As I stare at Mr Elkins dumbfounded, part of me cannot accept what he is saying.
In spite of my rising onset of panic, I try to quell the uneasiness I feel and dismiss it as irrational hysteria.

My Thomas can't be married to someone else, the very thought of it is inconceivable.
So I settle on deciding there simply just has to be some mistake. Perhaps Mr Elkins is speaking of another Thomas Sharpe -- though granted, it's extremely improbable that there's another Baronet with the same name -- but still, this solicitor has to be misinformed.

"Thomas--that is, my husband, can't possibly be married already. Otherwise he wouldn't have married me!"

"On the contrary, I'm afraid I have in my possession a legal document which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that your alleged husband is already married."
Producing a piece of paper with a flourish, he looks at me gravely for a long moment, then pushes it towards me across the table.

With an enormous feeling of trepidation, I force myself to look at it, and as if confirming my worst fears I see that it is in actual fact a marriage certificate. I swallow hard, staring at the piece of parchment as if it's very existence is taunting me.

On closer inspection, I'm able to decipher the elaborately scrawled handwriting and recognise Thomas' name and title, and the shock of it drives the blood from my skin.

The official document states that he married one Enola Sciotti in 1896 and moreover, I recognise the signature as his own.

"Of course, if the lady in question is now deceased then that naturally eradicates the possibility that Sir Sharpe is guilty of bigamy."
I hear Mr Elkins' voice, as if from far away, speaking matter-of-factly.
"However, as yet I have been unable to obtain proof that Mrs Sharpe has expired. That being the case, I trust Sir Thomas would have the necessary documentation. If he cannot provide a death certificate than one can only assume that his wife is still living, thus making him a bigamist and your marriage void."

He gives a smile of sympathetic mockery, which prompts me into forcing myself to concentrate. I have to examine the possibilities logically and stop my thoughts from flying ahead, presuming the worst.

"Y-yes. She must've passed away. That must be it. Thomas wouldn't commit bigamy. It's not in his nature, he's a kind and noble man." I manage, leaping to my husbands defence.

Mr Elkins nods but looks decidedly sceptical. "He hasn't disclosed to you that he's a widower?"

Churlishly, I dislike this man so much in this moment. The resentment is irrational I know, but unstoppable. He's unintentionally turned my newfound happiness into chaos in a matter of minutes. And I loathe him for it.

"No he's never mentioned it." I'm forced to admit. "Perhaps he finds it too painful to think about, or discuss."

Seemingly unconvinced, the solicitor takes the document and places it back inside his briefcase. "I shall need a copy of your marriage certificate, should the matter go to court."

My eyes widen in alarm. "Go to court?"

"Yes. If indeed Sir Sharpe is still married to the former Miss Sciotti, then he'll be charged for illegally attempting to marry again." Pushing his chair back, he stands and looks at me expectantly. "Do you happen to have the marriage certificate?"

I shake my head. "No, we were to collect it today from the old smithy." Standing mechanically, I pull myself together as much as is possible. "I....I better go and fetch Thomas--"

Thomas.

Just speaking of him creates so many conflicting emotions now. I mean, can I still trust that the Thomas I know and love isn't capable of such deceit?

As it happens, Mr Elkins speaks again, interrupting my shambolic thoughts.

"Oh, I think it improper to impose on a member of the peerage without giving him sufficient time to dress. I'll have a maid send up a note informing him of my arrival, and respectfully invite him to join us presently. Perhaps in the meantime I could call on the blacksmith. Would you be so kind as to accompany me? Otherwise they may be reluctant to hand the document over without first obtaining your consent."

By now every muscle and bone in my body is aching due to my tensing up. Without stoping to think, I numbly will my legs to move.

Not unnaturally, the walk from the Inn is a nightmarish blur. The morning is bright, but the sun offers no warmth. Whether or not that's due to the numbness I'm feeling inside, I can't be certain of.

In my somewhat dazed state, I notice very little, my senses not as keen as they usually would be.

