Rachel Stone

Dead Letters


Dim candlelight lit the hollow darkness, as I read the ardent letters from my mistress. Her beautiful, precise handwriting was like calligraphy on the page. She wrote to me of poetry and passion, and as I read her letters, I recalled our last meeting with great despair.
~

Arabella was stunning in her sensuous, aubergine dress. She inched toward me, her voluptuous hips swaying beneath the silk and crinoline. Her piercing gaze set my heart ablaze, and I wondered why I ever married my wife. Arabella had always won my sincerest affections. Her raven-black tresses fell down her chest and back, and they brushed against my neck as she leaned in to kiss me unabashedly. Without hesitation, I wrapped my hands around her perfectly cinched waist, feeling her curves under the loosened fabric of her bodice with my calloused hands, a low growl in my throat. Gently, my fingers traced the fine boning of her corset. Arabella’s lips rouged with my familiar, intense kisses. The air grew heavy; my knees weakened, just as they always did whenever Arabella was around.

“Henry,” She rasped suddenly, as if awakening from a trance.

“Yes?” I said, slowly kissing down her alabaster décolletage.

“We mustn’t do this,” She replied, pushing me away.

“Why?” I asked, not understanding. Emily and the children were away for the whole night, with my mother-in-law. There was no reason to discontinue.

Arabella looked away, her blue eyes turning gray with unspeakable sorrow. “I am terribly sorry,” She began. “I’ve met someone else.”

My head began to spin. This could not be happening. I would not lose the woman—only woman—I ever loved; it took a while for me to be able to think, let alone speak, but eventually I asked the one question that had been smoldering on my lips, like an over-seasoned curry:

“Whom?”

“Someone,” She sighed simply. Her lithe body was shaking now; clearly, this was not easy for her, either. “There is nothing you can offer me anymore. I don’t want to sneak around. I want a real family—a real husband.”

Desperately, I wanted to protest, but she was right; my duty was to my wife, regardless of how much I wished otherwise. I knew this now.

“I still love you,” I said tenderly; the words fell from my lips like a hopeless prayer. I could feel my heart—a dead weight in my chest.

Arabella said nothing as she walked out the door, tears glistening from her rosy cheeks.
~

The last of Arabella’s letters felt like an albatross in my hands. I was a useless puzzle, for half of my pieces were missing. Without her, I would never be the same.

Numbly, I stared at her last letter, unsure of how to carry on. But then—on an impulse, I threw the letter into the fire, deciding that her letter’s ashes were better-suited to my memory of our last encounter.

The red-hot coals melted the fine stationary from the inside out, and I pretended to find salvation in the incinerated pieces.

I would never have another mistress.
~