Duke of Camellias

PROLOGUE

The Duke of Camellias stood at the window of the second floor, and peered down at the lush pink and red camellias that adorned his garden. They lined the trellis, dotted the bushes, and covered the whole yard in their unruly, wild, and magnificent glory.

The Duke of Camellias, named Emmanuel, once called by a different name, was now almost entirely known by the title "Duke of Camellias". He never believed in trimming flowers. He was a sensitive person, as rumored by the several bachelorettes of England, with a gentle smile and warm, brown eyes. People said that he was often seen caressing his camellias like they were a terrier or British shorthair, even. He cared for them like they were his pets, or even children.

Talking about children, people always whispered about the mystery behind the duke's disinterest towards marriage—no, women, in general. In the many years he had lived there, he was entirely alone, and rejected all invitations to the balls and meetings of the elites of England.

Even his reason for moving away from his father and mother, the previous Duke and Duchess of Thornton, before living in the old mansion riddled with camellias, was unknown. As abrupt as his appearance had been those fifteen years ago, when he was seventeen, the small and sleepy town of Rue Point became well-known for this particular Duke.

Those fifteen years he had many visitors try and make his acquaintance and many families try and set him on a date with their daughters, but now, past his thirties, they had given up and moved on to the younger and wealthier bachelors in nearby towns.

As Emmanuel watched his garden from his window, he wondered, without much feeling nor conscious thought, almost as though he were going through an everyday routine, how it would feel to jump down.

Would his beloved camellias wrap around his corpse, pierced by the branches and twigs, staining their petals crimson as he bled?

Would the townspeople laugh at him, covered in the camellias from his own garden, say that he lived a lonely life in which he loved no one and was unloved in return?

Without knowing why, he dragged his fingers down the window pane.

No. He didn't want such an ending.

It didn't matter to him what people thought of him, said of him, but he couldn't let that go. That secret that he harbored deep inside of him. That secret that killed him, day and night, again and again.

The thought of the betrayal, the pretense, the hardships and prejudice he had to face. The things he sacrificed, and the lives that no one knew about. The life he lived that no one knew about. The true Emmanuel Francis Waterhouse, not Duke Thornton or Duke of Camellias.

The man that was once nothing but a little boy, a bastard child, thrown into high society without anything but the measly "noble" blood running through his body.

Emmanuel turned to his desk where papers, books, an empty silver cigar case and opal-handled letter opened. He grabbed the many periodicals off his desk and flipped through the papers smelling of fresh ink and cheap paper.

The Edinburg Review, Weekly Dispatch, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Monthly Panorama—ah, here it was, Blackwood's Magazine for Men.

Emmanuel licked his finger and went through the many pages for the last story he had read, his long dark curls falling from behind his ears and obscured his face. The story had touched him, a short and simple story about the death of a lover, a beautiful girl named Shirley—or was it Shannon?—either way, it had been melancholic—strangely sentimental. It had moved Emmanuel, who hadn't been moved by any of Dickens' writings, much less Lord Byron's, or Tennyson's.

He looked at the name. Blair Millais. It reeked of poverty. Still, however, he picked up his fountain pen and noted it down on a piece of paper, and then grabbed his top hat and coat, set about sending a telegram to Blackwood's Magazine for Men.

Passing by the camellias and then opening the gates, he smiled to himself.

It was going to be a long journey, starting from his pitiful origins to now enviable position. The writer, Millais, would certainly be shocked, so how, he wondered, would he write his story?

The true story of the Duke of Camellias.