I'm just heading across the green, Mr Elkins one or two paces behind me, when with brutal quickness, I'm smothered in a blur of movement, seized from behind in a crushing grip.

Before I can speak or move, something is clamped over my mouth, even covering my nose. My eyes open wide in bewildered fear, as I try to flail, but I can't even breath. My lungs hurt in my painful attempt to draw in air.

"Sorry about this Miss, it's nothing personal." The voice of Mr Elkins says from over my shoulder. "But as a solicitors clerk I only earn fifteen shillings a week, and she paid me more than double that amount to deliver you to her!"

The thing clenched tightly over my face is saturated with a sickly-sweet fluid. The noxious billow of fumes fills my nostrils, throat, chest, head, causing me to lose control of my legs and arms. Sinking into a fathomless darkness, I feel as if I'm collapsing piece by piece, until the sun turns black as my eyes close, and then....nothingness.

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

The nothingness lasts for the longest time, until it comes to an abrupt end.
Suddenly I am aware of being jostled with irritating repetition. It takes a while for my brain to regain full function, but slowly I begin to comprehend that I'm being transported in a carriage, swaying and jolting over the bumps in the road at high speed.

A terrible smell seems to saturate everything. Some kind of pungent solvent, like turpentine. Stirring in confusion, I try to remember what happened.
Try to make sense of where I am. But I feel so horribly ill, as if I've been poisoned. Nausea spreads through me in repeated waves, and with each breath I draw-in, my throat burns.

Cracking my eyes open, I see the smudged outline of someone above me.
I try to ask something, to find out what's happening, but it's like my brain has disconnected from the rest of my body.

"I see you're alive after all." A cold voice cuts through the silence like a razor. "Mores the pity. That idiot who brought you to me must have given you twice as much ether as was needed. I hadn't expected you to survive."

Confused, I close my eyes and try to clear my mind, but the sickness and thumping headache I have is slowing me down. After a while, I connect the voice to an image.

"Lu....cille." I murmur, tongue not quite moving properly in my mouth.

"That's Lady Sharpe to you."

My stomach drops, the lurching sensation adding to the feelings of sickness. I had hoped to find myself in the presence of someone who would help me. But my instincts shuffle in restless warning.

The idiot who brought you to me

The first glimmer of understanding comes to me, and I stare up at her hazily, perceiving only the sharp outlines of her pale face and the color of her hair, dark like Thomas'.

Oh, how I want Thomas. I want his velvety voice and loving hands, and the hard warmth of his body against mine. The safety of his embrace. His reassurance.
But Thomas doesn't know where I am, or what has happened to me.

Struggling to sit up, I realise my hands have been bound tightly behind my back. I turn my angry gaze on Lucille, but my eyes feel filmy and sticky and I can't rub them. Frighteningly whenever I move, showers of white and blue sparks veil my vision.

"Can't see..." I mutter.

"That's the ether." Lucille says in a monotone.

"Ether." I puzzle over the familiar sounding word. I have encountered it before, in some apothecary shop or another. Ether...sweet vitriol...used as an intoxicant, and occasionally as an aid to medical procedures. "Why?" I ask, uncertain if my uncontrollable trembling is a result of ether poisoning, or the growing fear that I've been kidnapped and delivered to the formidable woman who no doubt considers me an enemy.

Though I still can't clearly see the expression on her face, the threatening note in her voice is unmistakable. "Why? Because you corrupted Thomas' mind and stole him away from me. It didn't matter how you were subdued, as long as I got you. If it weren't for the fact that I need you in order to lure him back home, I would have happily drowned you like a cat in a sack."

"Thomas," I repeat faintly, still finding it difficult to move my tongue. Saliva keeps flooding my mouth, no doubt another aftereffect of the ether. "You....you've told him?"

"Mr Elkins had a note sent up to him before you left the inn, explaining why these extreme actions were necessary. My instructions were simple, if he doesn't want your death on his conscience then he's to return to Allerdale hall immediately."

