Franz's Letter to Samantha

...If this were a fair universe, but it's not...unfortunately there are impediments...you have a kind and quiet soul, but you try to protect it. Something in your past hurt you, and I'd like to prove to you that not everyone is like that.

[Franz explains everything about his situation, including about his nut bar wife setting fire to one of the buildings on their estate, with herself and their children inside; she survived, they didn't. There's a description of his home estate, where it is, how to get there - should she ever happen to be in the area.... This takes quite a while, then it gets very personal. Note: We did not make the GM write out all 15 or so pages, these are merely excerpts.]

I hope that you will forgive my familiarity in writing to you in this in this fashion, but I must confess that I have been unable to spend a wakeless night since we first met. I am not accustomed to flights of emotion. It has always been said of me that I am a man of reserve, and such is my natural state. And yet I find that my thoughts lately have been consumed by your presence. I had not believed that I might ever feel the burning of love's passions, and yet your visage and your warm presence intrude upon my every thought.

I know that these confessions must seem inappropriate - you a well bred lady, and I a married man, and yet they are there. In your presence it is as if the very sun shines down for my own particular pleasure, and in your absence, there remains only the blackest of despair. I had not thought that I would ever feel such stirring in my heart, and yet again, there they are, greater than any I have ever known before.

I cannot hope to imagine that you have anything like these feelings for me. I sense that you bear the scars of some deep injury, that someone has harmed you to the very soul. I feel your bitterness against the race of men, and yet I cannot help but hope that there is some small glimmer of fondness for me, forlorn though it may be. I grieve for your pain, and wish that I could take it upon myself so that you would not have to bear that terrible burden. Gladly would I bear this burden, to free you from it, and at least have something of yours in which to exalt.

Though I am not young in years, to be in your presence is to feel the giddiness and fiery passion of youth. To put it simply, I love you with all my heart and all my soul and all my being. To be away from you is to suffer the torments of hell, and to be in your presence is the pure elation of heaven. I fear that having known you, I cannot now live with your absence. A world without you beside me is a pale imitation, a rude caricature of life. I know I can hardly be your idea of a suitor, and yet I can say that I love you as much or more as any man could, and that you command my undying affection. I beg a brief note from you to query whether there is even the faintest hope that you should feel some mild fondness for me. Give me hope that there may yet be some room in you heart, or free my from this cruel torture and say that you do not have, and never shall have any love for me. If the latter, strike me quickly with your cruel bolt. For, if there be not the faintest stirrings in your heart for me, it were better to take that cruel injury now. No world could ever be complete for me absent you. I love you, more deeply than ever I would have believed possible, and a world without you is an empty shell, intolerable. I should rather suffer the fiery torment of hell, than to spend one minute in this world but be without you.

Your obedient servant,

Franz Frederick von Hollenstein, Count of Darmstaat, etc. etc.