Seacliff

Chapter nine: The heartbroken widow

Seacliff Lodge

January 1890

I went to the milliner's... yesterday, I think. Or the day before. They have all merged into one. It may as well have been a lifetime ago, that is how far removed I feel from it all. Almost dying will do that to you, I suppose.

But I did go to the milliner's, that much I remember, looking to buy a length of shiny black riband for my widow's hat. A year of use had worn it beyond fixing... Has it really been a year? Oh, God...

The thought still makes my heart clench... Yes, it has been a year, and instead of buying riband from the milliner's, I fled the shop in tears. I would have thought that after months upon months of malicious gossip and outlandish rumours, the chatterboxes might have had enough.

I had even dared hope that some might have guessed my wretchedness. What a fool I was. They had never liked me. They had never believed that I did love my husband. I was nothing but a fisherman's daughter – a siren in disguise, come to steal the most prized of stallions.

After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged, is it not, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife – unless, of course, that wife is a coarse outlander with absolutely nothing to recommend her but her wits. Then that wife is a harlot who tricked the poor man into her trap.

It never occurred to anyone that Douglas married me specifically because I cared not a whit about his fortune. I cared that he was a good and decent man who made me laugh... who loved life. He loved his horses and his dogs, every squirrel in his trees and every deer on his fields. He loved to dance! Oh, and how he danced...

I loved him... I loved him, I loved him, I did and it tore my heart out of my chest to wake up next to his cold, dead body in our bed... At least he passed peacefully in his sleep...

I could understand the suspicion at first. But only for so long. It weighed heavily on my nerves, already strained with grief. And after a year of strain, they finally snapped at the milliner's.

I don't know how I managed to ride my bicycle back to the Lodge, but I did. I did and I tried to comfort myself with a book – dear old Austen never disappoints – and some tea – black to begin with, slowly switching to barley as the day wore on and I began to feel utterly inconsolable.

Nothing made sense any longer. A walk might clear my head, I reasoned. Refresh my spirits. I stumbled in the dark through the wood to the beach. I stood on the edge of the shore, the sea lapping at my bare toes in the grass. The moon was full, so the tide rose high and roared, restless.

I felt the urge to crash into the waves. Wreck against the cliffs. I saw my bloodied body tossed about and wondered... would they even mourn me?

No, I didn't think they would.

I didn't think anyone would. What was there left for me to live for, anyway? A house and some land. The dogs and the horses would miss me.

Oh, bollocks.

Such good fortune, all mine now, but at what cost? I did not need it if I was to be alone. I needed nothing.

I jumped into the sea.