Too Late
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Bleak House
Copyright: Public Domain/BBC
Writing her farewell note is the hardest thing Lady Honoria Dedlock has ever done. Cowardice was never in her nature, even if it was forced upon her for all these years by the pressure of her secret. She would have chosen anything, even a screaming fight and broken glass, over this furtive disappearance in the night.
Sir Leicester will hate her once he reads those letters. She has no doubt of it, and the knowledge cuts her, more deeply than she had known anything still could. She has had many unkind thoughts about the man she married out of such desperation; a man who takes Mr. Rouncewell's political campaign as a personal insult, who has a running feud with his neighbor over a few metres of land, who fusses constantly over her ill health while remaining utterly blind as to its cause.
But he is also the man who saved her life, without knowing it, eighteen years ago. Without him, sooner or later she would have ended up on the streets. He is the man who never once treated her with anything but kindness and respect, no matter how cold she was in return. One corner of the locked-up mansion that is his heart has been swept clean for her, windows open to the sunlight, every day. She has kept him human.
Too late, far too late, to understand that he has done the same for her.
She loves him, and she will destroy him. Too late to change what is inevitable.
All that remains for her is to pray that, wherever she is going, her love will surround all three of those she holds most dear.