Reborn: The Duke’s Obsession

All of the memories, all of the secrets, all of the lies—they started flooding into Delia's head at once. It was a chaotic, overwhelming torrent of images and voices.

Her grandfather's sad confession: "…your mother died in a terrible carriage accident on her way to the cathedral that led to her death…"

Mrs. Doris's horrifying story: "…arsenic poisoning… I saw her with my own two eyes, putting a small, white powder into your bowl of soup before it was sent up to you…"

Augusta's own hateful, whispered words: "… How dare you crawl back into this house…Why can't you just die, like your useless mother did?… Why do you want me to go through so much trouble to have to kill you again…"

Mrs. Doris's letter, still clutched in her hand: "…He was the Baroness's secret lover, the one who came to the manor to see her… Fredrick Garrison."

The pamphlet about the accident: "…the driver who caused the accident fled the scene and was never identified…"

It all screamed, FREDRICK GARRISON.

Delia's body began to shiver, a deep, uncontrollable tremor that shook her to her very core. She opened the other letter, the official one from the palace that Eric had requested. Her trembling fingers unfolded the paper. It was a summary of a criminal record. Fredrick Garrison. Charged with a hit-and-run case that had killed a bride and her carriage driver twenty years ago. He fled for a year and was captured, went through a trial and sentenced to twenty-three years of imprisonment. He would be released soon.

It was all true. Everything. The pieces all fit together into a single, monstrous picture of her life.

Eric, seeing the violent shaking of her body, the look of the raw horror on her face, rushed to her side. "Delia," he asked, his own voice now full of a panicked urgency. "Delia, are you alright?"

She looked up at him, her beautiful blue eyes now wide with a terror so profound it seemed to swallow all the light in the room. Her voice came out in uneven, desperate gasps, as if she couldn't get enough air into her lungs.

"The Baroness…" she managed to say, her breathing erratic. "She… she tried to kill my mother… and me… by paying a man… the man she was seeing."

"Delia," Eric said again, his hands hovering over her, not knowing how to help, how to stop this terrible unravelling.

She clutched her chest, a pained, desperate sound escaping her lips. "It hurts," she whispered. "It hurts so much."

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she slumped to the ground. Eric caught her just in time, his strong arms preventing her from hitting the floor, gathering her limp, unconscious form into his arms.

Morning came quickly as the sun chased away the remaining traces of darkness. Eric sat by her bedside, a silent, sleepless guardian. He squeezed out the water from a soaked towel into a porcelain bowl. The doctor's words from an hour ago replayed in his head.

"Her Grace has fainted due to complete physical and emotional exhaustion. She needs a great deal of rest."

He stopped squeezing, his hands gripping the edges of the bowl in a white-knuckled rage. Exhaustion. It was such a simple, clinical word for the lifetime of pain and terror that had finally overwhelmed her.

If I could just fire a single bullet through Augusta's black heart, he thought to himself, a cold, murderous fury settling over him, then Delia would finally be free from all of this pain.

Every time she seemed to find a moment of peace, a new, more terrible revelation from her past would come to light. And each new discovery, each new heartache, it affected him just as deeply. Her pain was his pain now.

He looked at the unconscious Delia on the bed, at her pale, beautiful face, so peaceful in sleep. He had stayed by her side all through the night, watching over her. He wrung out the last trace of water from the cloth and began to gently dab her sweaty face, pushing the damp strands of her dark hair back behind her ear.

Suddenly, Delia woke up with a sharp, terrified gasp, as if she had been pulled from a terrible nightmare.

Eric immediately began to pat her head, his touch gentle, his voice a low, soothing murmur. "Shhh, you're safe. You're alright."

"Eric," she said, her voice a small, scared sound as her eyes focused on his face.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I don't know," she replied, her gaze distant, lost in the horror of her own thoughts. "Why? Why would the Baroness do that to me? To my mother?"

"Stop thinking about those things now," Eric said softly. "Why are you searching for a reason in a woman who has no reason? She is not the kind of person that we can ever truly understand."

"But why did all of those things have to happen to me?" she asked, her voice beginning to rise. "It wasn't enough that she killed my mother, but now she has tried to kill me, too. All of that hatred, all of that maltreatment, all of it… for no reason at all?"

She looked at him, her eyes now wide with a desperate, existential pain. "What sin did I commit in my past life that I was punished so harshly in this one? What did I possibly do to deserve all of these terrible things? Why did those things happen to me?"

Her voice was rising with every question, becoming a desperate, heartbroken cry. "Why?"

Eric dropped the damp towel. He got into the bed beside her and, without a word, he pulled her into a tight, strong hug. She returned the hug, her own arms wrapping around him, holding onto him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that was spinning out of control.

"Why?" she asked again, her voice now a low, muffled sob as she snuggled into his safe, warm embrace.