The oak tree still stood where it always had.
Its branches stretched wide and patient, leaves whispering softly in the late afternoon breeze, as if nothing in the world had changed. As if promises were not broken so easily. As if names still meant something.
Scarlet arrived just before dusk posing as her sister.
She wore the pale green dress that had once been meant for Charlotte, the fabric chosen carefully to look familiar, comforting—recognizable. Her hair was styled simply, just like how her sister who have wanted it done .
And when she got close , she paused beneath the oak, practiced the smile she knew would disarm him.
Henry would not question it.
He never looked closely enough to notice what mattered.
Footsteps approached through the grass.
She turned, heart fluttering not with love, but with triumph.
"Henry," she said softly.
He stopped short, breath catching as his eyes found her. Relief washed over his face, followed by a smile so genuine it almost made her falter.
"I was afraid you wouldn't come," he said. "After everything… after you got sick so suddenly."
She stepped closer, just enough. "I would never break a promise."
The lie slipped from her lips easily.
He reached for her hands, warm, familiar.
" Am glad you are doing well and thriving"
She lowered her gaze, just as her sister used to and spoke "My family exaggerated. I needed rest and eat healthy that's all but am fine now ,no need to worry " her lies left no room for doubt.
And he didn't doubt instead he believed her.
They stood beneath the oak where vows had once been whispered, where a future had been dreamt and imagined. They talked about plans of marriage delayed but not destroyed, of a life still waiting for them. She nodded, smiled, let him kiss her knuckles as though they had always belonged to her.
She did not think of the horrible things she had done to her sister nor of the carriage that took her away to a place she wasn't supposed to go .
She did not think of the girl who cried herself to sleep in a cold stone mansion alone and betrayed.
She only thought of what she had won.
At that very hour, miles away, Charlotte under Scarlett's name and face sat alone by a tall window in the lord's manor.
Looking at the sky outside which had the same color as the dress she was dressed in.
Her chest ached with a grief she could not explain aloud.
Today, she thought. It was supposed to be today.
She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, breath fogging the pane. She could see it so clearly the oak tree, the way the light filtered through the leaves, the sound of Henry's laugh when he was nervous.
He must still be waiting.
She swallowed hard.
"I promised," she whispered to no one.
She imagined him standing there, checking the path again and again, hoping. Wondering what he had done wrong. Wondering why she had not come ,or if her sickness had worsened .
Tears slid silently down her cheeks.
I didn't abandon you, she wanted to tell him. I was taken.
The manor was unbearably quiet. No footsteps. No voice calling her name_her real name. Only the distant echo of a life continuing without her.
She curled her fingers against the glass as though the distance itself might shatter.
"She stole everything," she murmured. "Even my goodbye."
The sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the room.
Somewhere far away, beneath an oak tree heavy with lies, another woman laughed softly and accepted a future that had never been hers to claim.
And in the lord's mansion, the girl remained still and unseen, mourning not just the man she loved__
But the life that should have been waiting for her beneath the open sky.