Chapter Text
He decided that he would marry her less than a week after meeting her. She was his opportunity to begin again. He found her schoolgirl crush on him intoxicating. She was young, innocent, and pretty. Being a paid companion was the only life that she knew … and he wanted her as his companion … permanently.
He found it ironic that her shyness and inferiority complex were both infuriating and at the same time alluring. She was not comfortable in her own skin and completely unaware of her charm. Most important of all was that she blotted out the past for him. For the first time, in a very long time, he was happy. With her, he laughed, sang, and felt gloriously alive. The deep malaise that weighed him down since he murdered his first wife dissipated.
Since he murdered his first wife! His young love must never know who he really was and of the heinous crime that he had committed.
She realized many years later that his proposal was not a spur of the minute decision. At the time, everything had happened so quickly for her. She came to his hotel room to say goodbye and he reacted by inviting her to stay. Her first thought was that he was offering her employment.
She loved him as a father, a brother, a friend … never imagining a sexual relationship between them. This frightened her. She was not ready (possibly would never be ready) to be anyone’s lover. But she had two choices - to head to New York with an employer whom she increasingly despised or to marry and make a home at Manderley with a man that she truly loved. It was really no choice at all.
She did not question that he knew the exact Italian town where they could marry in just a few days' time. Nor had she been surprised that he had all the necessary paperwork for their elopement to proceed.
In those very early days of their relationship, he was kind and loving. He gently introduced her to the ways of love and her fears of being his wife evaporated....