"I never corrupted him." I manage, weakly. "He needed no encouragement. He wanted me--"

Her blurry visage moves towards me as she leans forward on the seat and slaps me hard across the face. The contact stings, and the force of the impact sends me toppling back down onto the seat. My balance is already hampered, and I strain to pull myself back up, narrowly avoiding rolling onto the floor of the carriage.

"Stupid little bitch!" She spits. "Do you honestly believe that a girl of your commonness would be capable of turning the head of a baronet? Thomas is not in full possession of his wits, or it would never have come to this madness. You clearly have some hold over him. He's always been feeble and lacking a backbone. He's too easily influenced. You've led him astray. Did he confide in you, is that it? Have you threatened to blackmail him into marriage?"

"We already are married!" I inform her, indignation and anger giving me false courage. "If you wanted to stop us marrying, you're too late! He married me yesterday!"

There's a tense pause, as Lucille digests this dramatic bombshell. When she speaks again an icy brittleness layers her words, and yet at the same time she sounds vaguely perplexed, as if disbelieving what I've just told her.

"You expect me to believe that my brother would want to marry you of his own free will? I think not."

Adrenaline is pumping through my veins now, making me even angrier and braver with each passing second. "You think he wouldn't have married me because I'm lower class?" I scoff rudely. "Then you don't know your brother at all. He loves me. But he had to run away because he was afraid you'd overreact. You suffocate him--"

"Shut your stupid mouth!" She exclaims fiercely. "My objections stem from more than him just marrying outside the aristocracy. You understand nothing about the importance of blood. Of good breeding. Or of love. Nobility cannot marry beneath them. I am his equal, his only family. He loves only me."

"If you don't think he loves me, then what makes you think he'll come to rescue me then?" I level at her triumphantly. "If you believe he doesn't care then why kidnap me?"

Discovering to my relief that my vision is beginning to clear, my focus clears, but the relief is hollow, as it settles on the haughty, incensed expression of Lucille. Her intrusive gaze glares back at me angrily. I remain expressionless, though I can almost feel the colour drain from my face. No one, I realise, has ever looked at me with such real hatred until now.

"Thomas cares nothing for you. You are at best, a retaliation against me perhaps, for his imagined slights. At worst, a means of fulfilling a perverse curiosity. The novelty of him taking such a vulgar bride would soon wear thin, and he would only come to despise you as I do. His compassionate nature will compel him to come rescue you. He can't even bring himself to harm a wretched dog, and would sooner turn it out than face killing it."

I frown, trying to make sense of her ramblings. "And when he comes.....then what?"

Lucille pauses and gives a sickening smile of sorts, enjoying the moment. "Then I'll kill you. I would have killed you already, but if Thomas has indeed married you as you claim, then killing you without him being there to witness it isn't satisfying enough."

Though I despise myself for it, I can't prevent a whimper of distress slipping from my quivering lips. She isn't just violent, she's insane. The blood seems to congeal in my veins. Whatever I'd expected it wasn't this. The lingering nausea, instant panic and headache is making it difficult to think. But I have to claw back some composure and think rationally.

Perhaps I can try reasoning with her.

"My Lady, I know that deep-down you must desire your brother's happiness." I say with awkward slowness. "And I know you would prefer for him to marry well in order to secure the prosperity of the mines and your ancestral home. But I love him. And he....he's chosen me. Can you not try to accept that and respect his freedom of choice--?"

"Never! I will listen to no more of your nonsense." She hisses. "He may have married you yesterday, but by this time tomorrow I'll have made him a widow."

I stare at her aghast. The dispassionate eyes of a madwoman who would hesitate at nothing to get what she wants, stare back coldly. It's bone-chilling and unnerving. She may be a Lady of quality, but much like the so-called 'Gentleman' I've come across, Lucille has no principles, no sense of honour or compassion.
Scarier still, she seems to possess no human weakness.
I could cry, scream, beg, and none of it would move her.

Thomas on the other hand, is not soulless like his sister. A fact that I enjoy pointing out to her, in spite of risking her wrath.

"Thomas won't just stand by and let you murder me!"

