It was a careful balance that she had to walk now. She had every intention of keeping the truth of her affair with Max a secret, despite the elation and bliss she felt when in his arms. After all, how does one explain that she was in love with the ghost of her husband's father?
They had reluctantly parted after their morning love making, Max promising that he would come to her tonight, a promise that made Anna Marie very eager for the day to pass quickly.
She had to act as if nothing happened, be the picture of the perfect wife, lest Pietro or Wanda suspect what she was up to when she was alone.
She had no idea where Pietro ran off to at night, and quite frankly she didn't care anymore. Their failed attempt the night before to consummate their marriage had been unsuccessful, and her thoughts had been filled with Max, wishing that it was him that had been on top of her, wishing it had been his hands, his mouth, his-
Oh for heaven's sake, don't go havin' such unladylike fantasies in the middle of the day.
When she finally made her appearance downstairs, Pietro seemed to be avoiding her gaze, which she was sure was due to embarrassment. She couldn't blame him, if anything she did feel a little guilty, considering she had found comfort in a ghost. But if she was going to keep up this charade, she had to at least act the part of the doting wife.
"Pietro…" She tried to approach him.
"I'm going to be upstairs in the attic, I think. The snow is still too much for the men to work in." He redirected.
"Oh, of course. Would you like-"
"Anna Marie, please, just let me be. I do not wish to bring further shame to what occurred last night."
She stopped, knowing she should be hurt by his words. But truthfully, and it felt deviant to think so, she was at least glad he wouldn't bother with her again so soon after their failed coupling.
She simply nodded, and left the room.
At least ah attempted to be the good wife. No one can say ah didn't try.
As she made her way out of the room, something on a side table caught her eye. The set of keys that Wanda usually kept on her.
Ah've tried to have my own set made, but she always has a reason.
Feeling a bit miffed after being put off by Pietro, she slipped the keys into her pocket, wondering what they went to, and what other secrets were in this house.
She knew Pietro was in the attic, tinkering away by himself, and she heard Wanda playing on the piano. Several of the keys appeared to go to luggage trunks, and her mind went to the night she had ended up in the basement, the initials A.F. engraved on the one she found.
Adrienne Frost, perhaps. Only one way to find out.
She took her chance, hoping that Wanda and Pietro would assume the lift was acting on its own as she descended into the basement with the keys in her pocket.
Once she got down there, the trunk was still in its same place, and, with her heart pounding, she carefully opened the trunk.
Inside, she found clothes and pictures, belongings of the owner. Stitched on the inner lining was a name: Adrienne Frost.
A. Eisenhardt's letter….
This didn't make sense. Anna Marie was Pietro's only wife, wasn't she?
The trunks in the corner, were they also a conundrum?
She started to dig through the pile, but found a box that seemed rather out of place.
A record player?
It was perfectly intact, and she remembered the phonograph cylinders upstairs, in the closet that had turned over.
Do they belong to whoever the record player belongs to?
She resolved to find out, and decided to take the box upstairs, silently praying that if she ran into anyone on the upper floors, that it would be Max, like the last time she was down here.
Ah wonder what he knows….surely, he would have told me about this if it was important…wouldn't he?
She managed to not run into anyone at all as she carried the record player upstairs, grabbing the box of cylinders and locking herself in a secluded room.
She listened to the cylinders, one by one, and found photographs in the bottom of the box, photographs that made her very uneasy.
They were photographs of Pietro, but each one showed him with three different women, all dated within the last ten years.
The cylinders, the voice on the recording identified herself as Adrienne Frost.
"I fear that I am going mad….I am ill all the time, despite Pietro insisting that it is just homesickness."
"I am too weak now to fight back….Wanda brings me tea and it doesn't help…."
"I am not the first…..I fear I will not be the last…."
The pictures, the recordings, it all led to the shocking discovery that made Anna Marie go pale.
She was not Pietro's only wife.
She was his fourth.
The names on the photographs listed them: Adrienne Frost of England, Monet St. Croix of France, and Crystalia Amaquelin, a woman of nobility from a distant country she did not know.
The biggest question she had now….
What happened to his other wives?