2 A walk in the past

  While sitting on the chair in his wife’s room for the thousandth time in the past months, Joseph held a hairbrush in one hand while caressing the few strays of gray hair inside it that the servants had missed. He always kept it close to himself as a reminder of his wife, Margaret. The only thing left of her was those strands of hair.

  Someone knocked on the door, and he watched one maid enter the room. “My lord,” she said after a courtesy. “I know you wish not to be disturbed.”

  “What happened?” Joseph asked, not letting go of the hairbrush.

  “I found this,” she said, stretching her hand in front of the earl. She shouldn’t have disturbed him, and now she was rudely offering him something.

  “What is this?” the earl asked, not moving a muscle.

  The woman gulped hard. “A wooden horse, my lord.” Her answer didn’t help. He stayed quiet, waiting for her to explain more. “Her ladyship had this carved for your son.”

  With this sentence, Joseph rose to his feet and examined it. He hesitantly grabbed the wooden horse from the maid’s hand. It was small yet detailed. He looked at it and studied the curves on it. It wasn’t a perfectly made woodcraft, but it was a safe, adorable toy for Francis. Tears filled his eyes. How had he not seen this toy before? How did he not know the things Margaret did for their son?

  He glanced at the maid with desperation. “What else do you know about Margaret?” he asked, wiping his tears immediately.

  The maid knew Joseph wasn’t around much, and that he hated himself now for his son and wife’s death. She breathed deeply and thought for a few seconds. “This way, my lord,” she said, walking to the door. Joseph followed her like a toddler who had lost his way. She left for the music room and opened the door for him to enter, and he did. He stood in the middle and waited for her to say something.

  “The countess liked to play the pianoforte,” the maid said quietly.

  Joseph’s jaw dropped, staring at the maid and waiting for more explanation. His grip tightened around the wooden horse. “That’s impossible. I never heard her play.”

  The maid stepped aside so Joseph could see for himself. Papers filled with notes rested on top of the keys; not one, two, or three pages. There were at least dozen of them, placed disoriented. It was odd for him to see something untidy like that in a house filled with housekeepers.

  “She played these all?” he asked quietly, realizing once again there was something about his wife he didn’t know. The maid nodded as she looked down. “I told her I hated the pianoforte,” he said in a regretful tone. That was why Margaret never played it while he was home.

  Joseph sat in the chair and looked at the irritating keys he had avoided all his life. He remembered the days he was forced to take piano lessons by his father. Joseph always wanted to learn the violin, so sometimes he would skip the classes. His father would notice his absence and punish him. Joseph hated that instrument because of his father, and he probably made Margaret resent him for not playing something she loved.

  He put his hand on the keys and pressed gently. The sound filled the empty house. It wasn’t about him or the grudge against his father anymore. It never should have been, and he hated himself for not caring about his wife more. His other hand moved on the keys, and before he knew it, he was playing the notes on the sheets before him.

  All the house members went quiet so they could hear him play. It was the first time the earl had touched the keys of that resentful piano in more than a decade. The servants knew why. They were there each time the late earl physically hurt his son. The music was delightful. Even for his rusty skills, he played well, as if this would honor his wife in a way.

  While his fingers stroked the keys, memories of past resurfaced. The delightful rhythym took Joseph back in time to the first time he met Margaret.

  Margaret was beautiful and compassionate like no one else. There was a light in her eyes that Joseph hadn’t seen before. But Joseph wasn’t even supposed to marry her. He was only twenty then and had no purpose for marriage, especially not to someone older than him by almost eleven years. However, when his older brother, James, passed away, Joseph’s life altered.

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  Joseph’s father forced him to marry to secure their bloodline without giving him the time to grieve his older brother’s sudden death. He was suddenly the heir and had to take immense responsibility. Margaret, who was betrothed to a second son of a Viscount, was coercively wedded to Joseph.

  Despite the lack of love and affection, the couple spent time together, talking about politics, the economy, finances, and the earldom. They would take walks with each other and occasionally dine at the same table. The bond between them was only constructed by respect and nothing else.

