Wynthall Manor- The Wynthall Manor Trilogy

by Brianne E Pryor

  “And what could happen to me that would make me regret loving you?”

  “My father says he will take away your home, he will have your father stripped of his job! I cannot allow that to happen because of me.”

  “James, can I not make you understand? No matter what your father does or says, if I cannot be with you, then my life would be empty indeed. In the few years of our acquaintance, I have lived and loved more than I ever did before. And until you realize the magnitude of what you are throwing away because of me, I will continue to cast this illusion on you.”

  Grey smiled and shook his head. “No illusion, my love. I throw away a lifetime of sorrow so that I might live the rest of my life in happiness.”

  Taking his hand in hers, she smiled. “Then let us live the rest of our lives in happiness for not a single person—not even your father—can take it away.”

  Grey lifted his head to turn bloodshot eyes on Lady Eva, now standing in silence by the door. “How did you know?” his strained voice barely met her ears.

  “K-know what, my lord?”

  “All that you said, how—how do you know it all? You say it as though it was her who speaks and not yourself. How?”

  “I—I suppose any woman who truly loved a man would feel the same as she must have,” Eva answered him. “I know my mother did and I know I would should I ever love as she must have loved you.”

  Grey’s expression grew unreadable as he attempted to understand. To place each of Eva’s words in his mind so that they might ease his sorrow. But nothing could change what he knew already to be fact. However Eva had spoken truthfully Grey could not forget that it had been he who had left Dahlia alone on the road at the mercy of her hidden attacker and he who could not find her in the dark and rain to aid her. No matter how she might have been willing to die if only to be with him, Grey knew he might have prevented it. Shaking his head in defeat, he dropped into the closest chair and buried his face in his hands. “Perhaps she was willing to die if only to be with me but had it not been for my stupidity, my utter foolishness, then she would have lived.”

  Grey shook his head, his hands pulling the fibers of his scalp so that it burned. “I left her. I allowed her to walk home alone in the darkness. Only when I finally realized my folly did I go after her, but then it was too late.” Grey stared at the floor beneath him but saw only the misty night. “I grew closer to where I had left her in our meeting spot by the rocks on the river, it had just begun to rain. Then I heard her voice, a long, agonizing scream.” Grey’s body grew stiff again so that it trembled causing his voice to break. “I—I called out to her and she cried my name, b-but the sound… it echoed off the cliff, and I could tell not from whence it had come. I called again but heard only screams… each one my own name. I ran into the forest where I thought I had heard her. I continued to call, but she made no reply. I ran and called into the darkness until my voice grew hoarse and my clothes were wet through, yet I still could not find her. For the longest time I searched and then finally I saw her form lying just off the muddied path by the water’s edge at the foot of a rocky knoll, where we kept our meeting place.” The baron swallowed hard, trying to rid his throat of the knot that had grown and still grew.

  Drawing in a trembling breath, he continued, “She lay much as you did that night I came upon you, only she was not so well—barely conscious and beaten so that every inch of her face bore a mark. In the altercation she’d struck her head on a bolder beneath the cliff and struggled even to breathe.” Grey’s voice tightened as though at any moment he would burst. “I carried her back here but—but it was already too late… By the time I arrived, she was gone.” A cry escaped him as the baron was finished, his entire body wracked with anguish.

  Tears now rolled freely down Eva’s face, her heart grieving as though she herself could feel Grey's ache. “Oh, Lord de Grey…”

  With a stricken soul he rose to his feet, his own tears now wetting his cheeks. “It is not to be borne, my lady!” he cried out. “Tell me how I may live with this sorrow! I cannot! If only I were as lucky as she, if only I had allowed my brother to—” Grey stopped abruptly, his mouth trembling as he halted his words. A sudden silence fell over the room, an air of tenseness hanging in their midst as the two stared one at the other. Eva looked upon the baron with question in her gaze willing him to continue, but his sentence went unfinished. “Excuse me, my lady,” Grey uttered a wavered apology, and then with a brief bow, he hurried past Eva to the door and before she could find the words to protest he was gone.

