My Own Brother Left Me To Die — But He Didn’t Expect The Maid To Intervene
Part 1
I possessed a fortune that rivaled the Crown itself, yet my wealth could not purchase a single ounce of genuine loyalty.
My name is Brian, Duke of Ashbourne, and my vast estate in the rolling hills of Yorkshire was the envy of every nobleman in the country.
To the outside world, I was a man of imposing stature and limitless power.
Behind the heavy velvet curtains of my drawing room, I was a ghost haunting my own life.
Five years ago, a sudden winter fever took my beloved wife, Brenda, leaving me utterly desolate and without an heir.
Her absence turned the grand, echoing halls of Ashbourne into an opulent mausoleum.
I had stopped truly living the day she died, merely existing alongside the vultures who circled my immense wealth.
The most patient of these scavengers was my own younger brother, Tyler.
Tyler possessed ambitions that far exceeded his intelligence, coupled with a staggering gambling debt in London’s elite gentlemen’s clubs.
He and his haughty wife, Heather, had taken up permanent residence in the East Wing of my estate.
They watched my every move with predatory anticipation, viewing my continued existence as a frustrating delay to their inevitable inheritance.
I knew they despised my refusal to remarry, yet I tolerated their presence out of a misplaced sense of familial duty.
That fragile truce shattered on a damp, unforgiving Tuesday in late October.
I had always maintained robust health despite my profound melancholy.
During dinner, an aggressive tremor suddenly seized my hands, rattling my heavy silver cutlery violently against the fine porcelain plates.
I dismissed myself early, blaming the draft, but by midnight, a terrifying fever had taken hold.
My skin turned a pallid, waxy yellow as agonizing abdominal cramps doubled me over in my sweat-soaked sheets.
Bouts of blinding delirium dragged me into the dark, forcing me to cry out for a wife who could no longer answer.
By morning, Tyler had summoned Doctor Craig, a prestigious but remarkably arrogant physician from London.
The esteemed doctor barely crossed the threshold of my bedchamber, conducting his cursory examination from the safety of the doorway.
He adjusted his spectacles with a trembling hand, his face draining of color.
He declared to my horrified brother that I was suffering from Asiatic cholera or a highly virulent form of typhus.
He strongly advised an immediate evacuation of the household to prevent a localized plague.
The reaction was instantaneous and completely devoid of any brotherly affection.
Tyler did not rush to my bedside to offer a comforting word or a sip of water.
Instead, he ordered the stable master to prepare his fastest carriage.
Within three hours, Tyler, Heather, and their entire entourage were gone, fleeing like cowards into the Yorkshire mist.
Panic is a highly infectious disease in its own right.
Once the family fled, the upper servants quickly packed their trunks and vanished, leaving the grand estate eerily silent.
I was abandoned to suffocate alone in the dark, surrounded by silk tapestries and priceless art that meant nothing to a dying man.
Tyler assumed he would receive a black-bordered letter within the week announcing my tragic demise.
He grossly underestimated the courage of a twenty-one-year-old chambermaid named Megan.
Megan was not bound to my household by loyalty to my title, but by the desperate, unforgiving necessity of survival.
She was a quiet, observant girl whose meager wages kept her from the horrors of the local workhouse.
When the silence of the house became oppressive, the elderly cook begged her not to go upstairs and catch her death.
Megan ignored the warning, gathering a basin of cool water and a bowl of thin broth.
She pushed open the heavy mahogany doors of my master suite and threw back the suffocating velvet curtains.
She opened the windows to let the crisp air sweep away the stagnation, stripping my soiled linens with gentle but firm hands.
For three agonizing days and nights, she barely slept, forcing water past my cracked lips and keeping me tethered to the mortal world.
By the fifth day, my violent fevers began to wane, replaced by a terrifying lethargy and a severe burning pain in my stomach.
Doctor Craig returned to the estate, his face shielded by a handkerchief soaked in pungent vinegar.
He seemed genuinely shocked and mildly irritated to find me still drawing breath.
He handed Megan a small, dark glass vial, instructing her to administer five drops in a glass of water twice a day.
He claimed it was a powerful tincture designed to purge the lingering miasma from my blood.
He collected his exorbitant fee from the lockbox in my study and swiftly departed again for the safety of London.
That evening, as the grandfather clock chimed eight, Megan uncorked the dark vial to prepare my medicine.
A peculiar odor wafted up, smelling faintly of bitter almonds and sharp garlic.
Megan froze completely, the glass dropper hovering motionless over my water glass.
