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Chapter Two
The first thing that stuck Arthur was the abrupt and garish lighting of the theatre, and even so, everyone around him was cast in darkness. Above him, sconces and dipped candles hung crowning the chandelier, and the light seemed to be entirely focused on the stage, now empty. Something was odd about this place. Something in his stomach didn’t feel right; something important was missing.
A storm of murmurs arose; too many people were trying to talk at the same time. He turned to his wife, who was sitting beside him. “There’s just too many people here. Is the play that popular?”
He frowned as he looked around. “Looks like everyone has something to say.”
Lydia Hughes, the duchess of Davenport and his wife of seven years, didn’t turn around to face him, neither did she acknowledge him, which seemed rather odd to Arthur. She was always attentive to him.
“Are you all right, dear?” he asked, reaching for her. He could hardly see her face as she was turned away from him. He reached for her when the music began. It started with a low tilt before the notes rose higher and higher, reaching a crescendo. The music was beautiful, and yet in the spaces punctuated by the silence of the pianoforte and the violin, Arthur sensed certain melancholy.
“Lydia?” he called out. No answer. He reached for her hand but grasped air instead. Simultaneously she fell out of her seat, collapsing to the floor.
“Lydia!” Arthur shouted. He knelt beside his wife on the darkened balcony. The music seemed to surround him entirely, cutting off air from his throat so he could barely breathe. He knelt to the floor with his hands, his mind swimming. “Lydia,” he said, almost choking on the single word. He reached for her, but she seemed to be getting farther and farther away from him until darkness swooped down on him and made him its own.
Arthur woke up in his bed, gasping for air. He was drenched entirely in sweat, and the cool air from the window he had left open before going to bed played on his back. He couldn’t sleep with the windows shut anymore.
Arthur looked down at his hand. His hands were shaking. The faint light of moonlight darkened his chambers. He was in his home, alone.
He had dreamt of his wife again, and every time it was the terrible scene. The ill-fated play that they had gone to see together…It had been three years since she had passed, and he was in this room alone.
Arthur greedily gulped in the air, grateful to be broken of the nightmare’s chain. His hands were still shaking and his heart beat like a drum against his chest. No matter how many times he experienced it, each was equally as terrible as the first time.
Arthur got out of bed and walked to his window. “What is happening to me?” he asked himself, raking a frustrated hand through his hair. His condition had baffled his physician, whose only solution seemed to be a sleep remedy to help him dream and another to calm his nerves. Neither of them seemed to have worked till then.
He found the candelabra next to his bed and lit it with a matchstick. He knew he wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon, so he put on his evening robe and quietly exited his desolate room. Arthur walked down the empty halls of Davenport House, absolutely hating the silence. The servants lived in a different wing on the opposite side of the manor.
He padded down a rounding staircase to reach his daughter’s room. Arthur inhaled as he pulled the doorknob open. Nora was fast asleep in her bed. He heard the sound of her little snores from where he was standing. Arthur relaxed immediately. “Well at least she’s safe,” he mused to himself. Whenever he couldn’t sleep, he found himself checking up on his daughter. Her sight gave him immense comfort, when nothing else in the world could.
He quietly closed the door, not wanting to disturb Nora. Sleep didn’t take him when he went back to his room, so he took a book out of his small bookshelf and read instead.
Just as the clock stuck six, there was a knock at his door. “Come in,” he said. His valet, Ramon, who had been with him since he was a little boy, entered the room.
“Good morning, sir,” Ramon said, giving a slight bow. Arthur kept the book away. His eyes had grown heavy and he bit back a loud yawn.
“Good morning, Ramon,” he said, his voice scratchy.
The valet looked at him with some concern. “Didn’t you sleep last night, Your Grace?”
“Not really,” Arthur said.
“Bad dreams troubling you again?” Ramon asked. He knew about his affliction and the terrible headaches that accompanied his insomnia, and everything else. But Arthur hadn’t given him many details of his nightmare, or the fact that he always saw his dead wife whenever he was unfortunate to slip into one.
“You can say that,” Arthur said. He scratched his jaw and felt his morning stubble. “Please fetch my shaving kit.”
“In a moment, sir. Would you like to have a bath first?”
“Yes, that would be nice,” he said. A hot, soaking bath sounded wonderful. Half an hour later when Ramon was finished dressing him, he made his way to the dining hall where Nora already sat at the table. She was flipping through the newspaper that one of the footmen had kept for him.
He threw her an amused look. “What do we have here?” he asked, laying a soft kiss on the top of her head.
“Good morning, Daddy,” Nora said. She beamed at him. To Arthur, she was his greatest shining light in this world. “I was just reading the report about the two new kinds of exotic flowers they discovered.”
Arthur raised both of his brows. Nora was only seven, but had perception far beyond her age. Along with that she had also been blessed with a sharp mind.
“What of it?” he asked as he buttered his scone.
“Well, I don’t particularly fancy the names,” Nora said. “They could have been prettier.”
