Chapter 3 Lilian

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Chapter Three:Lilian

The name stayed with her long after she left the dressing room.

Lilian.

Not stitched for show, but hidden, like a secret. A woman's name looped into crimson silk, concealed in a gown associated with death. Evelyn had felt something-almost like a pulse-as her fingertips grazed the embroidery. The thread had been different. Not part of the original design. Someone had added it later.

But why?

She returned to her suite just before dawn, the corridors echoing with the creak of her boots and the shush of candlelight. Sleep wouldn't come. She lay in bed with the covers drawn to her chin, staring at the ornate ceiling, the name Lilian repeating in her mind like a refrain. Like a summons.

Who had she been?

Not Isadora, clearly. Another woman. Another shadow.

By morning, the sea mist had crept over the cliffs, clinging to the manor like breath on a mirror. Evelyn dressed quickly and skipped breakfast, returning to the dressing room with new resolve. She couldn't afford to be cautious anymore. Not with the house whispering truths in hems and seams.

Today, she chose a pale blue gown trimmed with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons. Its silhouette suggested the early Edwardian era, perhaps 1905 or 1906. A time of quiet rebellion-women pressing against tradition with hemlines, waistlines, and whispered defiance.

She laid the gown out on velvet and began her examination.

In the bodice lining, she found a torn scrap of muslin paper with blurred ink. Only two words remained legible:

> Lilian begged.

A tremor passed through her.

She pressed the paper flat beneath a glass weight and examined the gown again, breath shallow. In one of the cuff seams, a button had been replaced with a small black bead-not original to the design. When she unsnapped the cuff, a fine sliver of paper fell into her lap.

Not a message this time.

A sketch.

It was a charcoal rendering of a woman's profile-elegant, long-necked, with high cheekbones and a mouth slightly parted as if caught in the middle of speech. Her eyes had been left blank, the sockets smudged in gray shadow.

Below the portrait, a signature: I. T.

Isadora Thorne.

---

By noon, Evelyn had assembled her own private archive. In a long black journal she'd brought for notes, she now kept the sketches, the scraps, and the fragments she dared not leave in the open. She began tagging gowns with ribbon markers-blue for silent, red for suspect, black for haunted.

Most were black.

Each artifact deepened the mystery. The garments told a story not of glamour or elegance, but of surveillance. Fear. Women caught in silken traps, reduced to whispers stitched beneath brocade.

And always-always-the presence of Lilian lurking just beneath the surface.

She approached Maud that afternoon in the hallway near the library.

"Who was Lilian?" she asked.

Maud paused, just slightly. "Why do you ask?"

"I found her name sewn into one of the gowns. And a message. Several, actually."

Maud folded her hands. "Lady Thorne had many visitors. Some stayed. Some didn't."

"That's not an answer."

The woman's eyes met hers. "This house remembers what others forget. Be careful what you awaken."

---

Later, in the library, Evelyn pulled books at random from the shelves. Most were genealogies, crumbling romances, and dry accounts of textile trades from centuries past. But in a slim volume titled Wives of the Gentry: Forgotten Figures, she found a footnote that caught her breath.

> Lilian Fairleigh (1886–1908?) was briefly betrothed to Lord Alaric Thorne, though the union was never formally announced. She vanished prior to the engagement's formal debut. Local records cite illness, but no death certificate was ever filed. Her family estate burned in 1911.

Evelyn traced the words with her fingertip.

She vanished.

The timeline fit. If Lilian had once been intended to marry Alaric, and Isadora had worn the death gown later-then there was a gap. A betrayal. Perhaps even a motive.

She snapped the book shut.

Was Lilian the ghost the house refused to forget?

---

That night, she dreamed again.

This time, it wasn't the girl in red on the cliffs.

It was a room. High-ceilinged. Candlelit.

Evelyn stood at the center in a corseted gown too tight to breathe. Her hands were bleeding, fingers pricked by a thousand needles. The mannequins around her weren't mannequins anymore-they were women, frozen in place. Their mouths were stitched shut.

One of them turned to look at her.

Lilian.

She reached out-but Evelyn couldn't move. Her limbs were lead. Her voice caught in her throat. And as Lilian reached forward, eyes wide with warning, the walls began to bleed.

When she woke, the sheet was torn where her nails had dug in.

And at the foot of her bed, someone had placed a single black button.

---

She sought out Alaric the next morning.

Found him on the west terrace, staring out at the sea, coat wrapped tight against the wind. His profile was sharp, as though sculpted rather than born. In the cold light, he looked older-more tired. Haunted.

"Lilian Fairleigh," Evelyn said, standing beside him. "You were engaged to her."

He didn't respond for a long moment.

"She was never meant to stay."

"What happened to her?"

"She fell in love with the wrong person."

Evelyn's breath caught. "Who?"

He looked at her then, something dark flickering in his gaze.

"The house."

The words struck her like a blow.

"She-what?"

"She loved this place. Obsessed over it. Saw beauty in the bones. Heard stories in the walls. She didn't want to leave. She wanted to belong."

"She disappeared."

"Not disappeared," he said quietly. "Silenced."

Evelyn felt her stomach churn. "You killed her."

"No. But I watched her become something else. Something... stitched in."

The wind howled across the cliffs.

Alaric turned to her. "That's why you were chosen. Because you understand the language of fabric. Because you can read what others have ignored."

She stared at him, heart pounding. "You sent the letter?"

"No," he said. "The manor did."

---

Evelyn didn't return to her suite that night.

She returned to the dressing room.

The gown she chose had been hidden in the farthest armoire-tissue-paper wrapped and bound with silk cord. When she unraveled it, the scent hit her like a scream-rosewater, blood, and something burned.

It was unmistakably bridal. A cathedral-length train. Gossamer sleeves. Beading so fine it shimmered like frost. And at the neckline-charcoal stains.

She turned it inside out.

And there, in jagged black thread, were the words:

> I was not the first. I will not be the last.

Evelyn backed away, breath catching in her throat.

The gown seemed to shift.

The fabric rippled as if sighing, and then-very softly-she heard it.

A voice.

"Find me."

She turned toward the mannequins. They stood still.

But at the edge of the room, beneath a tapestry she hadn't inspected yet, something moved.

She crossed the room, fingers trembling, and pulled it aside.

Behind it: stone.

Cracked. Faintly marked.

A seam in the wall.

A hidden door.

She pressed her hands to it. The stone was warm.

There was no latch.

But she knew-without knowing how-that the key was the gown.

She laid it at the foot of the wall.

And the stone began to shift.

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