„There is no greater pain in this world than the death of a dear friend”

„And yet, he’s gone,” Eva whispered, standing in front of Alfred Stonebridge’s grave, but feeling no trace of sorrow or remorse for his death.

She found out about her father’s death a few days after coming into Ms. Huntington’s house and after she saw Brian there too. Actually, Brian was the one who told Ms. Alice about Stonebridge’s death when she asked him about what happened to the man that made Helen Walker suffer so much.

„He died too,” Brian said, with a kind of satisfaction in his voice because even if he thought that his enemy’s death wasn’t that much victory for him, he anyway felt somehow released when that one died. Actually, this satisfaction wasn’t due to the fact that Alfred paid, in the end, for what happened to Baron Beneath, but because Brian felt that this way Eva has been avenged, for being sold by her own father.

„But … does Eva know about her father’s death?” the old lady asked and Brian denied it by nodding. „Then, let’s say her about this first because two blows, one after another, will be too painful for the poor girl.”

„Two?” Brian asked without figuring out what the old lady meant.

„Yes. Two: her father’s death and … to find out about your marriage with Sophie Anderson Bell.”

Listening to her words, Brian winced: he had completely forgotten that his marriage with Sophie wasn’t yet annulled. And now, when he practically declared war on Evans, after paying a visit to Shelby Storm at his mansion, things seemed to be even more complicated than before and Brian wasn’t seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But even so, he knew very well that he cannot back down: first, for his child - to assure him a prosperous future, and secondly - to find out how to make Eva forgive him and this way to pay for his sins in front of her.

„I’ll take her to her father’s grave,” Ms. Huntington said and her words awakened Brian from his daydream. „I would have told you to be the one who accompanies her, but I consider this risky. In her condition, if she finds out from you that her father died and you knew about this, she’ll consider you being guilty of this and the same guilt will kill them both: her and her baby. I’m not willing to lose another mother in my house.”

The next morning, Bardain came to take Eva and Ms. Huntington. When Eva saw Bardain she stared in amazement at Ms. Huntington and frowned, and she even tried to enter the home, but Beth grabbed her arm and whispered: „I think we should go, Miss Stonebridge. I’m sure that Ms. Huntington has a good reason to ask mister Beneath’s teamster to come for us.”

Not at all convinced that what Beth said was a good idea, Eva sighed and came in the carriage, sitting next to Ms. Huntington. Beth however didn’t take her usual place in the carriage and this amazed Eva who stared in amazement at Ms. Alice. The old lady instead didn’t look at her and just mumbled: „This is a private situation, Eva and you are the only one who must know this, for the moment. More than this: we don’t need strangers hanging around. Let’s go, Bardain!” and the teamster pulled the reins.

While staring behind the carriage that was leaving, Beth spotted Stan, approaching her. „Did they leave for a long time?” the boy asked.

„I don’t think so. They didn’t take any luggage and the carriage isn’t one used for long journeys,” the girl said, without watching him. However, seeing him playing with two sugar cubes, she grimaced: „Are you stealing sugar lately?”

„What? Aaa, this isn’t for me, but for an old friend,” and he winked at her.

„For an old friend?! Don’t tell me that Moon prefers now sugar instead of milk?! Even if I am not surprised if she…”

„Follow me! I’ll show you!” the boy told her and he turned his back to her.

Not convinced that the boy will show her something unusual, Beth followed him, but before entering the house, she did a large cross behind the carriage, praying that Eva and Ms. Huntington will have a quiet trip and turn back home safely.

***

„He looks sweet-tempered enough,” Beth told Stan while caressing Bachaco’s snout.

„Yes, he is, but he’s enough sad these days. It seems to me that he misses his old friend and master. He barely accepts me next to him,” Stan said and gave Bachaco the last sugar cube he brought with him.

„Isn’t too much sugar for him?” the girl asked.

„There’s nothing too much during sad times,” Stan whispered while moving his hand through the horse’s mane.

