My Mysterious Seductive

Once upon the wee hours of summer, silence lingered as two young adult women listened to a very bizarre story.

Not a soul was asleep in the Trilby household as Fiona Trilby told her granddaughters the final story of the Everard family.

They delved deeper—quite literally—talking about the lives of people living in a place way below ground where everything else was not as how they were aboveground. She talked about actual events from The Town, a place where living meant living in frozen time. Time when balls were the rave, gowns a necessity, carriages a symbol of status and society even harsher.

Violet and Valerie listened intently as their grandmother talked about such things as though she was reliving a life forgotten. Their minds flew from their grandparents' living room and into the vast estates and cobbled streets of the Town, a peculiar place where the idea of sunshine was restricted to what the townspeople called holes.

But it was not the dire state of the Town—or the quite magical thought of it—that gave Violet and Valerie awe.

It was the amazing courage of the people in their grandmother's stories—the Everards.

They had heard of their many adventures of love, friendship and conspiracies. They hated the enemies, adored the lovers, and loved the friends.

And now, telling the story of the last of them all, Fiona Trilby was quite aware that her granddaughters would want for more by the end, because Emma Grace Everard's story was merely the beginning of the rest.

[ 1 IGettingtoNo ]

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Once there was a man who knew naught but the world he was enclosed in. Reared to be rich and powerful, he only knew what his teachers taught him—what his parents provided him. But the limitations and ignorance soon ended the moment he learned about the League of Founders and the secrets they protect.

Lord Byron Glocheshire realized that the stories were not merely products of dreamers for they were real and were spoken in truth.

The more he discovered the secrets of the Town, the more he learned of the world above until the secrets themselves became common knowledge and eventually, a part of his daily life.

Until he found her.

Or mayhap the better term is... until she found him.

- Above and Below

*****

It was not long ago when Emma felt the ground above came crumbling down on her.

She had woken up in bed with the most intense headache she had ever known. And merely minutes later she realized she was not alone in the bedchamber that ought to only be occupied by her. And seconds later after she realized she was in fact in bed with a man that was no stranger to her, she realized that they were both unreservedly naked under the thick covers.

The feeling was horrifying if not absurd, really, for Emma Grace Everard was not used to sharing her bed with anyone. No, not ever since she had the bedchamber to herself.

After her sister Ysabella married four years past, Emma was left to have the bedchamber all on her own. Sometimes her cat, Mrs. Brigid Beagle, would come by to spend a month with her before disappearing yet again to another mistress. Emma technically spent two years alone in the bedchamber and two more with Mrs. Brigid Beagle and no other.

Except, apparently, the night prior.

The worst part was that she spent the night naked in bed with the last man she ever imagined doing the deed with—Samuel Theobald.

It was not the realization of finding herself in bed with her friend and her brother's best friend that made Emma feel as though the ground above came crumbling down on her. That, she could have handled quite well if things did not turn out the way they did. The feeling of being buried alive followed just moments after she demanded from Samuel what had happened and the doors to her bedchamber opened to reveal Samuel's best friend, Ralph—her own bloody brother!

The feeling of the world finally coming to an end followed suit as another of her older brother, Maxwell, came into view.

By then, Emma knew that she would surely find herself burned to the stakes with naught but the bedcovers wrapped around her and Samuel before she could even find out what had transpired between them.

But that was two days ago. Two days of agony and constant bickering; two days of having to see that her brothers did not murder Samuel after they dragged the poor man from her bedchamber to the eastern part of the Everard mansion; two days of seeing the look of disappointment in her mother's eyes.

Yet even after a somewhat formal discussion, the tension was still there and the great desire to beat the hell out of Samuel Theobald still simmered within her brothers' blood. It was evident in their eyes. It was like watching blinking fireballs, really.

It was her sister, Ysabella, who fought alongside Emma. And it was their eldest brother, Benedict, who gave the final decision that she and Samuel shall marry.

The Everards had faced numerous scandals before, yet this was the first common scandal they had ever had to deal with. Emma had witnessed one of her brothers marry one of their governesses who also happened to be condemned of witchcraft. One married a bastard, another coveted another's fiancée while another was now married to a woman of color who had spent most of her life inside a brothel. And just recently, Ralph himself married a bandit. Frustrating as it may be for Emma, she also understood why her brothers would react the way they did.

For one, she was their youngest and the only remaining unmarried one amongst the Everard children. And it was not merely because Samuel was Ralph's friend that enraged them, but also the fact that he was a trusted entity in the household, thus it had never occurred to anyone that he could betray their trust in such manner.

Yet, for Emma, whatever she had done with Samuel ought to not be turned into such a bigger issue where she had to be forced to marry him. She admired that man and the cause he fought for as one of the Town Herald's most influential writers, but she could not, at the moment, see herself married to him—or to any man for that matter.

She thought she was spared of the dramas wrought by marriage.

But no, she had to make a very difficult decision she never thought she would ever have to make.

So Emma Grace Everard said yes to a union between her and Samuel Theobald. Almost entirely everyone seemed to be content except for her.

Whatever may have pushed her to share a bed with Samuel that night, Emma was yet to find out, but she knew for certain that she was not in love with Samuel.