Chapter 1
Isolde shifted uncomfortably in her seat and stared at her brother across the breakfast table, scrutinizing his expression in an attempt to determine how bad the news was.
Thomas had gotten better at hiding his emotions as he’d gotten older, but she could still read him well. And she knew, especially, what his expressions looked like when there was bad news to break to the family.
Something he’d had to do too often lately, usually because of their father.
Their father, who was absent from breakfast this morning – another clue. Though she hardly needed such a clue, for she could have guessed as much.
There was something new this morning, though. Something about the way Thomas kept glancing at her and then away just as quickly. Something like guilt or shame.
Thomas often tried to keep the worst of their father’s messes from her, but he did so with the intention of protecting her, trying to shield her from pain and heartbreak.
In those moments, he was miserable and often suspicious, but rarely ashamed and never guilty. She had worked hard to instill in him that the only shame would be to follow their father’s footsteps, something all of them – she, Thomas, and their sister Cornelia – had sworn never to do.
Between the three of them, they managed to keep their father’s drinking and gambling in check enough to preserve the family reputation, as hard as that had become in recent years.
So why should Thomas feel guilty? Isolde couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with her, specifically, and her stomach twisted with worry.
The feeling only intensified when Thomas asked to speak with her alone after breakfast. She followed him into their father’s study, cold because no one had lit the fire. Her father used it so rarely their small household staff had given up on keeping the fire lit.
She sat in one of the big armchairs by the empty fireplace, and he sat opposite, saying nothing now that they were finally alone. He stared over her shoulder, out the window to the meadows beyond, and swallowed hard.
So the news was terrible, then. She shivered from the cold and the sense of foreboding.
“Thomas,” she said softly, and Thomas snapped his gaze back to her.
“Our father,” he began, and then stopped. He took a trembling breath, and Isolde realized he was barely containing his anger. “Our father,” he tried again, “has made a marriage match. For you.” He pushed the words out through gritted teeth, and Isolde’s head spun.
A marriage match? While she was certainly of the appropriate age, she had not truly considered such a thing.
There was far too much to be handled here at home. How could she possibly leave? And who would she wed? The more questions she thought of, the more her stomach dropped.
She looked up, intending to pepper Thomas with her questions, but stopped at the expression on his face.
“There can’t be more, surely?”
Thomas looked away, as if he couldn’t bear to face her while he spoke.
“It was a bet.”
“A bet?”
“He was at the club last night. Came home late, told me the whole story. Unburdened his guilty conscience.” Thomas’s voice had a bitter edge. “He was playing cards but kept losing. Lost until he had nothing more to bet. Except … your dowry.”
Those two words hung in the air for a moment, frozen. Isolde’s mind slowly put together the pieces for her. It was impossible, ridiculous, unbelievable. And yet, she believed it. Of course her father had done this. She suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“He bet my hand in marriage in a game of cards.”
Thomas didn’t have to answer; it wasn’t a question. She forced herself to suck in a breath, then another one, until her breathing steadied.
“To whom?” she asked.
“The Marquess of Hartington.”
Isolde frowned, though more in surprise than anything.
“Hartington? The estate next door?”
Thomas nodded glumly. Isolde took in the picture her brother made, slumped in the chair, looking for a moment like a much younger version of himself – the little boy pouting because the world was cruel, and he didn’t think that was fair.
Her heart clenched in her chest. Even with everything her father had done, she’d never have expected him to do something this horrible. She was surprised to find that she could still be disappointed in the man, still feel betrayed by him.
She’d thought she’d grown numb to his poor decisions and the disasters they wrought long ago. Apparently, not.
She shoved away a panicked urge to cry. She could not afford tears because she had to solve this, like she’d solved all the other problems her father had made. She focused back on Thomas. At least she would always have him and Cornelia. The two most important people in her life.
And she wouldn’t allow this to change that. She stood up, straightening her spine.
“Well,” she said, forcing a cheerfulness that she definitely did not feel, “I shall just have to find a way out of this.”
