Chapter 2 : The Crack in the Mirror

It all began that night, almost two months prior to this unfortunate incident.

Lady Marguerite "Maggie" Delaney Antoine Blanchard, the daughter of Earl of Huntington, recalled the events of the night vividly.

Her otherwise very agreeable father was, for once, not as agreeable as she thought.

No, to be exact, her father was the complete opposite of agreeable that night.

In his rage over Nicholas Cunningham's unexpected proposal for Maggie's hand in marriage, he even went as far as smashing a glass at Nicholas' feet.

"Absolutely not!" the Earl had roared, the fireplace burning behind him cast a long shadow across the room, dwarfing the man standing in front of him.

From her vantage point, Maggie could see Nicholas' grim face. The poor young man looked heartbroken and devastated.

"I am sorry for making such an utterly disgusting proposal to you, Uncle," he slowly said. "It was my lapse of judgment. I shall never repeat this mistake. Please forgive me."

It was too much for Maggie to bear.

After all, they had both agreed to it.

Nicholas had done nothing wrong at all!

"But Father!" Maggie burst out of the door, stomping into the drawing room, unlike the well-mannered young lady she was supposed to channel. "Must you treat Nicholas in such an uncivil manner? He loves me, and I love him too!"

Earl of Huntington's eyes blazed furiously. For a split second, Maggie believed that the Earl was about to give her a slap across the cheek, but he did not. After all, the Earl had never raised a hand to strike his daughter. Not in the past, not now, and not in the future.

He merely inhaled and exhaled several times in an attempt to exercise utmost patience for his insensible daughter.

"Maggie," he snarled, baring his teeth at her. "You have no business interfering in a conversation between two grown men."

Maggie snapped sharply after air, as if offended by her father's words.

"I do if I am the reason for this dispute!"

"Maggie, your father is right." Nicholas closed the distance between them and gently put a hand on Maggie's shoulder. "Anyway, you heard everything. I am sorry, I have not secured your father's permission to marry you."

The Earl scoffed in disdain.

Maggie cried out, "No!"

To the Earl's greatest dismay, his darling daughter held onto Nicholas' arm like a wilting flower seeking the warmth of the sun.

"Maggie!" the Earl growled. "Come to my side at once!"

"No!" Maggie howled in response. "Father, did you not hear me? We love each other! Please, Father, please allow us to marry!"

Maggie's pleas ultimately drained the last bit of patience in the Earl of Huntington's heart. Without delay, he sent the young lady back to the Cavendish Academy, the very institute designed to nurture the minds and skills of refined young women from noble families. It was where she lived and studied for the past ten years.

To make it worse, the Earl specifically wrote a lengthy letter to the Academy Headmaster to forbid a specific gentleman from paying Maggie a visit.

"Father, you cannot control me forever," Maggie had written a letter to her father angrily the next day upon finding out. "I will be eighteen in a week. I am not a child anymore. I will be eligible to marry, whether you like it or not!"

Maggie did not receive a reply to her angry letter. And the next one. And the one afterward.

When her eighteenth birthday neared and she still did not receive any communication, she started to feel a little guilty.

Her father loved her, she knew as much.

Maybe she had been too harsh with the Earl.

She knew for a fact that the Earl had been dealing with a lot of issues with their land recently. Maybe that was why he exhibited diminished tolerance for trivial matters such as Maggie's wedding to her distant cousin, Nicholas.

Maggie pulled a grimace.

But it was her wedding!

It was not a trivial matter, was it? She was her father's only daughter!

After taking a deep breath and summoning her reserves of love and patience, she sat down with a quill and began composing a more diplomatic letter to her father.

"Dearest Father," she wrote, "please forgive your daughter's outrageous outburst at home, and also for the lack of manners she exhibited in the past several letters."

It had to be sufficient for an apology. If the Earl wished for a more sincere and direct apology, he might please allow his daughter to come home on her eighteenth birthday, so that they might celebrate her coming-of-age together.

Two more days passed, and Maggie started to become very worried. Her father did not think of disowning her, did he?

At this point, Maggie was extremely sorry for her utterly graceless behavior.

Finally, a day before her birthday arrived, the head butler from Huntington Hall came to pay her a visit at the dormitory.

"Richard, thank God!" Maggie broke into a relieved gasp. "Did Father send you here to pick me up?"

When Richard, the butler, did not immediately answer, Maggie started to notice that something was amiss. The middle-aged man's eyes were clouded with grief, and his lips, usually pressed in a firm line, twitched uncontrollably.

"Young Lady," he choked out, his voice ragged by suppressed emotions. "A terrible misfortune has struck Huntington Hall. The Earl… The Earl passed away this morning after falling from his horse during a fox hunt."