Page 2 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

No one ever noticed Marion, after all. She was certain that she could count the people who knew that she was there on the fingers of one hand: her parents, Mary, and Mary’s parents.

Such a lonely existence . . . pitiful, really.

Marion walked around the grounds alone, the wind whipping her face and seeping through the sleeves of her dress, but she didn’t even notice; her mind was preoccupied with other things, and the wind was only a small nuisance. She only stopped when she got to a small river that ran through the manor grounds, and she sat down onto a small boulder, watching the water run by.

Marion wondered, as she often did, what it would be like if she was someone else. She wondered how her life would be different if she was one of those girls in the beautiful dresses, if she spent her days dancing with handsome young men and talking to friends, if she had someone to whom she would like to send a letter.

She would be happy, she supposed. Every night, she would look forward to the next morning, and every morning she would be happy to be alive.

She wasn’t happy to be alive. She hated everything about her life.

What kind of life was it if her mother always controlled her, dictating what she could and couldn’t do, what she could and couldn’t eat, what she could and couldn’t wear? What kind of life was it if she was trapped in her chambers for most of her days, having no contact with other people? What kind of life was it if her mother only cared about her when it came to her finding a husband and ridding the rest of their family of her presence?

If nobody wants me, why should I live?

The water looked tempting. It would be cold, Marion knew, but after a while, it wouldn’t matter. She would only have to fight the urge to get out until her body would be too exhausted to register the temperature of the water, and then she would be gone.

Just like everyone wants.

Marion stood, approaching the bank of the river. It looked deep enough to her, at least in the half-light of the moon, and though it wasn’t powerful, she could still swim further away from the bank and hope for the best.

Or is it the worst?

She toed her shoes off, leaving them by the bank, and then stood on the grass. It always surprised her how much harsher the grass felt compared to the way it looked, and the chill of the ground made her flinch, but nothing stopped her from making her way towards the water.

She looked up, seeing the myriad of stars that were scattered along the sky, and for a moment, it gave her pause. She would miss seeing the stars, she thought. She would miss the stars, and the rays of sun warming her skin on a cold day, and the tarts that the head housekeeper liked to make. She would miss the scent of candles when they went out, and the softness of her bed after a long day.

Funny how we miss the most mundane things in the end.

She wouldn’t miss her mother, nor would she miss her father. That much Marion knew for certain, and she knew that they wouldn’t miss her either, even though they would be devastated to hear of her death, simply because taking her life would send her to hell, and it would also affect her family’s social standing.

To hell with it. What do I care about their social standing?

Marion took a deep breath and plunged her foot into the water, which only served to punch the very air she had just breathed right out of her lungs. It was freezing cold, much more so than she had imagined, and for a moment, she thought that it would be better, perhaps, if she found a fire by which she could sit and wait for the feast to be over.

But no, she had gone this far, and she wouldn’t hesitate now.

She put her other foot in the water, and then began to wade through the river, making her way towards its centre. Soon enough, she couldn’t reach the bottom anymore, and she was floating instead, moving her arms and kicking her legs on instinct.

It took several moments for her to convince her limbs to stop moving, and by then, her dress was drenched in water, heavy and inconvenient. Even if she tried to keep afloat, she knew that she wouldn’t manage to do so, not for long.

Marion let her body submerge itself, and then she didn’t fight it when her head fell under the surface of the river. It was dark there, the moonlight too weak to reach the waters, and Marion could hardly see anything around her.

Then, her lungs began to protest.

She could have never imagined what it felt like to drown, and in that moment, she wished that she had never found out. Her lungs were on fire, a burning in her chest unlike anything she had felt before, but that was hardly the worst pain that came with not breathing. Her head was pounding, the pressure so terrible that she worried her brain would explode before her lungs could fill up with water.

If only her mouth would obey her, she thought; if only she could draw in some water and finally drown herself.

But she didn’t want to drown. Just when she wanted to die the most, she realised that she’d much rather live. Perhaps her life wasn’t worth living as much as another life, as much as the lives of those people who were dancing in the great hall while she was drowning in the river, but she wanted to live it regardless. She wanted to watch them, at least, as they went on about their days and their nights, even if it meant that she would never get to do anything herself.

Marion began to kick her legs and swing her arms, but she soon realised that she wasn’t moving; at least not upwards. Her dress felt too heavy, soaked through and through with water, and her limbs felt like lead, exhausted as she was from the lack of breath. Even as she began to panic, fear coursing through her veins, her mouth would not open, not even for a moment, an ancient instinct that her body had to keep her alive at all costs.

She was going to die there, in the end, she thought. She was going to die there, only twenty-one years old, and a few people would mourn her, but most would not. Then, she would be forgotten, as she tended to be.

Marion tried to find some solace in the fact that at least she was ending her life on her own terms. It was the one thing that her mother hadn’t dictated, and she counted that as a victory. Her death was her own, and not even her mother could take that away from her.

She stopped struggling. She stopped trying to reach the surface, and instead allowed the water to push her to the bottom of the river, her skirt billowing around her.