Feeling a strange hand touching his mane, Bachaco shook nervously his head and neighed, and his sudden move made Beth move back, frightened. Stan instead didn’t scare, but right away grabbed Bachaco’s neck and caressed him for a long time, trying to calm him down. „Ho, Bachaco! Ho!” the boy shouted gently and slowly tapped with his palm on the horse’s neck, as Albert taught him to do in case the horse will show his temper.

When Bachaco calmed down, Stan made a sign to the girl to approach them again and she listened to the boy’s advice. But even so, she felt a kind of fear for the horse because she never had to do with animals before, especially with those difficult to control. At the moment her hand touched the horse’s snout, Bachaco looked at her as if he could read kindness in her glance, then he touched the forehead of her head as if looking for comfort. „It seems that he likes you, in the end,” Stan made a joke and, taking the wire brush he started to pluck the horse’s back.

„Listen, Stan, why did his master leave him with you? He doesn’t seem to be that old or mean. Per contra, he looks like a good friend and an obedient animal.”

Stan kept silent for a few moments while moving the wire brush on Bachaco’s back. Then, sad, as if he talked about him, the boy said: „I think that he left him because he loves him too much because nobody can bear such pain in his soul. Actually, I don’t think that there’s a bigger pain than the death of a dear friend.”

Beth approved by slowly shaking her head and continued to caress the animal’s snout, trying to comfort him as much as her heart was able at that moment because she saw how sad Bachaco was while watching how he was quickly moving from his long and black eyelashes and a kind of sigh was heard coming out of his chest.

On one side was the fact that he had been left on an unknown stable which seemed so cold and so unwelcome, despite Stan’s efforts to approach the horse, and on the other side was the fear that sneaked in his heart and it looked like Bachaco was preoccupied for his master and he tried to lament his loss in silence.

***

A well slap on Albert's face echoed in the empty living room while Emily’s furious glance was fixed on his eyes, but the man was trying to avoid her glance, looking at a blind spot on the floor because he disliked seeing in the eyes of the woman he loves reproach and hatred for what he did.

„Where’s Eva?” Emily hissed through the teeth, but she listened to no answer. So, she decided to slap him once again, to bring him back to his senses, but Lorenne, who showed up from nowhere next to them, grabbed her hand and forced her to give up. „Release my hand, Lorenne. This man…”

„…did what he considered that it was better to do in such moments and I consider that he did well. We couldn’t keep Eva here anymore and you also know this very well, actually. With Keen hanging around it was just a matter of time until Brian Beneath or anybody else would have found out that she was here and then we would have been all in danger.”

Emily stared at her friend and gnashed furious her teeth. Even if Lorenne was right, she couldn’t leave unpunished Albert’s betrayal because she considered him to be the only man that had been ever loyal to her, the only man who never betrayed her, but she understood that she had been wrong, in the end. „Leave us alone!” she told Lorenne, but the woman refused to leave them. „Lorenne, please! I must find out where Eva is!”

„What for? If you find out, will something change?! You lost this battle, Emily. You won’t hold that child in your arms as he won’t ever call you „mother” and it happens because he was never yours.”

The anger read in Emily’s eyes was limitless and the gnashing of her teeth was heard louder and louder and this made Albert be also attentive and, raising his glance, he fixed it on Emily. The woman instead was seeing only anger and betrayal in front of her and she wasn’t ready to accept her defeat because it meant to accept that she has kneeled and this was unbearable.

Eventually, she looked at Albert, piercing him with her gaze. Then, she hissed through the teeth: „you are free to go, Albert! I’ll think about your punishment later,” and she left the room, first.

Albert instead hesitated if to go or not. He knew very well that Emily won’t forgive him, but he didn’t know what else to do at that moment than to watch at Emily’s back while she was climbing the stairs in a hurry and to play with a small red cloth that served him as a handkerchief. Then, he spotted Lorenne’s glance fixed on him, but he didn’t see any reproach or anger in her eyes: only pitty and sorrow.

„You’ve been wrong this time, Albert. Betrayal isn’t the only path to walk onto to succeed,” Lorenne said, resting a hand on his shoulder. „And yet, I consider that you had been the wisest of the three of us because we all go right toward the chasm, but we prefer to be blind than to accept that, in the end, that chasm will be our grave,” and Lorenne left too the living room.

