【The Will】

Three months after becoming the mistress of Cavendish, Catherine was attending her husband’s funeral.

It wasn’t particularly surprising. Even before coming to Cavendish, Catherine knew her husband wouldn’t live long. He had been sickly since childhood, with frequent rumors that he wouldn’t survive past twenty years of age.

Yet he had lived until twenty-nine. Three months before his death, he had married Catherine and expressed his desire for a child.

This might sound like any ordinary couple, but Catherine never believed her husband loved her. Saul, her husband, was the most detached man she had ever known, and Catherine was no exception to his coldness. His desire for a child seemed unrelated to any love for Catherine or even an instinctual desire to leave behind offspring.

Catherine couldn’t understand Saul, but he appeared to have some desperate mission to continue the Cavendish bloodline. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left these words with his dying breath:

“Remember, Catherine. One child is enough. A child who carries on the Cavendish bloodline.”

Saul wanted Catherine to bear a child of Cavendish blood. However, Catherine hadn’t even conceived a child, let alone had any s*xual relationship with anyone—including her husband Saul. Their wedding night had been disrupted by Saul’s seizure, and afterward, he never visited Catherine’s bedroom. Or rather, he couldn’t.

Saul spent the final three months of his life in his own bedroom. Though it wasn’t a sentiment one should have toward the deceased, Catherine thought Saul might have been half-delirious during that time.

He mostly slept like the dead or suffered seizures that required his physician’s attention, but occasionally—and frequently during the two weeks before his death—he seemed desperate to harm himself.

Catherine caressed Saul’s bloodless, stiff hands with a detached touch before placing white chrysanthemums on them. Though hidden by the skilled undertaker’s work, she knew countless wounds marked the insides of her husband’s hands.

Those wounds never healed before his final breath and would remain unhealed forever—just as Catherine would never be able to bear Saul’s child, a child of Cavendish blood.

Catherine couldn’t understand why Saul had left such a strange will. She couldn’t bear a Cavendish child because no man of Cavendish blood remained. The search for close relatives to notify of Saul’s death confirmed this. Saul had no siblings, and his parents had died early. Besides female sixth cousins, he had no remaining blood relatives. Catherine clearly remembered learning, less than a month after marrying Saul, that his female cousin could no longer bear children due to a miscarriage—the day Saul received her letter and had a seizure in his rage.

Wondering if there might be blood relatives she didn’t know about, Catherine asked the butler, but coincidentally, the Cavendish butler had only arrived at the estate two years before Catherine’s marriage.

He was the nephew of the previous butler who had died of old age and had lived elsewhere before coming to Cavendish to succeed his uncle.

Catherine felt like she faced an unsolved mystery. She turned away from the altar where Saul’s coffin rested, greeted the few mourners who had come to pay respects, and descended from the platform.

Saul’s funeral was being held modestly in the chapel within the estate. True to its long tradition, the chapel was filled with an old-fashioned, chilly atmosphere. Catherine had ordered numerous candles lit to dispel the gloomy mood, but it seemed to make little difference in such an ancient building.

Moreover, with so few mourners attending to grieve Saul’s death, the vast chapel appeared almost empty.

The sound of fierce wind clawing at the windows reached her ears. Catherine glanced toward the noise and thought that the downpour that had begun hours before Saul’s death might serve as a good excuse for this sparse funeral—both for herself and for the absent mourners. She knew there were voices refusing to accept that Catherine, with her wheat-colored skin, had claimed the position of mistress in this once-prestigious ancient family.

Simultaneously, she knew that this position had fallen to her because the parents of pearl-skinned young ladies had refused it. No one wanted to send their precious daughter to be the wife of a man who would soon breathe his last—understandably so. Catherine herself wouldn’t have agreed to such a marriage if Saul hadn’t offered so much money.

“Lady Cavendish.”

Lost in thought, Catherine looked up, startled by someone calling her name. An apprentice priest who appeared to be in his mid-teens was offering her a wax candle. The one who had called her was the assistant priest standing nearby to light the sacred flame.

As Catherine took the candle with both hands, the priest lit it for her. With a stern face, he stared at her for several seconds as if trying to examine her face through the veil, then quietly bowed before walking toward the mourners.

Watching the apprentice priest follow behind him, Catherine soon sensed the head priest ascending the platform near the altar and turned her head. It didn’t take long for the few mourners to receive their candles. On the platform, the head priest began reciting funeral prayers, while two assistant priests on either side slowly swung censers, joining in the prayer.

“Miserere Mei, Deus.” (Have mercy upon me, O God.)

The deep, heavy sound of the pipe organ followed, along with the crude harmonies of a hastily assembled choir of children from the estate, performing under the apprentice priest’s direction. 

Though the sounds didn’t blend well together, they seemed the most solemn part of this makeshift funeral ceremony. “God, have mercy upon me,” Catherine quietly murmured along with the melody.

Clunk. With the sound of something coming loose, a strong gust of wind blew from behind her. With this sudden disruption, all lights except the candles on the chapel walls went out, darkening the interior. For a moment, short screams and voices questioning the cause of the commotion mingled together.

“You cannot enter like this!”

Following that, the butler’s voice, seemingly trying to block someone, sounded faintly as if buried under the rain. Catherine turned around.

What’s happening? Though it had only been three months, as far as Catherine knew, the butler rarely raised his voice. Find out what’s going on. Catherine sent the girl attending to her toward the chapel entrance.

But before the girl could leave her place and run to the entrance, the sound of the door closing was heard. As the fierce wind that had been gusting into the chapel subsided and the sound of pouring rain quieted, footsteps cutting through the tumultuous silence could be heard.

The cause of the disturbance revealed itself while everyone in the chapel watched. It was a stranger in a pitch-black robe.

He gently pushed aside the butler who was trying to prevent him from entering the chapel, then walked through the long pews where the mourners sat. With each step, droplets of rain fell, making a distinct dripping sound.

The sound was strangely vivid in the silence. The man walked straight toward Catherine, who sat alone in the seat closest to the altar, arranged for the bereaved family.

As he approached, she could see he was much taller than he had appeared from a distance, and in even more haggard condition.

Just as Catherine was thinking how he had managed to brave such terrible rain, the man pulled back his rain-soaked robe to reveal his face. A different kind of brief gasp rose softly from among the mourners.

The man with golden curly hair was beautiful despite his pale, rain-drenched face. Moreover, despite being an intruder who had entered the funeral chapel without permission, his manner of greeting Catherine was so courteous that for a moment she forgot this fact.

Surprised by his polite demeanor, Catherine unconsciously placed her hand on his outstretched one, and he kissed it. His lips on the back of her hand were surprisingly hot, contrary to his pale appearance.

When Catherine, coming to her senses, tried to pull her hand away, the man released it willingly and smiled lightly. His first words that followed were:

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sister-in-law.”

At that moment, Catherine blinked in surprise at the hot pain dripping onto her knuckles.

The candle had tilted due to her startled reaction. The whitish liquid that had streaked across her black lace glove had already hardened. Catherine stared at the prominently visible mark. It reminded her of the seed she thought she would never have.

At the same time, it also reminded her of the unhealed wounds in Saul’s palms. Catherine unconsciously began scratching at the dried wax, like she was trying to remove a dried bloodstain, then looked up. Covering the mark on her knuckles with her empty hand, she gazed at the man.