Nine days later, wearing a white dress that Arthur had paid for, I walked down the aisle.
The church smelled like wilted lilies. My heart felt like it had already stopped beating. My first kiss came at the altar, in front of strangers, to a man whose face I barely knew.
That night, when the door to Arthur’s home closed behind me, I stood trembling in a house that wasn’t mine, beside a husband I didn’t love. I remember thinking — this is how it feels to be buried alive.
But Arthur surprised me.
He didn’t touch me. Instead, he sat down across from me, hands folded in his lap.
“Matilda,” he said gently, “before anything happens, there’s something you need to know.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, frozen.
“I know this marriage wasn’t your choice,” he said, voice unsteady. “But I want you to understand something. I didn’t bring you here to harm you. I was born… different.”
He told me, haltingly, that he couldn’t be a husband in the traditional sense — that he couldn’t father children. I could see how much it cost him to say it aloud.
He looked at me then, waiting for disgust or anger. But I felt neither. I saw a man trapped by his own silence, just as I had been all my life.
Then he said words that would change everything:
“You’re free, Matilda. I won’t touch you unless you want me to. You can have your own room. All I ask is for companionship — someone to talk to, to sit with. I just… can’t bear the loneliness anymore.”
For the first time, I looked him in the eyes — really looked. What I saw wasn’t pity or possession. It was pain. It was gentleness.