Only when he had been left alone, Albert whispered: „a chasm that will kill us all, eventually, because we’ve been who dug it, Ms. Fabeu. For many years we dug it and eventually, he asks us to be its victims.”

***

The night quickly takes over Brighton and it also entered soon Emily’s room, through the half-open window. At that moment, Emily was sitting in front of a small mirror left on the dressing table and was combing her long hair.

Her lost, tired glance looked in the mirror and saw a different Emily, an unknown one, but who she was sure that she has seen before. Then she whispered barely heard: „and yet, Emily Davis, life always kneels you in front of fate, no matter how hard you won’t fight against it. Twenty years ago it took a child from you and twenty years later it took another one.”

She sketched a bitter smile and threw the comb in the mirror, breaking it into pieces. A shard passed by her neck and cut it a little bit, but Emily preferred not to pay attention to the small wound. She opened the drawer, took a small bottle from it, and looked carefully at the purple liquid seen in that bottle. „So dog’s life you had, Emily,” she whispered again and looked in the mirror. Then, she stood up and left the room.

Barefoot being, while descending the wooden stairs, her feet made a strange sound, barely heard, similar to a lapped on something wet. The house was empty because Emily asked Lorenne to leave her alone and because of this the servants had been sent with things to do away from the property. So, Miss Davis had all the house only for her and she could move throughout it at her will.

Even the white dress, with corset sightly tied around her girdle and her breasts, gave her certain freedom, and the hair, wept on her back, falling in waves of blonde curls, made her seem like a virgin who just awakened from a long dream, but who didn’t yet feel that she slept enough and this was seen in her tired glace and in the deep purple marks around her eyes.

After hanging around for a while, like a crazy woman, she finally reached the door of Albert’s room and she slowly knocked. Nobody invited her to come in, but it hadn’t been a problem because Emily grabbed the doorknob and entered.

Albert was standing in front of the window, with his hands stuck in his pockets, and staring at the night outside the window. He slowly turned toward her and Emily smiled at him, but her sad smile wasn’t for seeing an old friend, but something that was showing him that she came there to ask him to pay her some old debts. Then, he saw blood on her neck, slid from the small cut, and he approached her in a hurry, preoccupied: „Miss Davis, the wound … your wound is ble…,” he stammered and he covered it with his palm, but the wound wasn’t bleeding anymore and he saw it seconds later.

However, he stared in amazement at her because when he wanted to retract his hand, Emily gently touched it with her palm while the other palm was resting on his arm and her lost glance, similar to the gaze of a madwoman, mirrored in his and later he heard the whisper of her lips: „made me yours, tonight, Albert. I want at least once to feel that I chose with whom to spend the night.”

Albert hardened: it was the last thing he had expected because he never thought that Emily will be, in the end, the one to enter his room and to ask him to sleep with her. Then, his glance, unwillingly, lowered and looked at her corset, slowly moved by her slow rhythmical breath, and then he felt her long kiss on the skin of his arm.

The man deeply breathed in and his hand sneaked at her back and stuck her at his chest, feeling her hardened breasts touching his body and, watching them, he spotted their round form barely seen through the cloth of the dress. Albert closed his eyes and, touching his lips of the wound, he kissed the woman’s neck, making her slowly shudder into his arms because she came there with two aims and one of them was to give her body to him as a gift, willingly, to feel pleasure and to forget for a short while about her problems.

Their kiss became intenser and intenser while their lips were touching their skin: her lips - moving along his arms, and his - hungrily kissing her neck, her shoulder and moving slowly lower and lower on her skin toward the breasts. A sigh… a whisper … another sigh of her while his hand lifted the skirts of the dress till touching the skin of her loin and moving slowly along it and this made her feel the touch deeply in her body and the desire to be loved, hungrily loved … a desire kept captive in her body, for years, had been suddenly released and it was felt by the man too… first in his chest… then down the girdle, hardening everything in desire, like stormy mountain water rushing down the mountain in rain season time.