Thomas perked up a little.
“Do you think you can?”
“What else can I do? And what can’t I do when I have you and Cornelia to help me! We’ll manage somehow; we always do.” She frowned a little. “We really must do something about Father, though, Thomas. He can’t keep going like this, or there will be nothing left.”
“You let me worry about Father,” Thomas said, rising to stand beside her. “It’s my inheritance on the line. You’ll have more than enough to do trying to figure out a way to end this engagement.”
Isolde sighed. “I suppose he will come to call soon. The marquess, I mean.”
“What will you say to him?”
She considered the question, then set her mouth in a determined line.
“Let us see what he has to say to me.”
***
The marquess called in the early afternoon that same day, and Isolde wondered bitterly if he was that eager to claim his ill-gotten prize.
She had spent the intervening hours sifting through her memories of him, a tall boy who lived in the house across the fields, who often seemed to be looking for an escape from that house.
His skin and thick chestnut hair were always touched with gold from the sun. She remembered him as kind, never lording his title over other children, and that he’d been particularly sweet to Cornelia, little more than a baby when they’d last met.
She wondered how a boy like that grew up to be a man who bet a woman’s future in a card game. Then again, she reminded herself grimly, it had technically been her own father who had brought her future into play. The Marquess of Hartington had just seized the opportunity.
Her father, never one to brave an unpleasant situation – and likely still worse for the wear from his night of drinking and gambling – had still not appeared by the time the marquess arrived.
Isolde had considered using that as an excuse to turn the man away, but that would only have prolonged the inevitable, so she asked that he be shown into the drawing room.
“Lord Hartington,” she greeted him, dipping into as shallow a curtsy as manners allowed, and hoping he couldn’t see the way her legs trembled.
He was clearly surprised to see her alone there, but he quickly smoothed his expression into something courteous.
“Miss Fairchild,” he said, inclining his head politely. “I have come to speak to your father. Would you be so kind as to fetch him?”
“The viscount is not well this morning.” She would have normally attempted to conceal such a thing, but it seemed silly to try to hide the facts of the night before from a man who had witnessed them firsthand.
“I can call my brother to speak to you if you prefer? Though we are engaged, as I understand it.”
She had not said it sharply, but he still winced at the words. So he had some sense of shame, at least. Good.
“I would not want to impose on your brother’s time,” he said, somewhat stiffly. Perhaps he was as uncomfortable as she was. “And perhaps this will be for the best. The matter concerns our futures, after all. We should discuss it directly.”
“Yes,” she said, feeling light-headed. “I hope we can come to an agreeable arrangement for all.” What that would be, she had no idea, but she barreled on politely. “Shall we sit?”
He took the seat she indicated him, and she sat opposite. She expected him to speak, but he did not, so she took the opportunity to further study him.
He was the same as she remembered him: the chestnut hair, chocolate brown eyes and sun-kissed skin – only taller and broader, filled out into a man with the weight to carry the handsome features that had made him look a bit too serious as a child.
Except for when he laughed – she remembered he had a wonderful laugh, that lit up not just his face but the whole room.
She felt sudden warmth spread through her at the memory. Flustered, she looked away from him, trying to regain her composure.
“I apologize for the shock this must have given you,” he said abruptly, having apparently found the nerve to speak. She could hardly disagree with that statement.
“No girl expects to become engaged in such a way. Though indeed, I should have been shocked even if it were less … unconventional. I cannot say I expected to become engaged at all.” She had only meant to subtly underline the fact that they hardly knew one another as adults, and had not even been properly introduced in society, but he seemed to take it differently. He frowned.
“But surely you must have had many suitors?”
The question seemed so genuine that she wondered if he was unaware of the open secret of her father’s gambling habits.
Habits that had not ruined the family yet but certainly didn’t make marriage to her a particularly enticing prospect.
She’d heard he was abroad quite a bit, so perhaps he truly did not know.
Regardless, this was not the direction she wanted to take the conversation.
