The Forsaken Bond

CHAPTER 2

The Dark Taste of the Duke

The giant creature’s ears flopped heavy against its skull, aware of her fear. It rose, like a predator now, and walked on tender new skin to break in the new clothes.

“I can’t stay,” Brenda said, regret a weight in her chest. “But if you remain nearby, I will come tomorrow with fresh bandages. You have my promise."

A shadow made flesh had followed her back through the dusk thickening to twilight. At the edge of the forest, she looked back for one last glimpse of this mysterious protector.

“Thank you,” she breathed, although for what, she couldn’t tell. Those amber eyes gleamed like distant stars in the gathering dark, observing as she faded.

Beneath dead skies, the Wolfsbane moors lay vast and empty. Brenda passed like a dark ghost across the desolate landscape, her black crepe dress soaring in the cruel wind. Her fingertips grazed the hidden pocket that held her beloved herbs: yarrow and comfrey, nyssa from the secret walks and forays of that fateful afternoon in the woods. Her ethereal beauty bore shadows now, grief carving imperceptible wrinkling in her sublime face.

The man hung his head, lamenting as silent tears stained her cheeks, proof of the heartlessness that thrived behind Bingham Manor's looming facade. That ancient stone edifice rose on the horizon like the gravestone of the world, never failing to remind her of the prison that was her life, and the warden who presided over it - Lord Vincent Bingham, a father in name only, and a man who believed his own daughter was nothing more than another little toy to use in trade.

Two others the unkind walls had taken – her mother and brother – ill and unhelped;

The wind whipped her raven hair as Brenda approached her gilded cage. She stumbled, head bowed, as an eerie howl pierced the air. It broke the moor’s deathly silence, echoing through her bones. She jumped, hands trembling as she covered her ears to mute the mournful wail. But something in that voice resonated with recognition — the same creature that had said goodbye to her in the forest glade, she felt it in her soul.

She remembered, the beast yielding to her hand, those all-seeing eyes that looked through her flesh, its almost-yet-not-entire restfulness while she whispered sweet nothings, that surprising softness beneath the hard shell of its body, the soothing rumble of its vocal chords when she spoke of her mother...

"Inside. Now." Lord Bingham’s voice rang out through the entry hall and broke her reverie like thunder.

Her father appeared from the shadows, his aristocratic features harsh with rage as he took in her ungroomed state.

“A woman of your breeding should not be wandering about like a common peasant!” Each word sank like ice, slicing and slick. “Your place is here, furthering proper pursuits worthy of your station!”

Before his cold stare, Brenda shriveled, her newfound bravery blown away like ashes.

She could barely stammer an apology, but Vincent waved her dismissive.

“Keep your faux quaking to yourself, kid. I have neither time nor patience for such antics.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Young women are terribly prone to losing themselves in foolish dreams, bewitched by the vacant graces of stable boys and wandering musicians. But I'm not going to let such petty indulgences jeopardize the lucrative situation I finally arranged!”

As if conjured by this invocation, a shadow slipped free of her father’s flank — the Duke of Wolfsbane himself, his smile a predator’s mask of pleasure.

“Your future is set,” Vincent said, coldly definitive. “As any good father would make sure.”

“You’ll all gain an appreciation of my wisdom,” he added, his eyes glinting with calculated triumph.

Brenda felt the blood drain from her face as the realization hit her, that she was to be sold as if she were prized cattle to one of the ancient, greedy nobles that circled their estate like moths to a flame, lured in by her dowry. The idea itself made her throat feel tacky with bile.

I would assume that mothers have raised children, but would that approach currently suffice — “Father, I beg you; I am hardly nineteen summers old” — Brenda vainly pleaded with a voice tremulous, like leaves in autumnal winds, from quaking lips.

"Enough!" Vincent saw red, his fists bubbling for mercy. “You are going to marry the Duke of Wolfsbane when the sun sets tomorrow.” This is beyond debate. Any resistance will be met with consequences you don’t dare imagine.” The threat hung in the air like a snake.

Terror slithered through Brenda’s body, making her cling to the wall to stay upright. The Duke of Wolfsbane — that ancient predator whose time on earth more than doubled her grandfather’s? It was too familiar, the way his eyes drank in the sight of her, his youth-ravishing body, at every party — a sharp intel against her flesh, bony fingertips lingering too long on her skin for any objective.

He squirmed in perverse joy as her horror was paraded before him, his long limbs jerking as they were pulled taut on their invisible strings.

She had always tried to pretend he didn’t exist, her hatred a hot, undiluted thing.

“My sweet bride,” he rasped, his voice grinding like rusted metal. “What a chilly greeting after my patient waiting?”

He rose as if from death itself, his skeletal frame unfolding from shadow. Even being there, that presence felt dirty in the air.

“My darling, tomorrow you will belong entirely to me,” he said, words reeking of rot.

They faded away like twin ghosts, and Brenda remained behind, paralyzed.

"The Duke?" The low voice behind her startled her.

"Oh, my precious child. “…” Gretchen emerged from the shadows, a lined face of concern.

But under her sympathy lay a spark of longing — for the untamed liberation Brenda had dared to sample on the moors.

“A cruel fate for one so pure of heart,” the elderly governess said softly, laying her bony hand on Brenda’s shoulder.

“That monster is only hungry for innocent youth, to sate his unnatural appetites with fresh maidens.”

Brenda shuddered, bile rising in her throat. She could not argue with the truth of those words —the Duke was every bit the lecherous, unwanted touch she had thought him.

“Do I have to go through another tragedy?” she pleaded, her tear-blurred eyes searching for her governess.

“Since God took Mother and Bartholomew to him, I’ve endured more grief than words can hold,” she whispered, her voice thickening with emotion.

“I have no energy remaining to sate Father’s infinite avarice!”

Gretchen wrapped her in a maternal embrace, her own eyes shadowed with old sorrows.

"Hush now, my dove. …” she crooned in her rustic, worn voice. “Though you’re cast as sacrifice to that demon’s appetites … You’ll weather this storm as you have all others, one moment at a time. This I swear on all that is holy.”

The fire in Brenda's chamber had burnt down to smouldering embers, casting ghostly shapes across the walls as she became lost in memories.

Her mother’s voice rang in her ears, rich and warm with tales of slaying warriors and damsels in distress saved from terrible monsters through the awesome power of love.

“If only Mother’s stories would come alive,” she whispered to the shadows. “To be spirited away by a noble soul, instead of bound to that disgusting Duke by Father’s cold ambition. But who would notice such a faded bloom like me?” Vincent has made his feelings toward his disappointing daughter abundantly clear. Those fairy-tale worlds existed solely in Amelia’s delightful stories … no such magic awaits plain, unwanted Brenda Bingham.”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the dried herbs, crushing them in between her fingers. Their earthy aroma threw her back to that sun-spattered glade, to those clever amber eyes that had seemed to read her very thoughts...

A wolf’s howl broke the stillness of the night. Brenda began, her hand shooting up to her hammering heart. BONE DEEP — The sound pierced her bones like the cry of a mourning dove, tapping deep within her soul.

A strange desire came over her – to respond to that sorrowful cry, to respond to the?"that strange creature that appeared to shared her grief.

She sensed unseen eyes watching her from the window. She quickly pulled her covers around her, hoping that sleep would come and take her away.

“It’s nothing but a savage,” she chided herself softly.

So Brenda shook her head at such foolish fancies, extinguished her light, and sl

ucked between the cold sheets, begging for slumber to come and deliver her from this night of odd dreams.