He took her in his arms and left her on the bed, lying her in his poor bedding, but it seemed not to be a problem for none of them, at that moment. They stared in the other’s eyes, waiting for a blink of hope at least in some of them’s eyes, but there wasn’t seen anything as if those moments had been predestined as being the last moments before a grandiose final.

Then, her hands approached the corset, pulled the cords, and when the corset had been opened her round breasts jerked through the half-open neck of the dress, blooming like roses in front of the man’s glance. He quickly looked elsewhere, somehow ashamed, but right away looked at them again, amazed to see them completely naked because Emily knew how to take maximum advantage of everything she did and, to drive a man crazy, she knew very well how especially when that man was entering her bed.

After admiring them for a while, Albert kissed her breasts, enjoying their scent and their delicate touch, while their hands unified in a kind of pliers, their bodies stuck on each other and the rest of the night was just a mad night, a night of mad love, of hot love, a time while two old lovers made love like crazy, feeling the power of what they’ve planned for an entire life, dreaming about it, but they consumed the arson of their desire in one single night, wasting in a short time the entire passion of their bodies.

***

The bed on which Emily and Albert consumed their mad love is empty now, with wet traces on the pillows and on the bedding, reminding others about old pleasures and about a hot night in two. Then, is felt the cold air that enters the room through the open window and it also is seen, the cold air, while the wind moves the curtains, making the emptiness of the room be felt even stronger.

On the dressing table can be seen a half-empty whisky glass and another empty one and between those two glasses is seen the small bottle with purple liquid which Emily took from the drawer of her dressing table and brought it with her in the man’s room and that purple liquid is nothing else than cyanide.

Nothing else is seen around as nothing else is felt: no movement, no breath, as if the death itself passed by and took with her everything that was alive there: the lovers, the passion, the savage love between a hangman and his victim who gave up, in the end, on in front of the other when they’ve decided to taste from the forbidden pleasure at least one bite before leaving this world held in the arms of death.

***

After the visit rendered with Ms. Huntington to Alfred’s grave, Eva decided to visit him one more time. This time she took Stan and Beth with her and a big bouquet of white lily (the flowers of forgiveness).

Eva slowly bent and left the bouquet on the grave, staring at the inscription with her father’s name and the dates of his birth and of his death and she realized that he lived too few: 46 years only, but he sown so much pain around in his short life and probably a lot of curses had been thrown on him also in a short life.

Beth quickly wiped the tears that were streaming out of her eyes because even if she blamed her „master” for what happened to Eva, she was also sorrowful that he died too soon and without having someone next to him on his last day on Earth. Also, Beth was in a kind of uncertain state of mind after finding out about Alfred Stonebridge’s death because he had been for her not only a master but also a kind of father and she found out about his death the same day when Eva and Ms. Huntington turned home after the visit rendered for the first time at his grave, and the most impressing for Beth and also for Eva had been to find out that Alfred died on a stranger’s grave after asking the dead one for forgiveness and none of them knew for what faults Stonebridge asked to be forgiven before death.

„Do you think that at least he died in peace, Miss Stonebridge?” Beth stammered, barely heard, but Eva didn’t hear what the girl said: she was too immersed in thoughts, in sad memories, and trying to find out an answer to all those questions that were spinning in her head because all she lived till that moment were things difficult to understand, to accept, to forgive and to move on.

Actually, she was even more amazed to find out that Brian was the one who took care of her father’s funerals, than finding out about Alfred’s death. And it happened because Alfred Stonebridge had nobody by his side to take care of his funeral because he lost friends for gambling, he lost fortune and his good name and there wasn’t anybody left by his side, anybody normal of course, who could take care of him on his last path walked on this Earth. Actually, Stonebridge never had true friends: only those who were swearing to be while he was buying for them expensive drinks, paying them time to spend with beautiful women and of course, the loans Stonebridge was taking for others in his name and because of this he was ruined, in the end: for not being able to pay not only his debts but others’ too.

„Eva Stonebridge?” Eva heard behind them and when she, Beth, and Stan turned to see who was calling Eva’s name they saw a woman, about 40, approaching the grave. However, none of the three saw this woman before and also didn’t know who she can be. But they found out soon who she was when the woman left the flowers on the grave, next to Eva’s bouquet, and then she took her hat, with a black veil in front, a sign that she was mourning for someone.