  ~ 22 ~

  “James, you m-must leave me. He—he’ll return!” Her dying words begged him, implored him to escape what might be his end, not knowing that as she slipped away she took with her his heart and soul.

  “I will not leave you,” he contended vehemently, leaning over her frame so that the rain might not hit her bloodied face. Her eyes began to flutter closed as he held her to his chest. “Dahlia! Dahlia, tell me who it was! Who did this?”

  She opened her mouth to answer him, but her words caught in her throat with a struggled breath. Her eyes looked up at his as her hand clutched his shirt. “J-James… I—I love you.”

  “I love you too, my darling. Stay awake, please, Del!” But despite his pleas her eyes fell shut…

  Grey’s beating heart pulsed within him while the vivid recollection played repetitively in his memory. His aching forehead dripped beads of sweat down the length of his neck and onto his already stained collar. His body trembled as her dying words echoed over and over in his mind, unyielding to any attempt at forgetting them. For twelve years he had attempted such, to shut them out so that they might not rule what was left of his being. To forget the night whose memory cut his core and severed the heart, which he had been told only hours before still existed. Leaning forward in his chair by the dark fireplace, Grey covered his face with a quivering hand, attempting to shut out the recount of her death, the oh so clear picture of her in his arms as her body collapsed against his and her alluring brown eyes fell shut. It was as though this day had ripped open his innermost being and now spilled out all about him. Rising from the spot, Grey allowed his body to move toward the window and rip back the drape, looking into the afternoon only to find the sun covered by a cloud promising rain soon to come.

  His exhausted mind seemed to have collapsed, so filled with unwanted memories it was hardly able to function. Over and over, he heard Eva’s words, his own futile attempts to make right what he knew for which there was no antidote. However hard the lady had tried to help ease his mind, there was no way to change what had come about that night, no way to make right all that he had left wrong, and now its recollection tortured him as he refused to forgive himself for having been just as responsible for the death of another as the unknown person who had ended her life. It was as though the lady’s profound speech had drawn out every part of him which he had tried to conceal. And with it had come much more than he had ever intended, a flood of emotions and the story of a time he had never told to anyone in his own words before. Accompanied by the near revelation of the only secret that had not spilled the moment she ripped open your heart! Grey berated himself. For twelve years, you utter the tale to not a soul and then after a mere few days she cuts you open like a surgeon with his scalpel. She has bewitched you, James!

  Grey turned away from the window, running his hand through his dark mane, attempting to repress the only reasoning he could find behind such a bewitching as the Lady Eva had seemed to cast upon him. Did he dare allow it? Or was he capable at all of stopping such feelings as he now realized she instilled in him? Again, the familiar face of a love once strong appeared in his memory, gripping his heart and plaguing him. She would not want this, he attempted to convince himself of the truth in Eva’s words though he faltered. She would not want you to suffer for such a duration as this. And yet he could not repress it, he could not extinguish the sorrow as though it were the flame of a candle taking on breath. Grey turned his eyes f
rom where they gazed passed the parish toward Calgar to look to the east, where the forest began passed the road, the pane just obstructing his view of the wooded area where he had unintentionally fallen into sleep two nights before.

  In the heat of the pressing moment, Grey turned away from the window, desperate to be next to her, to speak with her though she could not hear him. Leaving in only his trousers and shirtsleeves Grey opened his chamber doors and twisted through the upper level of the castle to the back stairway, descending it to exit through the servant’s door where he passed many greetings from members of his staff as he journeyed. Once in the out of doors, Grey made haste across the grounds, bound for the only place where he hoped his mind would be given peace. He climbed the small hill at the manor's east end toward where the forest began, already seeing before him the small clearing to which he journeyed and picturing the stone in the midst of its grassy plane. Soon he was trampling through the overgrowth and stepping into the tall grass and ivy a midst the small circle. The afternoon sun sank just enough that the branches of surrounding tress did not block the entirety of its light, casting broken rays onto the greenery.