A gentle, mirthless laugh greets my statement. "Oh, you think he would intervene? You know nothing of my brothers' true nature. He didn't try to prevent me from disposing of the others, why would you be any different?"

"O-others?" I stammer. "What others?"

"His other wives." She says, smiling maliciously. "He's been married three times. Each of his spouses met their end at my hands, and Thomas was a willing accessory to each murder."

The ugly words drop like stones in my mind, creating a load that's too heavy to bear.

"No! No, I don't believe you. Thomas wouldn't be party to that. He....he hasn't been married before..."

My words trail off, and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut against the threatening prickle of useless tears. I won't cry. I won't give her the satisfaction.

At first I had presumed that the supposed solicitor had spun me a yarn. The tale about Thomas already having a wife, nothing more than a cunning ploy to lure me out of the inn, on the pretence of collecting my marriage certificate.

But now I'm not so sure. And as Lucille happily divulges the grisly details, my mind is thrown into turmoil, and I sit slumped on the seat. Helpless to escape her and these sickening confessionals.

"Pamela Upton, was the first. We met her in London. Then in Edinburgh we made the acquaintance of Margaret McDermot, she was the second...." She pauses, her glassy eyes gleaming like obsidian pools as she conjures the memory from her despicable past. ".....then whilst in Milan we happened upon a Miss Enola Sciotti. She was the third. We had to travel abroad in order to avoid a scandal....I was with child, you see, and being unmarried I would have faced social ruin, and if the identity of the father became public knowledge, Thomas would have been hanged. Enola claimed she could save the infant, so for that reason alone I kept her alive. She lied."

I swallow and swallow, now feeling overwhelmed with nausea, and the confines of the carriage feel suddenly stifling. More pools of bitter saliva flood my mouth, but I manage to collect myself.

"Why was there a risk of Thomas being hanged?" I find myself asking, fighting a surge of weakness.

Lucille glowers at me. "Because....it was his child."

My throat clenches with shock, and suddenly it hurts to breath. Yet somehow a cry is wrenched from me with a force that leaves me shaking.

It doesn't seem fair. But I know only too well that life often isn't, and I have to face this monstrous thing and fight.

Trying to cope with the wreckage of emotions, I realise my brief taste of security is over. All my hopes and happiness has been reduced to dust.
In the space of a few hours, Lucille has turned light into dark, and sweet anticipation into sickening dread.

She could be lying...I try to reason with myself, thoughts becoming stuck on an endless loop.....but she might not be.

Despite my fear and worry, the residual effects of the ether makes me succumb to sleep once more.

The eventual cessation of movement causes me to awaken again, and for one blissfully ignorant moment I wonder if I've been dreaming. Or more aptly, having a nightmare.
I will myself to awaken back in the quaint little room at the inn, or better yet, in Thomas' arms.

Opening my eyes I see the familiar interior of the Sharpe's carriage, and my heart plummets.

This nightmare is real.

Cautiously I move with a clumsy motion, so I can peer out of the window.
The carriage has stopped outside a large, dark, run-down gothic mansion, which cuts an imposing figure against the backdrop of the fading light. Looking every bit like the sort of place one would read about in a penny dreadful.

Aware of a movement on the seat beside me, I begin to turn, then immediately stiffen when I see Lucille brandishing an ornate dagger of some description.

I watch without blinking as she opens the door, and steps elegantly down from the carriage, all the while pointing the blade towards me threateningly, as she gestures for me to follow.

Begrudgingly I comply.

The gathering semidarkness encloses me, as evening falls. It feels ominous, oppressive and suffocating. I try to think above my fear. Surely there will come a moment, an opening, when I will have chance to escape. At the very least, an opportunity to arm myself.

All I have to do is wait.

And yet, the ghastly feeling takes root in the pit of my stomach, that if I enter Allerdale Hall, I'll never get out again. Not alive.

Gripping me tightly by the shoulder, Lucille positions herself behind me and presses the knife into my back, applying enough pressure to prompt me into walking toward the large entrance door.

Leaning in close, she whispers menacingly into my my ear,

"Welcome to Crimson Peak."