Stay Dead This Time

The day my husband, Stellan Montclair, was killed in battle, my cousin, Daphne Langford, wept and declared she would follow him in death.

No one asked for my opinion.

By the time I arrived, they had already decided everything. In seven days, Daphne would be laid to rest alongside my husband in the Montclair family crypt, bearing the title of his lawful wife.

When I stepped into the chapel, I found Daphne reclining on a cushioned chair with a damp cloth pressed to her forehead while my mother-in-law, Vivienne Prescott, personally spoon-fed her warm broth. Meanwhile, my son, Ansel Montclair, had been kneeling before the coffin for six hours straight, both legs so swollen that they were trembling.

No one told him to get up. No one offered him a cushion to kneel on.

Vivienne glanced up at me. "You're back. Daphne's being interred in the Montclair crypt as the lawful wife in seven days. See to the arrangements."

In my previous life, I did not dare disobey. The entire capital praised Daphne for the depth of her devotion. Vivienne called her a woman of honor. The moment I so much as furrowed my brow, countless mouths stood ready to call me petty and small-hearted.

Yet seven days later, Stellan came back from the dead.

Only then did I learn that he had taken a death-feigning potion so that he could openly and rightfully marry Daphne. I was cast from wife to concubine and spent the rest of my life crushed under Daphne's thumb.

My son was stripped of his status as the legitimate heir, barred from the family title, and left to scrape by among commoners for the rest of his days.

This time, though, I was living it all over again.

I crouched down and lifted Ansel from the cold stone floor. Then, I looked at Vivienne. "If her devotion runs that deep, let her be buried with him today."

The chapel fell silent.

Daphne Langford was so startled that she stopped her feigned weeping and looked up at me. "You... What did you just say?"

"We're sending you into the crypt to be buried alongside my husband today."

I did not even lift my head. I kept my attention on rubbing liniment into my son's swollen legs, my tone perfectly flat. "Since you love my husband so deeply, I'm granting your wish now. Shouldn't you be thanking me?"

That shut Daphne up. She had nowhere to turn but my mother-in-law, Vivienne Prescott. Her voice went soft as she wheedled, "Vivienne, can you believe her?"

Vivienne patted Daphne's hand to soothe her, then turned to me with fury in her eyes. "Elara Renworth, you must've gone mad. How dare you speak to Daphne that way?! Daphne loves Stellan so deeply that she's offered to be buried alongside him. Where else in this world would you find someone willing to do that?

"Could you? Would you give up every comfort this life has to offer and even your own son to go into the crypt to die for Stellan?"

A cold laugh escaped me. She was right. I could not do it, and I was not willing to. That was precisely how these words of hers had cowed me in my previous life.

Back then, I genuinely admired Daphne for being willing to die for my husband, and I genuinely pitied her for losing her life so young.

That was why even though it galled me to surrender the title of lawful wife, even though it galled me to give up the chance to be laid beside my husband when my own time came, I still gritted my teeth and agreed.

I never imagined that all of it was a conspiracy.

My husband, Stellan Montclair, had faked his death. He did not want the reputation of a man who cast aside the wife who had suffered alongside him through the lean years, so he devised this scheme to make me relinquish my position willingly.

Once Daphne had played her martyrdom act to its conclusion, he would rise from the dead and marry her in full view of the world.

In the last 20 years of my previous life, the two of them lived as a devoted, loving couple. Meanwhile, Ansel and I were banished to a forgotten cottage at the far edge of the estate, left at the mercy of anyone who wished to torment us. We both withered away and died in misery.

This life would be different.

I buried the cold edge in my gaze and looked up at Vivienne.