Reborn: The Duke’s Obsession

Delia sat in the simple, quiet room of her grandfather's hidden home, the horrifying story she had just heard from her grandfather still echoing in her ears. Baron Edgar had just finished recounting every terrible detail to Delia concerning the transfer.

"The Baroness did all of that?" she asked again, her voice filled with a quiet, lingering unbelief, as if saying the words aloud might somehow make them less true.

Edgar, who was listening in a state of pale, silent horror, nodded his head, his own voice a low, guilty rasp. "I was careless," he said, shaking his old head slowly. "I never should have let that woman into our family. I never should have let her near you."

"No, Grandfather," Delia replied, a new, hard resolve in her own voice. "I was the one who was careless, too. I lived in that house for years, and I never saw the truth that was right in front of me. I never expected her to go this far."

" How is your father now?" Edgar asked, his face filled with worry.

Delia answered, her facial expression mirroring his own. " They said he will be fine."

A thought suddenly struck Edgar. One that has been bothering him for a while.

"There is more to this, though," Edgar said, his brow furrowed in a deep, troubled thought. "There is this thing that is truly bothering me."

"What is it, Grandfather?" Delia asked, leaning forward in her chair.

"It is something that Augusta said," he replied, his gaze now sharp and analytical. "Something that Mrs. Doris told you she heard that night, when she was hiding in your wardrobe." Delia looked on, waiting for his words.

"When she said to you, while you were sleeping, 'How dare you crawl back into this house?'" he began, repeating the cruel phrase. "That means she already knew that your very existence, your presence in that house, was going to be a source of trouble for her plans."

Delia, now understanding what her grandfather was saying, continued the thought. "And then… when she said, 'Why do you want me to go through so much trouble to have to kill you, too?'"

"That, too," Edgar replied, his eyes now dark with a terrible suspicion. "The word 'too' is the key. It sounds as if she had already tried to kill you once before, even before the incident that Mrs. Doris saw and observed. As if the attempt with the pillow and poison was not her first and her plans didn't start after the inheritance discussion with your father."

The chilling implication of his words hung in the silent room. Edgar looked at her, his own face now a mask of dawning horror. "Am I overthinking this or am i just being too sensitive, Delia? Or am I just an old man seeing ghosts where there are none? Am I?"

Just then, Delia's brain clicked. A memory, sharp and clear, flashed in her mind—the handful of her mother's belongings her grandfather had shown her, the items he had kept hidden away for all these years.

She stood up from her seat and went to the small wooden drawer where the precious items were kept. She brought them all out and placed them on the table. She picked up the small, framed portrait of her mother and looked at it keenly.

Yes, the old painting was a little blurry with age, the colors slightly faded, but she was sure she could make something out of it. She could have sworn that the beautiful, sad-eyed woman in this painting looked… familiar. She knew that she was not the only person in all of Albion with blue eyes and there are others like her, others with even more lighter shade but there was someone else, someone she knew, whose eyes held that very same shape, that same shade of a summer sky. A specific person was coming to her mind.

She carefully kept the portrait to the side. I will look more into this later, she thought to herself.

She then picked up the worn-out, yellowed pamphlet, the old paper clipping about the carriage accident that had taken her mother's life. She began to read the fine print, the words she had been too distraught to truly absorb the last time she had seen it. The article described the tragic accident in grim detail. And then she saw it. A sentence she had not noticed before. It described how her mother, Catherine, in her final moments, had used her own body to shield her infant daughter, who was also in the carriage, from the impact. Her mother had sacrificed herself to save her.

The story also mentioned the person who had caused the accident, the driver of the other carriage, but it said that he had fled the scene and was never identified.

Delia looked up at her grandfather, a new, terrible question forming in her mind.

"Was the driver ever found?" She asked.

" Yes," Edgar replied. " Your father tracked him down. He went through trial and was imprisoned."

Delia nods her head in understanding. "Grandfather," she said, her voice a little shaky. "Can I please take these with me?" She gestured to the portrait and the old, faded pamphlet.

"Of course, my dear," Edgar replied. "They are yours, after all."

"Thank you." She smiled.

——————————

A group of grim-faced, elderly men, the long-standing advisors to the Ellington family, were gathered around the massive, dark table in the advisory council room, their expressions a mixture of confusion and irritation.

"Who called for this meeting, anyway?" one of the advisors, a man with a perpetually worried expression named Lord Ashworth, asked the one sitting beside him.

The man next to him, a portly gentleman named Lord Reginald, answered in a low whisper. "I am not sure. Lord Burton simply sent me a letter yesterday, saying that there was an emergency meeting that required my immediate attendance. He gave no other details."

"I also received the same letter," Lord Ashworth replied, his voice a low grumble. "It is highly unusual. What in the world is going on?"

Just as he spoke, the grand double doors to the council room swung open. Baroness Augusta entered, her steps confident and measured, her expression one of cool, unassailable authority. She walked directly to the head of the table and, without a moment's hesitation, sat down in the large, ornate chairman's seat—the seat that had belonged to Baron Edgar, and then to Baron Henry.

One of the advisors immediately spoke up, his voice full of a shocked disbelief. "Baroness," he said, "with all due respect, you are not supposed to be here. This is a meeting for the advisory council. Where is the Baron, or your father-in-law, Baron Edgar?"

Another one asked, his own face a mask of disapproval, "And why are you sitting in the chairman's seat? It is not at all proper. If the Baron were to find out about this…"

Augusta cut him off with a single, sharp raise of her hand.

"The Baron," she announced to the silent, stunned room, "is not coming." She looked around the table, meeting the gaze of each and every advisor. "And this," she said, placing her hands flat on the arms of the great chair, "is my seat. For the near future." She paused, a small, cruel smile playing on her lips as she reconstructed her words for maximum impact. "No. I misspoke. It will be my seat for a very, very long time."

Murmurs started to fly around the table, the old men looking at each other in a state of confused alarm.

"What?"

"What does she mean by that?"

"What is she saying?"

"I have been formally delegated the chairman's full management rights," Augusta replied, her voice now ringing with a triumphant, undeniable power. "And as of this very morning, I am the new owner of this seat, and the new head of this establishment."

She let out a slow, devilish smile, savoring the look of pure shock on the faces of the men who had, for so long, stood in the way of her ambition.