Perhaps, the nightmare is just beginning...
She hoped she was just dreaming, waking up still in the distant United States, with the first snow falling and the fireplace crackling with pinewood that popped and cracked as it burned, warming her to the point of wanting to linger. When Ethan Baird came to see her, she would tell him she had a long dream, where she married the most capricious ruler, and Ethan would laugh, telling her it was time to wake up and stop dreaming.
She wished it were so, but her body told her this was no dream.
Yesterday, she understood more clearly what cruelty was like from a man.
He was taming, taming her will with his body.
Only Charlotte Miller knew what she had gone through.
Dressed appropriately, she went downstairs. Breakfast gatherings in the Hallow Family were the most important, and she never missed them. No matter how terrible she felt, she persisted.
