Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“You know, there is a perfectly obvious way to solve the calamity that your sister has brought upon your house. So obvious, in fact, that I can’t believe you have not thought of it.
” Lord Benedict Hale, the Duke of Northwick was sitting across from Thalia, while her brother, Damien, was at the head of the table.
It was a tense breakfast, as had been the last three, and when Benedict arrived unannounced a few minutes ago, Thalia breathed a sigh of relief. Benedict might well provide a much-needed distraction.
He was twenty-eight years of age, the same as Damien, and while they were best friends and had been their entire lives, he was without a doubt the more companionable of the two. Charming to a fault, cocky always, and just a little arrogant, if there was a joke to be made, he made it.
Right now, his jokes were much needed.
“Now is not the time, Northwick,” Damien said, making sure to hold Thalia in a rueful glare.
“Oh, forgive me,” Benedict drawled, “for trying to help. And here I was, thinking that the sky was falling. It might as well be, for how you are acting.”
Damien shot his friend a frustrated glare. Damien was not one to let his anger get the best of him, nor would he be baited. He was far too strategic for that, the type who always thought through a situation from a distance because choices made on emotion tended to be the wrong ones.
That’s why he was yet to decide on what was to be done about Thalia. He was angry with her. He was ashamed, and had let her know in excruciating detail. But he had not yelled, nor had he threatened. A punishment would be given, but only when he decided on which was the most fitting.
That, and he knows how impatient I am. It is the waiting that I hate, and I would not hesitate to guess that Damien takes some pleasure from the fact.
“Fine,” Damien sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Tell us then, Northwick. What is this wonderful solution that you have come up with?”
Benedict grinned with menace, and he found Thalia across the table. He was a ruggedly good-looking individual, the type that had most ladies swooning to be in his company. But Thalia was not most ladies, and she knew Benedict well enough to see the glint of humor twinkling behind his eyes.
Whatever he said… her brother wasn’t going to take it well.
“As I see it, what Thalia is in need of is protection.” He nodded once. “Duke Amberhall is no-doubt furious at what she did and will just as likely seek to extract vengeance at the first opportunity.”
Thalia winced, knowing the words to be true.
“Your point?” Damien asked.
“That you need to protect her!” Benedict cried. “That you need to ensure that when Amberhall comes for her, he can’t get to her. And if this protection acts as a punishment for her most wicked actions…” He winked at Thalia. “All the better.”
“What are you saying?” her brother asked.
“Is it not obvious?” Benedict looked between her and her brother. “Marry Thalia to me, and at once. In so doing, Amberhall will have no choice but to leave her be and, as I said…” He shrugged. “The revulsion your sister is surely feeling right now will be a rather fitting punishment in itself.”
Thalia’s mouth dropped open, and her stomach squirmed as she tried to fathom the suggestion she had just heard… and the likelihood of her brother accepting it.
As luck had it, a quick look at Damien confirmed that he was equally put out by this offer. Perhaps even more so than Thalia was? His lips curled back, his body stiffened, and while her brother was an expert at hiding his emotions, even he could only cover them so much.
Thankfully, it was at this moment that Benedict burst into laughter.
“The look on your face!” Benedict hooted. “Honestly, I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry.”
“Very funny,” Damien snarled.
“I do so love seeing you get upset,” Benedict continued to chuckle. “What I had not counted on was the abject terror felt at the mere hint that your sister and I should wed.” He touched his chest as if someone stabbed him. “Am I bleeding all over myself? Or does it just feel that way?”
“You are not,” Thalia said to him. She tried to narrow her eyes and sneer, but she could not keep the humor from her voice. “But I can help with that if you have a knife handy?”
“What a wife you would make,” Benedict said with a cheeky smile.
Despite their edged banter, Thalia relaxed. As she’d hoped when Benedict arrived this morning, his affable nature and tendency toward humor worked to distill the tension that had existed in Wexford Manor for the past three days.
Thalia did not regret what she had done, nor would she ever. What she regretted, and what she was dealing with now, was the effect that her actions were having not just on her, but her family.
Damien had been the head of this household for five years now, a title inherited when their father had passed. And while neither Thalia nor Laurent nor Damien liked their father, living up to his name and reputation was still of utmost importance.
Lately, it has become more than that for Damien. I would never say it to his face, and he would recoil to think it, but he is turning more into our father with each passing day.
The full consequences of what Thalia had done were yet to be felt, and as each day rolled on, the tension built, the fear crept up, and all she wanted was to learn of her fate so that she could figure out a way to live with it… possibly even escape it.
“What of Laurent?” Benedict asked and looked around the breakfast room. “Where is he?”
“Where do you think?” Damien growled.
Benedict laughed. “Taking full advantage of the circumstance then, I see.”
“The cause of it, you mean.”
“No,” Thalia spoke up. “Laurent did nothing wrong. I am the one who stopped the wedding. Me, not him.”
Damien looked warningly at her. “No need to remind me, Thalia. Of that, I am more than aware. As is the rest of the ton, for that matter.”
Thalia swallowed, sensing her brother’s anger brimming.
It warmed her heart to know the good that had come from her actions. That Rosaline and her brother were now free to pursue their feelings for one another. Or that they would be, once the backlash of the cancelled marriage faded.
That, as much as anything, was why Thalia was so determined to take the blame herself.
If it fell on her shoulders only, then her brother and best friend would hopefully be free to marry.
And she had told Damien this, needing him to know that when the time for punishment came, it was to be for her and her alone.
Truly, she just wished it would happen already. All this waiting…
“It does raise the question though, doesn’t it,” Benedict continued. He was sitting with just a glass of juice, having arrived too late to eat, and sipped it as he narrowed his eyes in thought. “Why has nothing been done?”
