Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 124: The demon_ Part 1

It hadn’t been easy getting into the castle, but then there were no guards guarding the castle like many other rich homes, and he had studied the days the servants went out to the market by standing in the junction that led from town to the castle. He had seen the servants’ carriage pass by and made his move.

Belle was everything keeping him alive and strong. Many times he’d wanted to give up on life itself in the past, but her optimistic character and always looking at the bright side had been his life force. Her smile was enough to brighten his darkest days.

Whenever he felt like a loser, all he had to do was find his woman and be with her. Talk to her about dreams that seemed impossible, yet possible—because she was willing to stick with him. She made him believe he could still become a licensed doctor someday, and that all his dreams would come true if he just believed in them.

’It’s Isabelle, but you can call me Belle.’ She had smiled at him shyly the first time they had mistakenly crashed into each other at the ball. He hadn’t been invited, of course, but Jamie had gone there to make a last-minute dress adjustment for one of the guests and had happened to see the lady hiding behind a pillar.

When she turned around to leave, she had bumped into him and almost fallen until he caught her waist and balanced her.

’Let me get something for you to eat and drink. It’s totally unfair for you to come and leave without having all of those refreshments, Mr. Marchant,’ she had said with a worried look when he told her he wasn’t a guest.

Jamie had fallen in love at first sight with her kindness. They had sat together in the corner of the pillars with a tray of food she insisted he have, and wanting to spend more time with the kind lady, he had swallowed his pride as a man and eaten with her while getting to know each other.

He recalled how, under his gaze, she self-consciously kept smoothing her hair and blushing. When she had reached again to smooth the hair, he reached up and caught her slender wrist, and then used his other hand to delicately and gently tuck the hair behind her ear.

’Will you come by my shop someday? I make lovely ribbons that will look good on your hair. You have beautiful hair, my lady.’

Like a scared puppy, she had ducked her head as if she hadn’t believed his compliment.

’I will... think about it. I should get back to the hall. I hope you have a nice day ahead.’ She stood up and hastily tried to leave, but Jamie reached out and grabbed her wrist again.

’I hope to really see you again, Lady Isabelle. Will I?’

She smiled that shy smile again. ’Maybe. Goodbye, Mr. Marchant.’ Her wrist, which he held, slowly slid away from his grip like a grain of sand, and she turned and ran away. He watched her retreating back and the swaying mass of her beautiful hair until she disappeared from his sight.

’I think I am in love...’ he had grinned happily.

He snapped back to the present when Belle’s voice came.

"You should have just left then, Jamie. I told you in the letter to go..." came Belle’s quiet voice as she tried to fight the uncontrollable urge to lie down and sleep.

"Did you really write it without being forced?" he questioned as he raised his eyes to her. He begged her through his eyes for her to say words he would like and desperately wanted to hear—that she still loved him and that everything in that letter was a lie fabricated by the madman.

"My husband has no idea I sent that letter to you. He did not force me into writing it, if that is what you think... I wrote it because I want you to move on from me." She confessed, feeling so emotionally detached and disoriented she couldn’t focus on one particular emotion to know if his presence stirred up her heart like in the past.

But the pain on his face made her feel an overwhelming guilt come over her.

"Jamie..." she whispered his name as he suddenly began to shake his head as if in denial.

"You are lying, aren’t you? You still love me, right?" he asked, his voice quivering with emotion and his blue eyes welling with tears. He stared at her, and when she didn’t say anything and looked guiltily at him, he groaned—a sound so pained, like it was wrenched out from his heart.

"How could you? Why? I thought you loved me. I thought we had a dream together, Belle! Is it because I have nothing to offer like him? Is it because I can’t make you a duchess and buy you jewelry and fancy things? If that’s what you want, I will sell my soul to the devil and get you everything you bloody well want and desire. I will buy you all the gold in the world and give you—"

Slap!

Jamie’s head jerked to the side from the slap Belle gave him. She watched him with tear-filled eyes.

"How could you think so low of me?" she whispered, hurt that he believed she chose Rohan for his wealth and rejected him because he had nothing.

Belle had never been the kind to fancy shiny things. The simplest things made her happy, and she had been with him and had loved him even when he was trying to make ends meet. She had not loved him in the past for any reason, but because he was him. novelbuddy.cσ๓

She hadn’t wanted this life at first—it was forced upon her. And now that she was thrust in it and married, there was no point in trying to run away from it when the man she married wasn’t a bad person to her.

His words made her feel worse than she ever had. She had no control over who her heart wanted to love. It had happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that she had not realized she had swayed from Jamie.

Jamie turned his head back to her, smiling, though his blue eyes held a storm of betrayal and hurt. Then, suddenly, he threw his head back and laughed.

But it wasn’t a laugh at all. It was a painful cry, and Belle’s lips began to tremble when she saw the tears streaking down his face. She was reaching out to him, but his next words made her hand freeze in an attempt to be raised.

"Women," he spat, jerking a hand across his wet cheeks as if furious at his own emotions. "I should’ve listened. I should’ve listened when my friends told me to give up on you. They warned me."

His voice shook with a volatile mixture of pain and rage.

"Women are the undoing of mankind. Soft hands, sweet words—snakes, all of you. Changing skins the moment you find someone more beneficial than the last one. And I should’ve known... I should’ve known you’d shed yours too."

He stood up to his feet, towering over her.

"You’ve just shown me how wealth can buy everything... and how love means absolutely nothing in the face of gold. Nothing." He laughed again, hollow, bitter. "You’re a Jezebel. A bitch. A walking curse, like every other creature of your kind."

Belle couldn’t breathe, let alone blink. His words pierced through her like blades, each one carving away at the remnants of the man she once loved. It felt as though the ground had been pulled from beneath her, leaving her heart to plummet into an endless void.

Was that all he thought of her? She wondered bitterly.

She stared at him, this stranger wearing Jamie’s face, unable to reconcile the cruel insult in his voice with the tenderness he once showed her.

And before he could speak again to shatter every little image of her past lover, before he could deliver another blow to her already disappointed heart, she forced herself upright, her legs trembling beneath her, and whispered, barely able to find her voice,

"Take me back to my husband’s house, please..."

She stood before him, trembling from the cold and his words. She had nothing to say to him. It was best they part ways—nothing further, nothing more to say.

He had just made it easy for her to live on without guilt.