  Grey beheld the grave with anger and grief overwhelming his heart. He clenched his fists at his side, attempting to control the urge to bash his knuckles against the nearest tree. Turning his face to the stone, he leaned his hands upon it. “Oh, Dahlia…” Grey closed his eyes tightly, willing the memory of her cruel death to fade away, wishing he could address her person rather than her grave. Again he felt the chill of her body against him as he carried her through the rain, uttering prayerful words only she could bring forth within him; begging for her life even after she’d breathed her last. But it had not been done, and she had died without a hope. “It was because of me, Del,” he spoke to her though she heard him not. “No matter what the duchess says, were it not for me, you would have never been prey marked for slaughter. Had I not made you my own and refused all sensibilities telling me of the danger it was to you, then you would be alive even this moment.”

  “If she loved you as you still love her now, then she lived a full life,” Grey heard Eva’s words as though she spoke again to him, but how could he believe that in the worthless second offspring of a greedy baron this beauty and pure soul could have lived anything other than in sorrow? How could he believe his love was worth her death? “I tell you, sir, she would have died a thousand times if it meant she could love you. Just as you would have for her.” Had what Eva said been true? Had she truly died happy because she had been allowed to love him however brief a time?

  “But it cannot matter,” he muttered quietly to the stone on which he leaned. “Had you been there for her as you should, she need not have died.”

  “She would have wanted your happiness, my lord.” Eva’s voice sounded in his head again as the memory of what he had caused cast him into depths of grief. Would she have truly been saddened to know of his sorrow? Would her delicate brown eyes have grown dim to know the way he grieved for her? Did he dare stand with the memories of her joyful nature and pure heart and dare to think that she would have wanted him to suffer as he had? “I know you would not have,” he whispered. “But however it might have grieved you, I cannot live with myself knowing I might have prevented it.”

  “There can be nothing worth desiring the end of one’s life,” Grey heard Eva’s words again. “God has given it and only He can take it away.” Grey beheld the engraving across the stone’s mossy front, the single name that had lingered with him for half of his life. She had said much the same for she too had believed in this God of whom Eva had spoken. She too had harbored such a faith and, indeed, had nearly convinced Grey of this love which she was assured God had for all. But how could He love me when He did not grant me my only request? Grey’s conflicted mind began again to grow fatigued. Turning away from the stone, he looked through the trees to the east end of his manor where the gardens extended to the north so that they might be sunned throughout the day. Often he had pictured her moving about the grounds, imagining Dahlia adorned with the attire of a baroness in place of her apron and head cloth both soiled with the smell of her father’s latest catch. He could picture her hair, colored—she often said—by the sand on the water’s edge, when she and her father had lived on the seaside. He could picture her golden skin, freckled by the sunlight, and could see her figure move about the house and grounds, making what had once been his prison his home. And more vividly then they all he could hear her melodic voice as she spoke with him, each tone flowing with contentedness he had not known until he had seen it flourish within her.

  Grey’s eyes softened as he looked upon Wynthall and recalled not her death but the unending beauty that emanated from her life as she had lived it. “Your happiness is in what you have left of her. In the place in your heart where you now hold her.” Once again he recalled Eva’s words, and in a moment, he looked not upon the image of his lost love but of that of a familiar face. Again her figure had changed into that of another girl, which caused Grey to turn away, reprimanding his imagination for taunting him so.

  What is happening to you? You cannot allow this woman—this girl—to overcome you! Had it not been for you, your feelings might have been for your wife! Are you so quick to forget Dahlia? Again his grief began to creep upon him, his heart sinking under the weight of what had come about because of him and the guilt of entertaining any thought, however unintentional, toward another. Grey knew he had not forgotten her, he could not and yet he feared the overbearing feelings that had so recently come to dwell in him, stemmed from what he knew must be the oh so unpredictable arrival of Eva Vastel.

