The diary :
The next morning, the house resonated with the busy thrum of hammers and the constant buzz of several machines, heralding the thrilling changes to follow. Maria stayed tossing and rolling in bed for a while, the soft cotton white sheets wrapped around her legs. Her heart raced with excitement, and although she might have drunk too much wine the night before, the excitement of possibilities of the new day overrode any tiredness. The atmosphere was charged with a feeling of anticipation and what lay ahead. Deep inside, she had a profound feeling of empowered insight into the great truth in store for her to discover.
It wasn't the wine that made her stay awake ; it was the memory of the sight of Richard laughing in fading sunlight, without a shirt—a sensation Victor had not had for years. She could still feel the tightening in her chest as when their eyes first met. An unspoken ignition that neither would agree and yet could not help but deny.
By the time she climbed down the staircase, Victor, her husband, had already left for the day, his schedule was full of meetings that would keep him till late in the night. The estate was quiet without him, but not lonely today.
Maria could hear the laborers outside. She walked through the hallway with her beautiful long robe touching the marble floor. She stopped by the entrance of the doorway, took a deep breath before going outside to the rising sun.
When she got outside, Richard was outside.
He was focused and working. As he was working, his muscles were propped out with veins standing out and drops of sweat glowing like jewelry on his skin. The other workers laughed and cursed at themselves but Richard worked quietly in silence which distinguished him from his colleagues, a character about him which demanded attention.
Maria's heart raced and beat faster as he looked at him. She knew that she was the mistress of the house and Richard was just her husband's worker. She should turn back and go inside but her feet betrayed her, moving slowly as if tiptoeing on the terrace floor towards him.
"Good morning," Maria said to him. Her voice was calm and confident, a confirmation that she was Mr Langley's wife.
Richard looked up while using his backpalm to wipe sweat from his forehead.When their eyes met, the atmosphere was ignited with an unusual sensation.
Good morning Mrs Langley he said politely.
"Maria," she gently proclaimed.
She had no real reason to insist on Richard calling her by her first name, but a wish burned within her for Richard to see her as more than just the mistress of the house.
A thin smile towed the corner of his mouth. "Maria.". He said.
That evening, when the employees departed and quietness fell across the estate, Maria sat in front of her vanity. Her diary lay open, the leather cover cool against her hand.
She began to write, the letters coming with ease.
"This hunger is dangerous," she wrote. "I lied to myself that I was just looking at him the other day , but today I called his name Richard aloud and confidently. I needed to hear it in his mouth, feel the weight of it in the air between us. When he spoke it, I lived. I do not live in my husband's arms. I do not live in my marriage. I live when Richard looks at me. If I am not careful, it will destroy me. And yet I hunger for and want more."
Her hand trembled when she closed the diary and she kept it in the top drawer, sure she had concealed her secret.
The next day, Maria was called by a friend to visit for lunch. She left that afternoon dressed like royalty in a long silk gown wearing a perfume of heavenly fragrance which lingered the whole mansion unknown to her that she didn't close her diary tightly as she had hurriedly left it the night before.
Meanwhile, Richard was asked to take material up to repair a window in the master bedroom.As he walked through the stairs, his boot echoed as he stepped and climbed up the marble floor. He had grown used to the quietness of the house .
When he entered the master bedroom to put the wood near the window, he saw something. The nice, shiny vanity sat next to the open window, and on it there was a leather book, opened halfway, with one page showing.
He should have resisted glancing, But the beauty of Maria's handwriting drew him irresistibly, like a moth to fire. He laid the materials aside carefully, then paused. His hand lay on the diary. One swift glance would satisfy the gnawing curiosity that had been troubling him since the moment she spoke his name.
Richard opened the diary.
The words struck him like a blow to the chest.
"I am alive when Richard looks at me," he read.
His heart beat paced. He turned another page, each line burning hotter than the last. Fantasies laid bare on paper—her longing, her frustration, the hunger she concealed behind polite smiles. She wrote of him, not of Victor. She wrote of hunger and fantasies unspoken and ungranted.
Richard's throat parched. He should close it, not touch it, pretend he never saw it. But his hands refused to listen. His eyes devoured each word, and with every stanza, his restraint disintegrated.
The steps down the corridor woke him out of his daydream. He slammed the diary shut, pounding heart, and drew back as the maid walked in with towels. She gave him a passing look, indifferent, before disappearing into another room.
Richard breathed deeply, steadying himself. He glanced once more at the vanity. The diary remained there, tranquil and still. Yet he was aware of its secret now. He was aware of her secret now .
That evening, when Maria returned home, she sensed something was different in the atmosphere of the house. She did not know what it was, but when she passed Richard in the hallway, his look lingered on her for a second or two with an intimacy that made her heart jump.
Something had shifted.
Unknown to her, her covertly harbored fantasies had now started surfacing.