“You do not need to worry; I can handle it,” he assured her, never taking her eyes off her even for a moment.
“Very well then,” she pursed her lips and scraped her nails alongside the upholstery of the sofa she was seated on. It left a trail of ruffled fabric in its wake. “We were a family of four: my parents, my sister, and I. From my childhood, I was made aware of the fact that I could never be my father’s heir because I was born a girl, but my father never let my sister and me feel less than valued. If anything, he treated us equal to a son.”
“Your father sounds like a respectable man,” the Duke noted.
“Indeed, he was. Together with my mother, he gave the two of us the best childhood.” Sophia smiled at the memory. It had been a while since she had spoken about her parents. “We were quite close to our Aunt Rose, too. Since she did not have children of her own, our parents would take us to her house every other week. It was a great tradition, and our lives were filled with happiness.”
Sophia exhaled a sharp sigh, now getting to the dark part of her story.
“It was another day when we were supposed to visit our aunt. I remember what I wore that day; in fact, I remember that day like it was yesterday. It has been forever burned into my memory, now until eternity,” she professed. “I had a baby blue dress on that my mother had picked out for me specially. I could hardly wait to show it off to my aunt. So perhaps, when the dark cloudsappeared outside and my father said that the weather was not good to travel that day, I protested.”
The Duke was hanging onto her every word now. It was as though she was delivering a holy sermon and not a word was to be missed.
“I protested as children do.” Sophia’s voice was filled with pain now. “I puffed up my cheeks and demanded that we leave to visit our aunt, lest it get too late, and my father agreed.”
“You can take a break at any moment, Madam,” the Duke assured her, but Sophia shook her head. She had to get it out of her system now.
“When we set out on the journey, the weather conditions were not abnormal. In fact, I remember joking with my father that he had been worried for nothing. But I spoke too soon… because not long after, we found ourselves caught in the middle of a terrible storm. It was windy, and the rain made the horse neigh in protest, but we continued on.” She dug her nails into the side of the sofa now and tried to keep her voice from choking up.
“We were almost there, too. But when we embarked on the bridge…” She could not help it anymore, and her voice finally broke.
“Madam…” The Duke extended his hand out to touch hers. “You do not have to continue.”
“It is important to me that I do.” She mustered up all her remaining courage. “When we embarked on the bridge, the rainstorm only got worse, and the driver lost control of the carriage. We skidded off the side, and the carriage landed in the water. When I woke up the next morning, I had arrived at my aunt’s house, covered in wounds incurred when I had tried to escape the sinking carriage. I had immediately asked for my family, and they told me my parents and my sister had not been as lucky.”
She looked up at the Duke now, finally having finished her story. As hard as it had been to retell, she felt strangely lighter — as though a burden had just been taken off her chest, and she could finally be transparent about everything.
To her surprise, the Duke was silent. She began to grow worried that she had scared him with too many details. Another silence hung in the air between them, and she dug her nails even deeper into the sofa as she waited for him to say something.
Anything would do at this point.
“Madam,” he finally spoke, “do you… remember anything else from that night?”
She shook her head. “This is all that I remember.”
“Do you remember how you were retrieved from the water?” he pressed.
“I…” She racked her brain. She had never spent too much time thinking about the part where she was saved as she already felt so much guilt about being the only person to survive.
“Please try to remember,” he pressed again, observing her carefully.
“I do not remember, but in my nightmares, I always see a dark figure pulling me out of the water,” she admitted. “He always appears whenever the nightmare gets to the worst part.”
“Oh, does he terrify you?” the Duke asked, curiosity dripping from his tone.
Sophia shook her head.
“It is usually the water that terrifies me,” she admitted. “The figure is the one who saves me. Whether I deserved to be saved or not, well, that is something else entirely.”
“Madam…” The Duke looked up at her. “Your nightmares are a memory that you did not know you had. The figure who saved you, well that happened in real life.”
Sophia scrunched up her nose in confusion.
“And why would you say that?”
“Because…” the Duke braced himself, “it was I who you pulled you out of the water that night.”
CHAPTER 15
