December 1st 1914,

Gerry,

So you want honesty, don’t you? So you don’t want any of the carefully-learnt etiquette rules mommy dear worships? So you want a piece of “that girl of blissful madness”- and more in particular, of her temper? Well here she is!

Gerry, I cannot believe you left. There, that is the truth.

And don’t you dare speak of love, dear cousin, because I cannot see any love between us. Actually, I don’t think there’s ever been love whatsoever.

When father told me about the possibility of a marriage to you, I already knew you did not love me. I knew you’d never love me, Gerry, and I didn’t even bother. I still don’t. You’re a very good friend of mine, one of my best friends even, but you do not love me the way our parents want to see you loving me. Father offered you the title and our surname because you were our closest male relative. Period.

And it is a fact that my father, Lord Archibald Kingsleigh, has never cared about “love” or anything else of those strange things of the common people. His and my mother’s marriage was arranged, I know, and they’ve grown into something of understanding, of affection even, but not love. Certainly not when she proved unfit to deliver him the heir, the only thing he needed her for. There is coldness between them that even I, seventeen years old, can place. It’s the coldness of indifference, because not hate is the opposite of love, but indifference.

I don’t want to end up like my parents, Gerald. And I thought that, with you, I could become happy. I thought you in the least cared for me… but obviously you did not all!

Why would you otherwise leave me, two weeks after I became your official fiancée?

Go to hell, Gerry- despite my oh-so-Christian upbringing; go to hell.

Very sincerely indeed,

Mira