deviant_muses August prompt - Picture #1
She couldn't believe that had been her mother's mirror.">She couldn't believe that had been her mother's mirror. The shattered pieces seemed so unlike anything she’d ever seen before. There was nothing to distinguish the antique glass from common window fragments found on the street. But there was no mistaking the silver framework, the meticulously crafted handle with its soft wear from being grasped by hands so many times.
Pressing a manicured hand to her lips Lillie sank back into the plush armchair. These fights were becoming more commonplace, as Edward’s suspicion of her life was growing. It could hardly be blamed, after all. She was spending more and more time out and away from home, wrapped in the lavish luxury of the society world she had so craved to belong to. And while her gown was seldom seen as anything to be envied by her own eyes, it had become a raw, unmistakable symbol of her beauty and presence. She was a woman that didn’t need extravagance to be beautiful, because she was already lovely beyond comparison.
All of these things were well and good, especially when they caught the eye of the Prince of Wales himself. But when behind closed doors at home mirrors were shattered, words were flung about like bullets, and Lillie retreated into one of the empty bedrooms to hide away for the night there was little left to be desired about her home life. She didn’t want this, didn’t want Edward’s unwelcome touch and the stench of liquor on his breath as he loomed towards her.
He was not the man she had married back in Jersey, but Lillie knew she had never truly married him at all. No, she had married his wealth and promise and the life he could offer her, and this was what she had come to belong to. But it wasn’t forever, and those thoughts were what comforted her at night beneath the fluffy feather blankets and the chill of the coming darkness. She would be free soon enough from a husband that wanted her to play the dutiful wife, free to live the life she knew had belonged to her from the moment she witnessed London’s beauty.
She was to belong to something greater, and never to any man. No man at all, not even one that appreciated her. And as the liquor bottles shattered in the downstairs room and Lillie fought to banish the sound from her hearing, she vowed that never again would a man possess her the way she had allowed Edward to. That had been her first mistake, and she would not make it again.