  ~ 23 ~

  Grey walked with a slow pace toward Wynthall, his heart aching and his mind fatigued with all that overwhelmed it. He could no more attempt to make peace with his own self; his mind could think no further on the subject lest he drive all rationality away and take to being as mindless as was thought of the lady when she had first arrived. Grey entered the manor just as he had exited, through the servant’s door and kitchen into the damp lower corridors where he might reach the back stairs lit by a single window carved into the castle stone. Grey made the ascension without having seen more than a few chambermaids, reaching the upper level where he twisted his way down the dark, damp castle halls, the light from an occasional candle mounted upon the wall, providing the only warmth that might be had in the dingy, narrow corridors. Soon he had reached the main gallery, which would lead him to his own room.

  Desiring not to cross paths with another Grey walked quietly, unsure of what he intended to do with his sorrowful thoughts once he had reached his chamber but certain that he wished not to be disturbed by his servant’s inquisitive concerns. Lost among his own attempts to shut away the world around him Grey did not see the approaching Lady Eva until he was nearly upon her. Stepping back in surprise when his body nearly collided with her own, the baron looked up to meet Eva’s apologetic eyes but uttered his own amends before she could speak. “Your pardon, my lady.” He bowed quickly and would have made a move to continue down the hall had her words not stopped him.

  “Lord de Grey?”

  Turning his head so that he might meet her gaze, the baron cast her a look of question. “Yes, my lady?”

  “I have been on the search for you, my lord,” she spoke timidly, as was her usual nature, her eyes now downcast, though she could feel his stare on her. “I must leave here,” she whispered, glancing about them to ensure they were alone. “I must return to my uncle. I know he spoke earlier of his intent to declare me dead so that he might become the Duke of Dawcaster. I cannot allow it, my lord, I cannot allow him to take my father’s peerage and set it to ruin.”

  Grey sighed heavily, his mind now straying from its previously void state to thoughts of their current dilemma. “You are certain there is no purpose in waiting, my lady?”

  Eva shook her head. “The longer I delay, the more damage he shall inflict.”

  The baron only nodded gra
vely, knowing there was nothing to be said that might persuade her against what she was certain was her duty to perform. “In this case, my lady, I shall send for the carriage as soon as you are ready, and I will accompany you to see that you arrive without mishap.”

  At this, however, Eva shook her head. “You cannot, my lord. However I should be thankful for your protection my uncle has been here only this day, and you have told him not of my presence in your home. Were you to appear with me upon my return, he will know you did not tell him the whole of it and have such a scandal riddled about the entire country before nightfall. I must return alone.”

  Grey sighed with reluctance, realizing the correctness in the lady’s predictions but wishing to find some way that he might omit this reality. “You cannot go alone,” Grey protested, “and the circumstances that you have mentioned will also, I fear, prevent you from taking my carriage for he will surely recognize it.”

  Eva nodded. “That is true. I had not thought of it.”

  Grey frowned in his musing, attempting to discover a way to safely deliver the lady without bringing ruin to both their names. “If it is agreeable to you, my lady, I will have the rig brought and will go with you as far as the Covingdell road, then I shall return and Dickson, the stable master here, may take you the remainder of the way. You can tell your uncle that he found you on the road and offered you a ride to your home.”

  Eva nodded. “That is most agreeable, Lord de Grey,” she thanked him. “I will not tell my uncle of my stay here. I shall only say that a farmer took me in after my escape and that I have only just now been able to return to him.”

  Grey frowned inwardly as Eva spoke of her plan to deceive her uncle, to pretend she had spent no time whatever at Wynthall and that the past four days would become nonexistent in the eyes of the future. Grey felt a pang within him as her words lay on his heart. The prospect of life returning to its lonely normality struck Grey with a keen displeasure though he concealed it for all hope for his future had long since run out. “I will call for the rig as soon as you are ready, my lady.”