Seeing the woman’s face, Eva was amazed because that woman had some physical traces of her father, but she never knew that Alfred had alive relatives. „My name is Charlotte Wilson, Miss Stonebridge. Actually, in the past, I was called Miss Stonebridge, too - Charlotte Stonebridge. I mean that this had been my name before my marriage. I’m Alfred’s sister. Actually, I was, as he’s dead now.”

„My father’s sister?” Eva murmured. „I didn’t know that my father…”

„Actually, I also didn’t know that Albert has a daughter too. I found out this coming here to find him, after my husband’s death. I don’t know why, but I felt the necessity to make up with him because when the two ran away, I and my mother had been forced to ran away too and to hide, escaping from the village and of the locals’hatred.”

„They ran away? Who do you mean?” Eva asked, even more, confused and Charlotte understood that the girl didn’t know about her parents’past. She only sketched a smile and bit her lips, not knowing what else to say. „Miss Wilson, who ran away?”

„My dad. And Alfred. They ran away from the village, about twenty years ago and I and my mother had been forced to suffer a lot because of this. Actually, my mom didn’t ever forgive Alfred and she died this way: regretting that she grew up a man that betrayed her and forced her to live like a servant in her son-in-law’s house because even if my husband was a religious man, he never accepted anybody living in his house without doing anything and to pay for her living my mother had to work, a lot, till the day of her death.”

„And, why should I know about this?” Eva eventually mumbled.

„Because I had to complain at least to someone about my pain,” Charlotte hissed through the teeth. „And… remember, Eva, the fact we have the same blood flowing through our veins, doesn’t give you the right to look for me later and to ask me for help. I know that you have a lot of debts, but no property or income. That’s why: forget about that we met today and I hope to never see you again,” and Charlotte turned her back to Eva and hurried away.

Eva shuddered. Not to fall, she supported her hand on the stone grave and Beth ran toward her to help her, yelling: „Stan! Stan! Help me!” Beth yelled, seeing that Eva barely stands.

„You don’t have to!” Eva eventually mumbled and she started to crawl toward the exit. After a few meters of crawling, Brian showed up next to her and hold Eva into his arms because he followed them from Ms. Huntington’s house and he stood all this time waiting for them at the entrance in the cemetery, but when he saw that woman approaching Eva and later he understood that it isn’t a pleasant meeting, he decided to approach them and he managed to help Eva not to fall or lose consciousness because Eva was so pale and so powerless that she was barely standing. „Why?” Eva mumbled pressing her body against his, with closed eyes and forcing with the tears. „Why does everybody hate me?”

„Nobody hates you, Eva. Simply: you’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

„And yet, that woman: my father’s sister, she seems to hate everything related to him. What did my father that everyone tries to make me pay for the hatred and the pain they felt because of him? Why should I pay for his mistakes?”

„Because you are still alive and he’s not, and to hate a dead man doesn’t bring happiness to anybody. It’s better to blame an alive one. But, you, forget it! Everything will be soon just a bad dream!”

He helped her to climb in his carriage and then he ordered Bardain just to spur the horses and to drive onto London’s streets because he knew that Eva likes to be rocked in the horse’s gallop. Then, he climbed next to her and laid her head on his shoulder.

Eva didn’t oppose this gentleness. She kept staying like this, with her eyes closed, feeling with all her being the burden of those moments, a burden that was trying to chase away the peace she felt next to the man that she loved and hated at the same time, but who she also felt that was hiding something from her.

„Is this ok to leave them alone?” Stan asked. „Maybe we should…”

„Just … let’s go!” Beth whispered and headed toward their carriage. She was hating Brian for what he did to Eva, but the girl also knew that Eva could be calm only next to him, even if this will also bring her a lot of pain and a bitter taste on the top of her tongue.

But yet: the two girls had been orphans, all their life: Beth didn't have both parents and Eva was motherless, even if she also could have considered that she had no father too, due to that Alfred had never been next to her. And only because of this Eva was trying to forgive Brian: she didn’t want the same for her child - to grow up being an orphan of a father.