The silence in the west wing was a physical presence, thick and velvety with dust. It was a different silence from the rest of Blackrock Keep. The Duke's silence was cold, commanding, and enforced. This was the silence of abandonment, of things long forgotten and left to decay. Emmeline stood in the center of the main room, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind her, sealing her in.
This was to be her gilded cage. The Duke's decree—You will not enter the west wing—had been a challenge she'd accepted the moment his boot heels had faded down the main hall. A wife, even one acquired like a head of cattle, had a right to know the boundaries of her prison.
The air was stale, tasting of old wood, dried lavender, and the faint, sad scent of perfume that had long since lost its bloom. Late afternoon sun, thick and syrupy with dust motes, forced its way through a tall window whose lace curtains were grey with age. They hung in tatters, like the gossamer webs of long-dead spiders.
The room was a museum of a forgotten life. A grand piano, its wood scarred and dull, stood in one corner, a sheet of music still open on its stand, the notes a fossilized memory of a song. A lady's escritoire, delicate and spindly-legged, was piled with yellowed letters tied with a faded ribbon. Plush armchairs were shrouded in white sheets, giving them the ghostly appearance of silent, waiting mourners.
Emmeline's fingers trailed through the dust on the mantelpiece, leaving a solitary, defiant trail in the grime. She picked up a small, porcelain shepherdess, her smile frozen and her painted eyes blank. This was a woman's space. A space meant for music, for correspondence, for the gentle art of existing beautifully. It spoke of a time when the Keep wasn't just a fortress of industry, but a home.
A deep, aching loneliness threatened to swallow her whole. She sank into one of the sheet-draped chairs, a cloud of dust puffing up around her. She didn't care. The grime on her travelling dress was already a testament to her fallen state. What was a little more?
Closing her eyes, she let the silence press in, and in that void, a memory surfaced, vivid and painful.
She was eight years old, perched on her father's shoulders, her small hands tangled in his thick, chestnut hair. They were in the sun-dappled orchard behind their Boston home, and the air was sweet with the scent of apple blossoms.
"Higher, Papa! I can almost touch the sky!" she'd squealed.
He'd laughed, a rich, full sound that seemed to make the very leaves vibrate. "Hold on tight, my little Emmeline! I'll give you the moon if you ask for it!"
He'd run then, with her shrieking with joy on his shoulders, weaving between the trees until they were both breathless and collapsed in a heap on the soft grass. He'd pointed out shapes in the clouds—a dragon, a ship, a crown—and told her stories of knights and adventures, his voice full of warmth and wonder. He'd kissed her forehead. "You are my greatest treasure," he'd whispered. "Never forget that."
A single, hot tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek. The memory was so real she could almost smell the blossoms.
Another memory, sharper, more recent. She was sixteen, and he was teaching her to waltz in the grand parlor. Her mother had passed two winters prior, and a quiet sorrow had taken up residence in his eyes, but for her, he always mustered a smile.
"A count of three, my dear. One-two-three, one-two-three. Don't look at your feet! Look at your partner. Or in this case," he'd said, spinning her gracefully, "your dashing, if slightly old, father."
She'd laughed, following his lead effortlessly. "You're not old, Papa."
"Old enough to know that a man's true wealth is not in his bank ledger, but in the love he safeguards," he'd said, his tone turning uncharacteristically solemn. "Protect your heart, Emmeline. It is the only thing that is truly yours."
Protect your heart. The irony of that advice now was a knife twisting in her gut.
The good memories began to curdle, replaced by the slow, insidious change. The laughter in the orchard faded, replaced by the clink of glasses in his study late at night. The warm, guiding hands that taught her to waltz now spent their evenings shuffling ledgers, their once-steady grip becoming shaky.
The father who promised her the moon started talking about mining shares and railroad bonds. The light of adventure in his eyes was replaced by the frantic gleam of speculation. Their home, once filled with music and stories, grew quiet, then anxious, then fearful. The cherished objects—her mother's silver, the landscapes painted by her grandfather—began to disappear, sold to cover a margin call, to placate a creditor.
The man of love had been methodically dismantled and rebuilt into a man of greed. His treasure was no longer his daughter; it was the next deal, the next chance to win back what he'd lost, to reclaim a status that had become his obsession. The final, brutal transaction had been her. His greatest treasure, sold to settle his debts.
Emmeline opened her eyes, the ghosts of her past receding back into the dust-filled sunbeams. The ache was still there, a hollowed-out space where her love and trust had been. But the tears had stopped. In their place was a cold, hard clarity.
She looked around the forlorn room, at the relics of another woman's abandoned life. Was this her fate? To become another dusty ghost in the west wing, a forgotten wife in a heartless man's fortress?
A spark of her father's old fire—the one from the stories, not the greed—flickered within her. He had told her to protect her heart. And she would. But not by hiding it away.
She stood up, brushing the dust from her skirts with a new determination. She walked to the escritoire and gently picked up the stack of letters. The ribbon crumbled to dust. The top letter was addressed in a elegant, looping hand to Isabelle.
So that was her name. The first wife. The one who had died of silence.
Emmeline Montague, Duchess of Blackrock, was not going to die of silence. Her father had sold her to save himself from ruin. Her husband had bought her to secure a bloodline. They had both treated her as a thing, a transaction.
But as she stood in the haunting beauty of the west wing, surrounded by the echoes of a lost life, Emmeline made a silent vow to the ghost of Isabelle, to herself, and to the ruthless Duke downstairs.
They owned her name. They owned her body. But they would never own her spirit. The terms of her imprisonment were about to be renegotiated.