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Wouldn’t it be lucky if he just died?
Lucky, lucky, lucky. Didn’t everyone always say how lucky she was? Young, rich, beautiful. Cordelia Rosewell had it all. People said that all the time, so it must be true. On top of everything, she now had a fiancé, too. She should have felt blessed, then why did she feel as though her luck had run out?
She laughed when her father told her the news. “Father, stop!” Cordelia commanded, wiping a tear that laughter brought to her eye. As jokes went, this was not a very good one. Marrying a forty-something-year-old man? Ludicrous! She stopped laughing when she noticed her father didn’t join in.
Of course, Cordelia knew her father loved her, but she also knew how much he valued social conventions and she had always known she would probably marry someone one day, she had even entertained the possibility that she would marry someone not of her choosing but. Not now, not yet. Why? She shook her head. The corners of her mouth twitched, she was still trying to tell herself this was nothing more than a poor attempt at humor. The last of her glee faded at her father’s next words.
“You will marry him, Cordelia.”
If looks could kill, her father would have keeled over. She could even picture his glass of brandy rolling off his hands, spilling its contents on the lavish carpet. She loved him, she did, but at present she wondered why love required submission.
Cordelia spent the weeks leading up to the wedding—her wedding—seething. She loved the fine white gown but she hated that she was being made to wear it against her will and it got her thinking if her will had ever truly mattered. Her father had always treated her like a princess and that had made her believe that she was and that she would always be allowed to do as she pleased. It was almost a betrayal that he was the one now stripping her of that sense of freedom, what could she expect of a strange man?
What, indeed.
Wouldn’t it be lucky if he just died?
It would, yes, but Cordelia couldn’t trust her luck anymore.
I could kill him, she thought as the maid behind her pulled on her corset. She gasped, both at the realization and the tight laces.
The idea comforted her somewhat, it made her feel heartless but she would hold onto it so as not to feel entirely powerless. She wouldn’t act on it, no, it would be her fantasy. Perhaps this man she was marrying could be reasoned with, perhaps he would listen to her, leave her be. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, she would have all the luxuries she was accustomed to, she would still have some semblance of, what, freedom? Something like it.
These thoughts were still running through her mind when the celebration was over. The garden was dark, the white roses of her bouquet looked almost black, ominous. Cordelia rose from the table and went into the house. Her husband barely took notice.
She sat on her bed, glad to be alone. She knew she had to ring for her maid to help her get out of the ridiculous dress, to take out the pins from her hair, but that could wait. She wanted a quiet moment with her racing heart. She didn’t even reach for the book on her nightstand, she wasn’t in the mood to read about passionate lovers, she just sat there until the last sliver of daylight faded and her room was plunged in darkness.
Then her door creaked open. A large shadow ran toward her, grabbing at her with greedy hands, pushing her down on the bed.
Cordelia struggled but it seemed to be in vain, he was too strong. He could hold her with one hand while he ripped her clothes with the other. She kicked and flailed.
“Scream all you want, it’s like music to my ears,” he said. Cordelia bit her lips bloody, she would not give him that satisfaction.
Her hair came undone, the pins that held it ran free, and then she was drowning in a sea of red.
She pushed him off her and stood up, clutching her heart-shaped pin in her right hand in case he tried to get up. It took her a minute to realize he would not get up again, not that night, not ever. Cordelia looked down at her dress, she had wanted to have a red wedding dress, now she did. The white roses of her wedding bouquet were stained red too. Good. She preferred red roses anyway. She was placing the crushed flowers on her dead husband’s chest when her father walked into her room.
He had her locked up that same night.
Cordelia paced the length of her new room. Her father promised her he would fix the place for her, that she wouldn’t want for anything, he at least had the decency to look mortified. This was his way of loving her, to protect her, she didn't doubt it but she suspected that on some level he wanted to be rid of her; marrying her off meant she wouldn’t be his problem anymore, having her committed achieved much the same thing.
His father was as good as his word. He bought the place and ensured Cordelia had every comfort, he even gave his name to the place, as if to prove he wasn’t ashamed of the connection.
Cordelia spent most of the time in her room, sitting by the window, reading, occasionally looking out into the yard and daydreaming about escaping, wondering if she’d ever be free. She didn’t pay attention to the other patients, she didn’t realize someone noticed her.
It started sweetly enough, annoyingly so. A tiny flower just outside her room, a poem slipped under her door. She smiled, she felt so silly. She tore the page in pieces and then put it back together. She loved it, she hated it. Was this man mocking her?
But Charlie wasn’t mocking her. He liked her, he liked spending time with her, talking, braiding her hair, talking, making a doll in her likeness, talking, talking, always talking. She liked listening to him, with polite interest at first and then in earnest, it was clear Charlie had been through a very traumatic experience, some days he did not seem to distinguish the memories that haunted him from reality, through the worst of this Cordelia held his hand, shook him by the shoulders as a way of soothing him. She soon learned how to sneak out of her room and into his, to fall asleep to the sound of his voice.
“My Queen.” He called her that one day without prompting, and though Cordelia’s face went probably as red as her hair, she only nodded and offered her hand for him to kiss. Then came more poems, pages and pages, enough to cover the walls of her room.
It was odd—for she wouldn’t dare to call it crazy—, this domesticity, this bubble they had shared in such an unexpected place. Cordelia wondered if things would work between them outside of the asylum, part of her knew it wouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it, she liked him. No, she didn’t. She shouldn’t.
“I want to get out of here,” she whispered to him one night. Charlie was playing with her hair, almost asleep.
“What would I do without you? We belong here, someone put us here and this is where we are and if I hadn’t been here I wouldn’t have met you, so isn’t it good that we are here?”
Cordelia batted his hand away, softly but firmly. “I don’t belong in this place, this place belongs to me.”
“But if this place belongs to you, doesn’t it also mean you belong to it? Everything we own, owns us in return. I love you, so I’m yours and you love me, so you’re mine.”
Cordelia turned away from him. No, that didn’t sound right. She wasn’t anyone’s.
She didn’t feel loved, she felt like the object of a delusional obsession. It wasn’t she that he loved, it was something that only he could see, a figment, a hallucination, an idea. She was tired of being an idea. All of a sudden she had a vision, Charlie would follow her wherever she went but he wouldn’t help her, he would hinder her, he would hold her back. He would eventually make her have to hurt him, wouldn’t he? The thought was painful, and painfully real.
When was the last time she’d felt trapped, hopeless? The memory of her engagement and short-lived marriage came to her mind, and with it, the first thought she had when her father told her who she would be marrying. As ridiculous and extreme as her own words had sounded in her head back then, they were almost making sense now. She didn’t want to leave Charlie, she didn’t want to harm him either, no. But…
Wouldn’t it be lucky if he just died?