Page 45 of A Highlander Bound by Oath
Charlotte opened her eyes to see her uncle holding onto her. She kicked and wriggled her body, trying to escape his hold. She wanted to see her mother. No, it was not a want. She needed to see her mother. She needed to see her and confirm that this had all been a dream or some weird imagination she had cooked up in her head.
"Let me go!" she screamed at him. "Please let me go. I need to see her. I need to see my mother." Charlotte broke down in tears when she tried to get out of his grasp, to no avail.
"You should not have seen that."
"Charlotte! Charlotte, what is going on?" She whipped her head around when she heard her father's heavy-set footsteps hurriedly run up the stairs. The sight of him bursting into the room looking panicked brought her to tears once again. The drops flowed from her eyes without stopping. How would he take the news? He ran up to her, looking her over as if to see if she had been injured or hurt herself.
"Are you all right? Why did you scream? Brother, what is going on?" he asked quickly, looking around the room to see what had set her off like that.
As she watched her father, this man who deeply loved her mother, look her over, she knew that if he saw her body splattered on the floor, he would be broken, yet there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening.
"Answer me, Charlotte. Has anything happened?" he questioned her once again. "Where is your mother, anyway? I thought she would be here."
Charlotte whimpered when she heard her mother being mentioned. She thought she could protect her father from the sight, but there she was, unable to utter a single word.
"What happened, Alexander? Why is she crying? Do you know what happened?" he got up from where he had kneeled in front of Charlotte and went to stand in front of his brother. And then Charlotte noticed the instant he saw her mother, his wife, on the ground below them. She noticed the falter in his steps. She noticed him stumble and fall.
"Wh-what happened?" he muttered over and over again. Charlotte wished she could go to him and console him, but her uncle held on to her again when she tried to run for the window. She cried for her father as she watched him crumble into pieces. She had never seen him cry until this very moment, yet here he was, crying like she had been just some moments ago.
"I do not know what happened, brother. I came in when I heard Charlotte scream and held her back from jumping right after her." He cleared his throat as he paused, stopping himself before he said anything else. Charlotte watched him close hiseyes as if to steady himself. He let go of her suddenly and this time she did not move from her spot. She watched as her uncle lifted him onto the floor where he sat, bawling his eyes out and pat him on the back. "We need to get Charlotte out of the room before she does anything stupid," he said. Horror filled her when her father nodded in acquiescence to his brother's suggestion.
"No! No! Please don't. I want to see mama!" Charlotte screamed over and over as her uncle picked her up. This was the last time she would see her, and she needed to be with her at least this once. Didn't they understand that? Why were they choosing to take this away from her? She wriggled and screamed, calling out for her mother.
"Charlotte, Charlotte, please stop it!" she stopped when she heard the deep anguish in her father's voice, and she allowed her body to go limp in her uncle's hands as he took her to her room and left her in the care of a maid before rushing off to his brother.
Charlotte's eyes watered as she came back to present day.
She looked at her uncle now and started thinking, picking up on clues she had failed to see in her grief as a child. How had she never thought about this before? She had always suspected that something else that they did not know had happened, but that was all. Questions came up in her mind that should have on that fateful day.
Why had she not thought of the fact that she had heard her father's footsteps, but not her uncle's? Where had he come from before he grabbed her? Her uncle was heavy-set like her father, and if he had run into the room when he heard Charlotte scream, she would have noticed him.
Why was her uncle so close to what was happening? Who had opened the door? It could not have been her mother, so someone else had to be. That was the nagging feeling Charlotte had always felt whenever she thought about the day her mother had died and how she had fallen from the window. It should not have been so easily accepted, because she had never been careless or clumsy. Her mother just liked to sit beside the window in her rocking chair whenever she read and there was no way she could have tipped off and fallen out through the window.
If her uncle was the one who pushed her, then it would make sense that he was there. It would make sense that the door shut just moments before she came in. Charlotte had never suspected him to be in the room with her, but that was the only way she could perceive that he would be able to grab her so quickly. She figured she had arrived too early and foiled his escape plan, so he had probably been hiding when she came in. She had not looked around much so she would not have seen him.