“Not as many as you might think, My Lord,” she demurred, shifting her eyes to the side. He took the hint, thankfully, and did not press the question.
“I hope in time you will see that I did not act as rashly or as carelessly as it may seem,” he said, his voice softer. Dropped low like that, it had a pleasantly dark, velvet quality. She shivered but tried not to show it. She wondered what could he mean by that?
How could she see this as anything more than it was – a property transaction between two men, neither of whom cared very much for her, the property in question? All the warm feelings from moments ago bled away, replaced by a bitter cold despite the fire in the grate.
“I shall not tarry or take more of your time,” he continued, “especially as I believe we will have much time to discuss such things in the future. In fact, that is my primary purpose for calling today. I’ve come to ask you to come to stay at Hartington.”
“Stay with you? Why?” she gasped, momentarily shocked out of her good manners. She hastily regained her composure. “Forgive me, My Lord. It was a kind offer, but I cannot say I understand why you’ve made it.”
To his credit, he did not tell her that she did not need to understand, as some men would have. But his response still made her heart sink.
“I’m sure you’ll agree it will be an agreeable arrangement. I should like to keep an eye on you, and for you to come to know my mother and sister. And me, as well, of course.”
Emotions swirled through Isolde: a hot spark of anger at the idea that she needed to be kept under scrutiny, a pang of frustration that her father had put her in this situation, and stronger than both those, a chill of fear at leaving her sister to fend for herself in this house.
Cornelia wasn’t ready for that; Isolde had never planned to leave her to deal with all this alone.
And yet, even as she contemplated the many reasons she could not go, she knew that she must. He had phrased it like a question, but of course, it was not, not really. She wanted out of this engagement, but she could not achieve that by angering him so that he broke it off.
A ruined engagement, on top of the rumors of how the engagement had come to be in the first place? She wasn’t sure her family’s reputation could survive that.
She allowed herself a brief moment to close her eyes – just a breath in and out to will herself to calm. Then she opened them, steeled against this new reality.
“Thank you for the invitation,” she said. “Of course, I would be pleased to come stay with you at Hartington.”
***
At least by the time Cornelia found her packing in her room later that day, she had managed to stop crying.
When Cornelia heard the news, she crumbled into one of the bedroom chairs, her lower lip trembling. At that moment, Isolde thought she might hate Thaddeus Harrow.
“But you cannot leave us, Izzy!” Cornelia exclaimed. “What will we do without you? How shall we survive? As it is, you can barely manage Father with Thomas’s help. Without you, it’s hopeless!”
Isolde had had all the same thoughts, but she couldn’t confide that to Cornelia. Her sister needed her to be strong and make the best of the situation, for all of them.
And besides, she’d had some time to think and had decided to see the whole thing as an opportunity. She pushed all the emotions roiling her stomach down as far as she could.
“Don’t be glum, dear – it isn’t hopeless at all,” she said, tugging Cornelia across the room to sit on the bed and wrapping her arms around her.
“It’s awful to be parted from you, but I daren’t risk upsetting the marquess, or making a worse mess than things already are.
And besides,” she let go of her sister to procure her a handkerchief for the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks, “he’s powerful and well-respected, so perhaps this is a chance for us. ”
“A chance? What do you mean?”
Isolde shrugged and tried to sound like she wasn’t making this up as she went along.
“Who knows what might happen? Perhaps if they take a liking to me, I shall be able to convince them to release me from the engagement quietly. I shall probably meet so many new people while I’m staying there. Have chances we have not yet had to find sympathetic allies.”
“Do you think?” Cornelia asked, still tearful but looking brighter.
“What are we always saying? That we must do something before it’s too late. This might be a chance to do just that. I should take it.”
“You’re so smart, Izzy,” Cornelia said and sniffed. “I love you so much.” She threw her arms around Isolde and squeezed her tightly. Isolde squeezed back, willing herself to believe her own words and hoping that, somehow, all this trouble could be worth it.