He had watched her for years, observed her from shadows and salons alike. Her beauty alone could have ensnared any man foolish enough to chase it, but Lucien's fascination with her ran deeper than simple admiration.
There was something about her.
Something rare.
Something she had possessed long before she ever became Lady Halveth.
A slow, almost imperceptible smile curved his lips as he extended his hand. "Consider it sold."
Their handshake sealed more than a bargain. It sealed a fate.
That very night, Lord Halveth returned with what little payment he could muster, dragging with him a thin, exhausted French servant, a wretched soul purchased from the desperate slums where men were sold cheaper than cattle.
The servant had not lasted long.
Hunger hollowed him. Misery consumed him. Within days, he was nothing more than a corpse.
Seraphine never understood how her husband's hunting excursion had transformed so grotesquely.
He had departed to stalk deer through the forests beyond their estate. Yet he returned not with a wounded stag slung across his horse, but with a dying Frenchman trembling beneath his arm.
Lucien's laughter echoed in the empty road.
"I never touched you while he still lived."
His voice was low, threaded with a dark amusement that lingered unpleasantly in the air.
His gaze drifted toward his hands. Fine scratches lined his pale skin, delicate marks left by something that had struggled fiercely beneath his grip. The faint sting of them pleased him more than he cared to admit.
He flexed his fingers slowly.
"But when he finally died…" Lucien murmured, his voice dipping into something dangerously intimate.
"And he did."
A slow smile formed; cold, patient, inevitable.
"Then you will be mine."
Seraphine sunk herself on her settee the moment she stepped inside her manor. She was tired and careless that time slipped so fast and her heavy eyelids had soon dragged her into a dream.
Perhaps things she endured had become dreams and reality, for I her dreams replay how dead she almost had gotten with Lord Edwin's never ceasing abuse. Eleven months felt like years to her, and a day, excruciatingly painful, felt like a week without the sun in its formal rotation.
Sweat slowly traveled traveled her porcelain skin.