Rain touched her cheek. Cold, sharp like a tear from someone else's grief.
Henrietta stirred slowly, lashes heavy, dress clinging damply to her skin. The grass beneath her was wet, and the sky above was the color of mourning, thick with dark clouds, bruised by thunder. For a moment, she thought she had simply fallen asleep in the garden again, like she always did anytime she's in thoughts.
But this wasn't the garden and this certainly wasn't a dream.
She sat up, groggy, heart pounding as the cold seeped into her bones. The trees looked familiar, but something about them felt warped, like a memory stretched too far, her feet moved on their own, towards the mansion ahead . Her family's home.
The Fairleigh estate stood tall as ever, but it's windows were dim, the candles inside flickering low. No morning bustle,no chatter from the maids. The air was heavy with silence and something else, grief, maybe.
"Finally," she muttered, brushing strands of hair from her face. "Ina ". She called out. "I need a towel".
A maid appeared from the corner, carrying a stack of linens. Henrietta recognized her vaguely. One of the newer girls, mousy, small shouldered. Stopped short when she saw Henrietta, her eyes narrowing with something like...disgust.
"I said I need a towel," Henrietta repeated, slower this time.
But the maid didn't answer. Instead, she scoffed, adjusted the stack in her arms, and walked past her without a word, out into the rain as if keeping her words for later.
Henrietta turned after her, stunned. "Excuse me?". But the maid was gone.
Her heart pounded louder now. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. She turned towards the long hall way mirror by the passage to the west wing, the one her mother always insisted be polished daily.
And that's when she saw it. Not her.
The girl in the reflection was not lady Henrietta Fairleigh.
It was Margaret. The lowest ranking maid in the household. A girl often scolded for slowness, for clumsiness, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Henrietta had barely spoken to her, but now she stared at her face, her eyes, her body.
Her reflection.
She stumbled back from the mirror, breath catching in her throat. "No...no, this isn't _"
"Margaret" a voice called from the front entrance."stop dawdling and come pay your last respects. They're burying the lady!".
The lady?
Henrietta blinked. Her legs moved before her mind caught up. She rushed to the front doors, burst outside, and stopped.
There, beneath the stormy sky, surrounded by family and hired mourners, was a white coffin.
An open one
The guests were lined up to look inside, to weep, to sigh. To whisper behind gloved hands. A few drops of rain slipped onto the silk lining inside the casket, dampening the pale dress wrapped around the corpse.
Her dress
Henrietta stood frozen in place as she looked down at herself. Or rather, at what used to be herself. The face was too pale. The lips were too still. Her skin had already begun to shrink around the bones like an old, forgotten doll.
A dry sob clawed it's way up her throat. Behind her she heard voices.
" She looked so peaceful" someone said. " A tragic accident".
" She was always fragile ", another whispered. "Poor girl ".
But the worst came from the ones who wore her family crest.
Her mother's tears were too few. Her father kept glancing at the time. And then... Beatrice.
Her cousin stood wrapped in a mourning shawl, eyes downcast, posture perfect.
Henrietta gaze dropped instinctively to her belly slightly rounded. Hidden beneath layers of black .
She wouldn't tell anyone, not until the wedding, of course. Not until she was married to Albert, the man who once kissed Henrietta's hands like they were made of silk and swore eternal love.
Henrietta swallowed hard, memories crashing in too fast.
Albert's absence in recent weeks. The lingering perfume on his collar, the late night chats.
And then...the door she'd opened. The sight of him and Beatrice on his bed.
She ended the engagement that night. She'd shouted. She threatened to tell everyone of their ungodly acts.
And then ..... nothing
Just darkness. Cold
Until she woke up under the rain in someone else's body.
Henrietta stumbled backwards, the realization tightening around her chest like a corset drawn too tight. She wasn't dreaming. She was dead or something close to it.
And now she was Margaret
They buried her like she meant nothing. Albert stool in black beside Beatrice, jaw clenched, eyes dry. Beatrice clung to his arm like a grieving widow already claiming her price.
Henrietta looked down at her dirt stained dress. Her hands, this body, this stolen life.
"I'm still here", she whispered
But no one heard her
No one even looked.
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Everyone had left that night. The night wasn't meant to mourn but somehow, it did.
The storm returned with fury.
Rain lashed the earth as if heaven couldn't contain it's grief. Thunder cracked across the dark sky, rolling over the mansion's roof like the slow drag of a coffin lid.
Inside the corridor whispered.
No servants moved. No laughter echoed. The grand Fairleigh mansion once filled with the music of elite guests and clinking glasses, now held only sorrow in it's bones.
*** ***** ******
In her chambers, Lady Eleanor Fairleigh clutched a pale gown to her chest.
I was Henrietta's silk, ivory, the one she wore on her seventeen birthday.
Eleanor curled around it like a child would do to a doll. Her tears soaked the fabric, her breath hitched, sharp and breaking . She hadn't wept at the funeral. She didn't want to make a scene. But here, alone, she was no lady, no wife, no figure of noble grace.
She was a mother
And her only child has been taken from her, from the world completely.
"I should have listened more...." She whispered, voice shattering against the sound of thunder. "I should have held you tighter.... God forgive me".
The candle beside her flickered, casting shadows on her face, lines deepened not by age, but by regret.
***** ***** *****
Else where, in the great dinning room, Lord Fairleigh sat still.
The fireplace had long gone cold, but he didn't notice or didn't care.
A crystal glass sat in front of him untouched, the amber liquor inside rippling from the Thunder's vibration. His hands were folded on the table, face unreadable, emotionless. No grief, no rage, no softness. Just... nothing.
Was he mourning?. Remembering?. No one knows.
***** ***** *****
Outside, beneath the storm, Margaret knelt in the garden beneath the ancient ash tree.
Henrietta
She was soaked to the bone, the wind biting her skin, but she didn't flinch. The cold didn't matter. The water didn't matter, she was too number.
She stared at her fingers. Margaret fingers, and clenched them.
"This isn't mine", she whispered, eyes hollow. "None of this is mine".
She'd watched her own funeral. She'd seen her betrayers shedding fake tears over her, and her parents showing no emotions at their own daughter's funeral. And yet here she was, a maid , dirty, invisible, discarded.
"I should be dead" she murmured. "Why didn't I stay dead....and...why can't I remember anything after that night?"
Lightning streaked across the sky, white and merciless. The trees above groaned under the weight of the wind.
But Henrietta didn't move
She sat there so confused.