  Regardless of their age gap, there wasn’t much conflict between them. Some assumed that Joseph spent his time with secret mistresses. A young man with a title and a substantial fortune was expected to meet his needs one way or another. But Joseph cared the least about bedding a woman. He was faithful to Margaret even though he didn’t love her.

  Margaret’s one true wish was to taste the sweetness of motherhood once in her life. After years of despair, she could only give birth to one baby. And since it was a boy, there was no need for another child. Joseph named their son Joffre Francis Ford, and they called him Francis.

  Francis was the center of Joseph and Margaret’s life. It was a miracle to have a child after so many years, and the miracle happened to be a boy! Nothing could upset the Mainwood house anymore, or that’s what they thought.

  It was only a light fever at first, like the fever Francis used to have as an infant. But his position as the only heir had everyone worried about what would become of him. Joseph sent his footmen in the middle of the night with the fastest horse he had to fetch the physician. The physician couldn’t name the disease precisely. ‘Fever,’ he would call it. But which type? It was unknown. After fifteen days of nonstop vomiting and diarrhea, the only son and the only child of the Mainwood house passed away.

  It was the worst pain any parent could ever experience. Without thinking twice, Joseph burst into Francis’ room. His lifeless body was on the bed, his lips purple and his skin pale. Little Francis’ eyes were closed forever now, and the scene hurt Joseph like a knife stabbed into his back.

  Margaret, Joseph’s wife, was crying on the bedside, holding the poor child’s little hand in hers. Joseph walked toward the bed and watched his son. Could it all be a bad dream? Could it all just not be the reality?

  He sat on the bed and grabbed his son’s other hand. The remaining warmth in his lifeless body devastated Joseph. He stared at the hand that would never move but did nothing because it wasn’t right for a man to sob. It wasn’t right to fall on his knees and lose his mind. So, he only stared while a part of him shredded inside.

  Margaret, in her forties, mourned her motherhood and the fatherhood of the earl, feeling responsible for their sorrow as if it was her fault Francis had died. Even after all the good things she had done for the people, they said say things that were not so kind, judging her for being infertile and therefore a bad wife for Joseph. One of the gossips—the worst of them, which she always heard between the whispers of the nobles—was ‘the earl can get married again.’

  A few months after Francis’s death, Joseph was sitting in a chair at his office with a bottle of whiskey and no one to disturb him. While the candles on his desk were being blown out one by one by the wind that came through the open windows, one servant opened the door of his office.

  Joseph looked up, ready to lash out at the intruding servant for not asking for his permission before entering. He was too drunk and unfocused. The world around him no longer made sense. Wasn’t the purpose of life to get married and have children? Hadn’t he been a loyal husband and a good father? Why did God test him like this? Why did it have to happen to him?

  He looked at the footman and waited for him to talk. Something was wrong, and it was evident on the man’s face. Joseph pulled the bottle to himself to drink. Without saying a word, the footman stood still. A loud scream rose from outside.

  Joseph got startled, knocking the bottle off the desk with his hand. The bottle shattered to a hundred pieces. That’s how he found out the sweet Margaret, the caring, loving, kind-hearted Margaret, farewelled the face of the universe...

  In a blink of an eye Joseph was left alone with nothing but a big mansion and a title that he hated deeply. He was supposed to move on and live for the sake of his earldom. Everyone relied on him. And if he lost his mind, there would be no earl to take care of the earldom.

  All he had learned from his abusive father was anger, yet he did not use it. The rage within him was toward only himself. That must’ve been something that he learned from his father as well.

  By the time that the song he was playing with the piano ended, the train of his memories stopped, and he looked up, noticing no one was around him. He was alone in the room with nothing but his wife’s music sheets and a piano that could cry if it knew what Joseph had been through.

  Joseph had the weight of a thousand tears on his shoulders and needed to release it. After that day, he learned to grieve in a way he never got to mourn his mother; the way he always wished he could mourn his older brother—whom he loved more than anyone in their family—the way he desperately wished he had mourned his son, Francis—who was a piece of his existence and had perished away.