Chapter 2 - The East Wing SecretThe East Wing of Hawthorne Manor felt less like a bedroom and more like a high-security observatory.
The room was vast, dominated by a four-poster mahogany bed draped in heavy velvet, tall windows overlooking the raging Atlantic Ocean, and a massive stone fireplace where a low fire burned quietly. But there were no personal touches. No photographs, no books, no colors other than charcoal, deep crimson, and bone white.
The housekeeper who had escorted her upstairs—a severe, elderly woman named Mrs. Gable—set a single leather trunk at the foot of the bed.
“Your belongings from Providence arrived an hour ago,” Mrs. Gable said flatly, her eyes avoiding Evelyn’s. “Dinner will be served in your quarters at seven. You are not permitted to wander the west corridors after dark.”
“Why?” Evelyn asked, crossing her arms as she stood by the freezing window, watching lightning flash across the dark horizon.
Mrs. Gable paused at the door, her hand resting on the brass handle. Her posture stiffened. “Because the master values his privacy, Mrs. Hawthorne. And because Hawthorne Manor holds history that outsiders are not equipped to understand.”
Before Evelyn could press further, the heavy wooden door clicked shut, turning the lock from the outside.
Evelyn rushed to the door and rattled the handle. It didn't budge.
“Locked in,” she muttered, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. “Of course I am. I’m not a wife; I’m a prisoner wrapped in a legal contract.”
She turned away from the door and began to unpack the single cardboard box containing her few clothes, her high school diploma, and the folded acceptance letter from Boston University. She held the university letter in her hands, her thumbs tracing the embossed university seal.
Financial aid pending.
That phrase had haunted her for months. Now, it felt like a sick joke. She was legally married to a reclusive billionaire twice her grandfather's age, living on a desolate cliff in Rhode Island, cut off from the world.
Restless and suffocating under the heavy air of the room, Evelyn walked over to the tall windows. She noticed that one of the casements was unlatched. Pushing against the heavy wood, she managed to force the window open a few inches.
A rush of cold, salt-laden wind whipped into the room, carrying the roar of the crashing waves below.
Leaning out slightly, Evelyn looked down. The East Wing jutted out over a sheer drop of jagged rock where the ocean smashed violently against the cliff base. But directly below her window, on a narrow stone balcony connecting the East Wing to the forbidden West Wing, a faint beam of light cut through the darkness.
Someone was moving around down there.
A figure wrapped in a dark overcoat was holding a flashlight, examining the stonework near a rusted service door that supposedly hadn't been opened in decades.
Evelyn narrowed her eyes. The figure moved with a strange, fluid agility—nothing like the frail, bent old man she had seen at the altar.
Could it be a caretaker? she thought. Or... was Nathaniel Hawthorne lying about his condition?
Before she could ponder the thought further, a sharp knock rattled her door.
May you like
Evelyn jumped back from the window, closing it quickly as Mrs. Gable’s voice called out from the hallway.
“Dinner is served, Mrs. Hawthorne.”