Damien made sure to look right at Thalia. His expression was flat; his eyes were cold. “Do not worry yourself there, Northwick. My sister will be dealt with shortly.”
“Not by you.” Benedict waved her brother down.
“Think about it. If I was Amberhall, the last thing I would do is sit back and allow my fiancee to run off with another man. That I would do nothing! At the very least, he ought to have started some sort of smear campaign against young Lady Rosaline…” He scoffed and took a sip of juice.
“Citing her as a harridan or somewhat to soften the blow of –”
“That is not true!” Thalia cried before she could stop herself.
“Obviously,” Benedict sighed. “But the point is the right one. Why has nothing been done or spoken about since you…” He flashed his eyes at her. “Since you saw fit to tear down the walls of this nice home so they might collapse on your poor brother’s head.”
Thalia winced and looked away with shame.
She had not meant for her actions to blow back on her brother. And she was resolute in her decision to take her punishment as it came.
All I wanted was to help! Am I to blame that my friend was put in such a situation in the first place? Am I to blame that this world… these people… that they look at me and my friends and see only tools to be used?
That was at the heart of Thalia’s frustration, and why she had done as she did.
She could not help but narrow her eyes as she looked between her brother and Benedict, as she thought of her father, and of Rosaline’s father too.
They were the reason for this, the way they used women for their own gains, they way they looked upon marriage as nothing more than a means to further their reputation and position among their peers.
It was just so unfair!
Thalia’s father was the worst of them. He had been a cold, manipulative creature.
Not wicked. Not evil. But calculating, the way he prized that which affected him above even his own children…
and his wife, for that matter. Theirs had been a loveless marriage, a lonely one, and while Thalia had never been able to prove it, she knew as well as she knew anything that her mother had died because of it.
“I will think of something,” Thalia said, speaking into her chest.
Her brother looked at her. “No, I will think of something. You have done enough, Thalia.”
“All I did –”
“Was exactly what I told you not to do,” he snapped and then groaned with frustration. “As I have told you already, for now, we wait. I do not know why Amberhall has remained silent. But there is a reason.”
Benedict scoffed. “Of that, we can be sure. That man…” He shuddered. “He is not to be messed with. But I suppose it’s too late now for that.”
Thalia bowed her head, knowing it was better not to test her brother in this.
As children, they had been close, and she looked back on those years fondly.
But the older that Damien grew, the more like their father he became, and a part of her truly worried what he might do if he felt that he had to.
“Your Grace…” a voice spoke from the doorway to the breakfast room.
“Ah, Mr. Carter,” Damien greeted the butler. “What is it?”
Mr. Carter hovered by the doorway, a nervous look in his eyes. “Forgive me for interrupting, Your Grace, but you have an unexpected visitor.”
“I do?” Damien frowned. “Who?”
Before Mr. Carter had a chance to answer, the unexpected visitor strode into the room.
Thalia felt the temperature drop so that she started to shake. The sun outside vanished behind a cloud, so darkness settled upon them all. And her heart began to thump so loudly that she was certain everyone in the room could hear it.
“Duke Amberhall…” Damien rose from behind his chair. “This is certainly a surprise.”
“Amberhall!” Benedict was quick to follow Damien. “You look… rather serious.”
Thalia would like to have said that when she saw the Duke stride into the room, that it did not shake her. That she met him with a raised chin, a firm posture, and a sense of righteousness that she felt justified in because she did not regret what she had done.
Of course, her reaction wasn’t nearly so stoic.
The first thing she did was gasp. Then she shuddered. Then she made to stand but found that her body did not work. And all the while the room continued to darken, the air turned thick, and she found it difficult to breathe.
“Northwick,” the Duke said to Benedict with a simple nod. “Lord Wexford,” he added next, with another simple nod. “I am sorry to arrive here unannounced like this.”
“Not at all,” her brother said.
“Can’t help but feel you of all people have the right,” Benedict chuckled. That was received by a scathing glare from Damien. “Ah… perhaps I should…” He looked between the two dukes and bowed. “See myself out, yes?”
Damien said nothing. Nor did the Duke. They both stood silently as Benedict offered his apologies and then hurried from the room as if it had suddenly caught fire.
Thalia almost cried out for Benedict to take her with him.
She found some semblance of serenity in those few seconds, but it was a pitiful thing, and it struggled to remain the longer she watched the Duke.
He was just so… composed. He stood tall and proud.
His expression was flat and distant. He was not angry.
He was not emotional. He was, for all intents and purposes, here on business.
And not once did he look at Thalia.
“Might you like to sit?” Damien said once Benedict left the room.
“I am perfectly fine,” the Duke said coolly. “I shall not take long. Indeed, I expect that what I have to say will be greeted with a sense of relief.”
“Oh?”
Oh no…
“What happened three days ago was regrettable,” the Duke continued, speaking as if he was telling them about the weather. “And while many assume that I might intend to marry Lady Rosaline still, as I am sure you can agree, that is not an option.”
“Perfectly understandable.”
“I am glad that you agree. However, I still intend to marry, and I was rather put out by the interruption to these plans.”
“Allow me to be the first to apologize,” her brother hurried. “And I assure you that whatever you need, you must only ask. I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am.”
“I do not want your apology,” the Duke said, still with that same emotionless tone. “What I want, is a wife and, seeing as Lady Rosaline is no longer an option, I will be taking Lady Thalia instead.”
Finally, he looked at Thalia. Those cold grey eyes, that emotionless dissidence, the sensation that the Duke saw her not as a bride-to-be, but as an object that he wished to own… no, that he expected to own.
Thalia’s stomach dropped through the floor, and without having to wait to hear her brother’s answer, she knew what it would be.
The consequences of one’s own actions… who would have thought?