The Return of Chastity-Anne

Dearest Jonathan;

I'm writing this letter to try to explain what happened that fateful day twenty years ago. When I ran into you on the street yesterday, I was caught unaware, and I so desperately wanted to clasp you to my bosom, to cry, to touch you, to hold you, to never again let you out of my sight.

But such things, I know, are not to be. We are not who we were twenty years ago, and the obligations of our lives are different. Oh, please, think me not unkind. I am not so cold to forget the thrill of your touch, the warmth of your breath on my cheek.

I wish to explain. And this much am I now allowed. Perhaps this is more for my benefit than yours, but I beg you to understand that I never intended to leave you at the altar. I was an unwilling victim to the most unlikely series of events. I beg you as I attempt to relay all that has happened.

I woke up that morning and gazed into the mirror. I told myself I was the happiest woman alive because before the day ended, I would be Mrs. Jonathan Ashcroft. I fairly glowed with the thrill of it.

My mother had already left messages with the servants that I was not to eat before the fitting, and that I should be given only the most sparing amount of liquid lest I bloat and find myself unable to be fitted into the corset and gown. I had hidden some food in my bed chamber the previous night however, and nibbled sparingly of the remains of the cornish hen we'd eaten the previous night.

Perhaps the meat was off. I do not know. But I swooned during the fitting. The maidservants called for the doctor, but our family doctor was unavailable, delivering a new child elsewhere in the city. His assistant, Dr. Yousuf attended me...

Dr. Yousuf was an enormous man of undetermined heritage. He had dark skin and thick eyebrows that gave him a brooding predisposition. My mother believed he was Russian, or at the very least from Constantinople. Veronica, my handmaiden at the time, thought him Greek.

He carried about him the air of absolute authority, so when he said that there was a grave issue and that he must attend to me in private at once, none of them thought to argue. Certainly, I was in no condition to protest.