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“Gloria! Please!” I silence her. “Listen, I came upon him in the west wing…”
“Oh no.” Gloria raises her hands to her mouth. My eyes follow her movements without thinking. She stares at me unblinking, though her eyeballs tremble. She shakes her head. “And you’ve lived to tell the tale?”
Wrinkling my brows at her, I swallow. “Yes, well…” I sigh. “I guess he’s a man of his word and will wait for the day he’s assigned for my death.”
She drops her hands, slowly, and whispers. “Did you go intotheroom?”
I nod.
“What’s in there?” she asks.
“You don’t know?” My mouth falls open.
“No one knows,” she whispers. “You’re the first person who has ever survived wandering into the mouth of the lion.” Those words don’t move me since they don’t mean much in the bigger picture.
Recalling the shattered cot and feeding bottles, along with the ripped frames of the beautiful blonde, my body resumes its uncontrollable shaking. “How could someone be so cruel? He loved her. Truly loved her, didn’t he?”
“Ah, Agatha. Was it pictures of Agatha?” she gasps. “Her skeleton?” she whispers a silent prayer.
Despite myself, I laugh and sniffle, wiping my nose. “No. Didn’t you say he spared her life?” I ask.
“Yes. Well, that was years ago. Who knows what has happened since?” She shrugs.
“Did they have a child together?” I raise my eyes to hers.
Gloria pulls her brows in. “A child?” she whispers to herself before meeting my eyes again. “Not that I know of. No one has ever said anything about that. Why? Did you find a child’s skeleton? Oh, heaven…” She lifts her head to the ceiling, clutching her chest.
“Calm down. No. There were no skeletons as far as I could tell.” I rest my hand on her shoulder and nod at her. “There were baby things in there, broken apart, along with paintings of her likeness. That’s all.”
She sighs. “Thank you,” she whispers at the ceiling with her eyes closed.
“What happened that caused her to cheat on him? Was he a beast to her?” I ask, trying to make sense of it all.
“No. All accounts say that with her, he was the perfect gentleman. He went crazy after she cheated. They say he loved her so much and was so gentle with her that even after all that, he couldn’t even bring himself to kill her. In fact, Alfred was the first ever person he killed, and I suppose that sent him into a spiral of madness,” she says.
I shake my head. “Then why would she betray him so? If he loved her, if they planned a life together, even envisioned something as precious as having children together, why would she throw it all away on their wedding day? Why accept his proposal in the first place? How could she be so cruel, knowing she didn’t love him and hiding it from him?”
“I don’t know.” Gloria shrugs. “Like I told you before, she was his first love. He wanted everything with her, but she didn’t seem to want the same.”
“Maybe she seemed to realize that too late.” His voice comes from the door. Both Gloria and I jump up from the bed. “It’s okay,” he says, holding out his hand to calm us.
“Sir, I was just…” Gloria starts. She looks at me with bulging, panicked eyes, asking me without words if he might have heard what she said about him. Shaking, I look between her and him, unsure about the answer, but hoping for the best.
“It’s all right, Gloria. Can you give us a minute?” he asks.
“Certainly, sir.” She bows but as she hurries from the room, I reach for her skirts, wishing I could leave with her. But she moves too swiftly out of my reach. After his earlier display, I’m not sure being in the same room with him is a good idea.
Eyeing the door, I gulp. “Adam…”
He looks awful. There are cobwebs on his shirt and pants, even bits of it hang from his hair, and I itch to remove them. The whites of his eyes have turned red and beneath them, his skin is puffy. Heavens, I’m such a mess as within me, the need to hold him battles the need to strangle him and make my escape.
“Olivia,” he says my name softly, and I shiver. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Or pushed you. That was wrong,” he grunts.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I say, backing away from him. “I was only trying to help you.”Although, I don’t know why.
He clears his throat and nods. “Gloria was right. I lost all my marbles after catching Alfred fucking my betrothed.”
Kind of?
