A Fine Line (Being Rewritten into The Pursuit of a King)

Concern

Hey guys thanks so much for reading and giving this story some love! I'm sorry this update is so late I was swamped with exam stuff

Three days.

Three days Violet had been locked up in her room and was considering leaping from the window if only to escape her restlessness. She sat in the sitting room that adjoined her bedroom and merely stared out of the window and onto the grounds. The silence that had descended upon her life was becoming unbearable.

The extent of William’s injuries had not become apparent until the day after he had received Phillip’s beating. While he had been all smiles and inappropriate touching the night before, the next morning he had scarcely been able to move.

In truth it was probably to both their benefits as his sudden weakness dispelled any awkwardness between them. Violet shuddered at the thought that he might touch her again and she would take leave of her senses.

Absentmindedly she traced the crinkles in the skirt of her gown. She had bunched in yesterday in a fury as the sounds of her sister’s coronation echoed throughout the chambers. Violet could see the crowd through her window; every smiling face only amplified her frustration. She screamed and screamed for assistance but all attention was fixated on the balcony to her right and she could not be heard above the ecstatic roar of the people.

When the crowd began to disperse yet she still was paid no attention, Violet had flown into yet another of her rages and the evidence of it lay in the desecrated sitting room furniture lying around her.

William had thankfully left her alone, he was too weak to converse and it suited her just fine. If speaking honestly, Violet dreaded the day he would return to full health and she would have to burden herself with his company once more. His company was becoming more and more confusing.

Idly she strode from her place in the sitting room and back into their bedroom. She sat back down on the settee that faced the bed and casually wafted her gaze over to where her husband lay.

“William?” Violet asked for merely something to say. Her husband did not respond from his place in the bed and it irked her. His one redeeming quality seemed to be his ability to carry conversation and now it seemed he had also forsworn that.

“William?”

She stood with a huff and stalked over to the side of the bed and looked at him appraisingly. He was asleep yet again so Violet reached out a hand and shook him lightly, but gasped and withdrew her hand. His skin was on fire!

With a shriek she rushed over and pulled on the servants rope with all her might. In the process, the sheet fell from William’s chest and revealed that it was covered with mottled purple bruising. Violet recoiled in horror and pulled down hard on the rope again, sobbing as she clutched it desperately.

“Ma’am?” a young and petrified looking maid poked her head around the door, most likely recalling how Violet had treated the last woman who had errantly wandered into her rooms.

“Quickly!” she screamed “my husband-”

She glanced back at William and bit her knuckle to control her sobs

“My husband – he is dying – please – fetch the surgeon as fast as you can I beg of you!”

The maid disappeared, slamming the door behind her. Violet listened to her footsteps tear down the corridor to fetch the surgeon, as she made her way over to the other side of the bed. She sat and looked helplessly down at her husband, reminded again for the second time how useless she was.

“William can you hear me?” she pleaded. It was not the same as it was before; she had not known the extent of his injuries and believed them to be trivial. Now he lay before her feverish, pale, and his breathing shallow and laboured. She had never seen a man so close to death and it terrified her.