There were so many things that made little sense. But, in her mind as a child and with the trauma of seeing her mother, her brain pushed everything aside without really thinking about it to protect her. Her father, in his grief and the knowledge that he had to take care of his young daughter, must have done the same, accepting the easiest excuse to be the truth.
Charlotte glared at her uncle. She was in pain. Her heart hurt from having to relive the beginning of the worst days of her life over and over, and there he was, standing before her, looking emotionless. She saw him in a different light now. As a monster. Of course, she had known he was a wretched man for years. But Charlotte had always assumed that his motives for doing what he did, locking her away and treating her so harshly, had been fueled by greed. Now, however, she saw him as a murderer.
What reason could he have had for killing her mother? Why had he not cared enough for his brother to settle whatever problems he had with her mother amicably? Did he not care that his brother would suffer and be lost without his wife, or had he wanted that to happen? Knowing what she knew now about her uncle and how he had been treating her since she became an orphan, it did not seem difficult to believe he wanted this to happen. He wanted her father to lose himself so that he could take everything from him. Every time her uncle had talked to his brother, consoled him and told him to take care of himself and be strong, he had meant none of it. He had been silently rejoicing to himself that he would soon get what he wanted and none of them would be the wiser.
She watched as her uncle's eyes glazed over, as though he, too, were lost in past memories.
"I had always loved your mother. Even before she met your father. I had seen her first. It is a memory that is forever lodged here," he tapped the corner of his head and smiled bitterly. "I saw her for the first time in a field. She was laying surrounded by flowers. Her hands fingered the petals of each flower gently, almost as if she was afraid to bruise them and ruin their beauty.She was so gentle, even with something as senseless as flowers. I knew from that moment that I had fallen in love with her."
What?
"I fell in love with her gentle ways and her sweet disposition. It did not hurt that she was so beautiful and that her long hair glistened with every move." He cleared his throat, almost as if he was ashamed to admit his love. Charlotte did not want to hear him talk about her mother like this, not from his evil mouth, but she also craved any remembrance of her mother that she could get. Her lips morphed into a shaky smile as she imagined her mother in a field. She was gentle. She had been gentle with everything and had taught Charlotte to be the same.
"Before I could make any move to claim the woman I had fallen in love with, your father became involved with her, and I was forced to watch from the sidelines as their relationship blossomed. They eventually married." His hands turned into fists, and the smile on his lips transformed into a scowl. In another world where he had not killed her mother and been the terrible monster that he was, Charlotte would have cared about the pain he had gone through, watching his brother and the woman that he loved.
"It was not long before they had you, their precious daughter." He looked at her with scorn. "Their perfect little family was now complete,with you. I remember how much hatred I felt in my heart when I saw you for the first time. You looked very much like the woman I had just lost. She had continued her torture of me by creating a small version of herself, constantly remindingme she had chosen someone else when she was supposed to bemine. I wanted so badly to get rid of you. I wished for it so much, but I knew I couldn't do anything. Your parents always felt the need to watch you. They never left you alone and, before long, you had grown, looking more like her with every year."
Charlotte felt a chill as he stared at her with such hatred. Despite how he had treated her for years, she had never seen this level of hate in his eyes until this very moment.
"It had been a long time that I had harbored these feelings for her and no matter what I did or how many times I told myself that she was not worthy of my love, I could never get rid of my feelings. One day, I decided to tell her. I went in to talk to her that day, to ask her why she never took me seriously and why she allowed our relationship to crumble, but it turned out to be a terrible mistake. She looked at me like I had gone mad." Charlotte struggled to keep her face neutral. From what he had just told her, he had never had a relationship with her mother. He had never even had a chance to tell her how he felt about her before her parents had met, so she was right to think that he had gone mad. However, Charlotte kept her feelings to herself. She did not want to anger him. But she knew now that her uncle was delusional as well as evil.
"She made me feel stupid, explainingthat we had never been in a relationship and that she had met your father first. When I told her I used to watch her in the fields, she looked shocked and horrified. Seeing the disgust in her eyes was too much for me to bear. That was the breaking point. I became enraged and... pushed her."
