Prologue

‘Dearest sister,

I must be brief, for I fear that Mycroft will stroll into my room at any moment and peer over my shoulder at my hasty scrawl.’

‘I pray that you are doing well, for I am not in any place of which I can come to your immediate side if you fall ill. 

I confess, I do not understand this man that has bestowed me with his last name. In truth… he frightens me.’

‘I am also very much afraid that you will not believe my far-fetched tale and write me off as mad. But you must believe me, dearest sister!

Have lies ever graced these lips before?’

‘Ever since that moment in the rose garden a month ago, this Mycroft Black has pranced behind me as if I am knitted to him with thread.’

‘He is my husband under the Lord’s eyes, yes… but I cannot bear to think of a life where I am solely his wedded wife! There is another man. There has always been another man…

And I could as soon forget him as my own life!’

‘Mycroft’s secretive mercantilism takes him to far off lands, leaving me to the dust of the manor. I am not one to settle like grime on a wardrobe!’

‘I-I must confide in you, Drucilla, for your face is the only light in all this darkness.

This Lord Mycroft that father had me marry… he is not a man. He is something dark and horrible to live with.’

‘One day, I could not bear to hold my silence any longer. I told Mycroft all of it.

Oh, I was a fool to do so, Drucilla! A terrible, vain little fool!’

‘He was not mad with pain and jealously, and he did not play the despairing lover. He only said, with that cold, deducing stare:

‘Not he, not the world, not even you, can come between us.’

‘And ever since that moment (and please do believe me for I am not creating farces simply to frighten you!) —

I cannot leave his side.’

‘Should I try, it results in the worst pain imaginable! Inexplicably worse than the time I toppled down the hill beside our manor and broke my arm!

The moment I try to escape him, I am gripped by this ghostly hand and, suddenly, my breath is no longer mine!’

‘My hands become cold and numb and my sweat turns to beads of ice on my brow. There is nothing but relentless, tormenting pain and hunger, cruelly making me its slave.

I cannot move, for I turn to stone under the pain! And I fall to the floor like a cripple without a cane.’

And do you know what he does, youngest sister?

His thin lips turn slimy and he smirks.

Because he knows that the only thing that quails the pain and my quick pulse, is his touch.

Without it, I’m like a fish separated from her mother, the sea.

‘I want to leave this house and never come back to it. I never want to see his face again or listen to his oily voice as long as I live!

I want to cry, but these tears only blight and curse and damn me.’

‘I must part with you now, sister. I can hear him marching proudly up the steps, for he knows I am his porcelain doll, that I have no choice but to always be here waiting for him to take me off the shelf.’

‘I am afraid, Drucilla.

I fear the next time we meet, I shall have glass eyes.’