Chapter One
"Victor, darling!" Victoria's soft voice carries up the stairs and into the study. Dinner's ready!"
Victor sighs and sets his pencil aside, rising from his desk chair. He glances down at what he'd been drawing for the past hour.
The butterflies again. Sketched in soft granite, outlined with smooth strokes of ink, and filled in with swirls of deep blue hues. He'd filled pages and pages with them. He's been doing that a lot lately. He just can't seem to stop. He traces the outline of one of them, the large, wispy one in the center, with a long, slender white finger, a hint of a smile creeping onto his ordinarily pensive face.
They reminded him of her.
"Victor, please, before it gets cold!"
The smile disappears as reality tugs his arm towards the woman downstairs. His wife.
It's not that he has anything against Victoria. She is a lovely young woman, innocent and terribly sheltered. She was incredibly bashful on their wedding night in a way that was endearing to Victor at the time. He had to be very careful and gentle with her, as she was extremely fragile and still is.
Yes, she is what one can call "the perfect wife".
And Victor finds this perfectly boring.
Victoria never wanted to do anything exciting. A trip to the market? She'd just bought groceries. Learn the piano forte? Her fingers grew tired. A walk in the woods? Never going to happen. Victoria never did anything beyond cooking, cleaning, and sewing.
Yes, Victoria is "the perfect wife".
But perfect isn't what Victor wants.