Reborn: The Duke's Obsession
Chapter 82 - Eighty Two

Chapter 82: Chapter Eighty Two

The room was dim, the heavy velvet curtains drawn tight against the afternoon sun, trapping shadows in the corners. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying scent of sandalwood incense. An old woman with eyes that’s all knowing sat behind a small, round table covered in a dark, embroidered cloth. This was the parlor of the most famous palm reader in all of Albion.

"I must have been blessed by the fates today," the palm reader said, her voice a low, raspy whisper. "For years, all the great nobles of this kingdom have come to my door to know their fate. But you, Dowager Duchess Elena, in all this time, you never came. And yet, you have finally arrived."

Elena, looking as regal and out of place as a diamond in a coal bin, sat opposite her. "I have never had a reason to come before," she replied, her voice cool and clipped. "But today..." She turned and looked at Delia, who was sitting silently beside her. "Today, I am here because of her."

The palm reader’s gaze shifted to Delia, her dark eyes sharp and assessing. "And who is she?"

"She is to be my granddaughter-in-law," Elena stated simply. " And the granddaughter of your regular patron."

Delia, hearing the words spoken with such finality by the powerful matriarch, let a small, involuntary smile touch her lips.

"Oh, I see," the palm reader said. She took one quick, penetrating look at Delia, then turned her attention back to Elena. "So what is it that you wish to know about her that you would both come here together, Your Grace?"

"I want to know what connection this child truly has with her grandfather, Baron Edgar Ellington," Elena began, getting straight to the point. "Years ago, when his son, Henry, was getting married to his current wife, Edgar made a strange condition. He said he needed to give back to society, to atone for past sins. But his son argued with him. Henry said he would only agree to the marriage if Edgar, in turn, agreed to let him bring his first seed, his illegitimate child, into the family home." She looked at Delia. "That is how she came into the Ellington family. A bargain chip in another woman’s marriage."

She continued, her voice hardening with the memory of her recent encounter. "And now, suddenly, she is to marry my grandson. And the old Baron comes to me, on his knees, begging me not to disapprove, with a sack full of all the money he stole from me, all the money he cheated me out of me years ago in his hands. Watching him act like that, so desperate... it scared me. It was not the act of a man simply wishing for his granddaughter’s happiness. He was not the same greedy, money obsessed man I knew.

"Your Grace truly hates the Baron," the palm reader observed, a simple statement of fact.

"Of course, I hate him," Elena retorted. "He cheated me out of a fortune in our shipping venture. But it was more than that. I almost died that day he almost made me lose everything. My blood, sweat and tears."

The palm reader leaned forward, her voice dropping even lower. "Death comes for us all. Speaking of death, Your Grace," she murmured, her dark eyes fixed on Elena. "Do you remember the other incident from all those years ago? The pregnant woman who died. The one who died because of Baron Edgar?"

Delia sat there, a silent, confused witness to this conversation. She felt as if she had been dropped into a story she didn’t understand. A story where her grandfather, the man she adored, was a villain. This was a side of him she had never known, a past he had kept buried and hidden.

~ FLASHBACK ~

The rain was a cold, miserable downpour, turning the cemetery grounds into a sea of mud. A man stood alone in front of a freshly dug grave, the rain plastering his dark hair to his skull, his dark clothes soaked through. He didn’t seem to notice the cold or the rain. He just stared at the mound of dark earth where his wife had been buried that morning. He stared at her name on the headstone.

Whispers flew among the few remaining mourners who were huddled under the relative shelter of a large oak tree.

"I heard her husband came back home from his trip assisting merchants and found her on the floor," a woman whispered to her friend. "Already dead."

"And she was in her last month of carrying a child, too," the other woman replied with a sad shake of her head. "Oh my. Defective goods are really a terrible thing. That’s the second bolt of silk from the Ellington establishment that has fallen apart this season."

Just then, Baron Edgar Ellington arrived. He carried a large bouquet of white lilies. He walked to the grave and dropped the flowers onto the wet earth. As he was about to leave, the grieving husband, who had been watching him with a confused expression, stopped him.

"Thank you for coming," the man said, his voice hoarse with grief. "But forgive me, have you met my wife before? how did you know her?"

Edgar stammered, his eyes darting around nervously. "Oh... oh yes. She... she frequents the same social club as me. A terrible tragedy. So, if you will excuse me...?"

The husband’s grief-stricken face suddenly hardened. His eyes narrowed as he recognized the man before him. He reached out and grabbed Edgar by the collar of his expensive coat.

"You...It is you," he snarled, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "The owner of that damned Ellington Textile company. Why are you here? How dare you come here?"

"I was just trying to pay my condolences," Edgar replied, his voice shaking. "And I came to give her family back the money for the bolts of silks she procured. All of it, and more. For the faulty dye used."