Chapter 6 #3
The Duke of Talwyn stepped forward so that he occupied nearly the same spot the Marquess had just vacated.
“Do you want me to leave you alone, Lady Phoebe?” he whispered so low that Phoebe was certain she was the only one who could hear him.
Before Phoebe could answer his question or even come up with a snappy reply of her own, her mother wrapped her fingers tightly around her upper arm, snagging her back towards them.
“We are leaving,” her mother hissed in her ear. “Now.”
As soon as she was home, Phoebe was dragged by her mother into the parlor and all but thrown through the doorway as she rounded on Phoebe.
“How dare you speak to poor Lord Birchwood that way!” she snapped. “He has done nothing to you! He has offered you the world, Phoebe, so how could you be so ungrateful?”
Before Phoebe could say anything, her father stepped forward. “What did you think you were doing tonight? Were you trying to impress your new friends by being more outspoken than you ought to be? You embarrassed not only us, but yourself tonight, Phoebe.”
“I—” She tried to defend herself, but instead she withered beneath their glares. Phoebe locked eyes with her mother first, then took a deep breath and zeroed in her focus on her father. “I was not trying to impress the dukes. I do not even know them.”
“But you wish to?” Her mother challenged.
“No,” Phoebe answered, but it was too quick of a reply to be believable. Her mother’s eyes narrowed, her lip curling with distaste.
“Must we remind you that our entire fortune is riding on this engagement?” Her father asked. “If Lord Birchwood decides that he cannot tolerate such an insolent wife, then he will deny us everything we have worked so hard to achieve.”
“I do not understand,” Phoebe whispered.
She had long known that she was a pawn in some kind of wicked game her parents were playing with Lord Birchwood, but she still did not understand the ramifications nor the terms that guided them.
“Your father owes Lord Birchwood a tremendous debt,” her mother snapped.
She placed both hands on her hips and sent an aggravated stare at her husband.
“He is a foolish man for getting himself into this state in the first place, but he is indeed in debt. With this engagement, your father will have paid everything he owes and be forgiven for his sins.” She inhaled deeply through her nose.
“We need Lord Birchwood to continue to see this union in a favorable light. Our family needs his income so that we secure our future.”
So, I truly am a pawn. Phoebe felt her shoulders slump.
But no.
No, the Duke had given her a token of confidence, and she had to take it. The boldness of Lord Spencer’s ball, the rebellion of sneaking out that night, it all collided in her throat until she found her voice. Her true voice, the one her parents had silenced her whole life.
“So, you secure yourselves…but what about me?” Her blood thrummed in her veins as she took the opportunity to say all that plagued her.
“Is my freedom truly worth less than your comfort, then? You will sacrifice my happiness, my own sense of pride and well-being so that you may prosper on your own terms?”
At first, both of her parents looked shocked at her speaking out, but then they smirked at one another before turning dull, unfeeling expressions toward her.
“Yes,” her mother answered flatly. “We will sacrifice your future to secure our own.”
“How could we not?” her father added. “You have made it remarkably easy to find a remedy to all our problems.”
Phoebe was stunned. She knew not what to say. “I…have been a dutiful daughter,” she managed to eke out through trembling lips.
The Earl tipped his head to the side and gave Phoebe a look that could almost be described as sympathetic.
“You have done as we asked, Phoebe, and for your obedience, your mother and I will be forever grateful. But surely, you must know that you were always destined to save our family.” His smirk disappeared and was replaced by a more thoughtful expression.
“We raised you to be respectful. Your mother has done all she could to make you into a tractable, moldable young lady. Don’t you see, my girl?
You are most valuable. Any husband would be pleased to have a quiet, dutiful young lady like you by his side. ”
She flinched away from them, crushed by their words. Her worth was not in being a daughter but being a bargaining chip.
“Your father is right,” her mother said as she stepped into the void that separated Phoebe from them. “I have expended a great deal of energy in educating you.”
“You…you…” Phoebe could not summon the proper words.
Her mother scolded her continuously and sent her away when she proved to be burdensome, so how could she claim to have spent her time in any other way?
“You are worth a lot, Phoebe,” her mother said, as though it was something to be proud of. “This engagement shall save your father and I.”
“And what of me?” she whispered. “What will save me?”
Her father snorted. “What do you need saving from, Daughter? Lord Birchwood will lavish you with riches for the rest of your life.”
I need saving from both of you, and not in a way that is marriage to Lord Birchwood.
“Heavens, you are ungrateful,” her mother muttered, shaking her head. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she began to pace the parlor. “I did not mean to raise such a selfish daughter, yet here I am.”
She spread her arms widely towards Phoebe, a mockery of an embrace, but it was more to gesture at the selfish person in the room.
“Phoebe, all we have ever asked of you is to be dutiful. It is your duty to preserve the good name of Tripleton. It is also your duty to keep this engagement with Lord Birchwood. You and any new friends you make, should accept that what’s done is done.
You must learn to embrace your future and not actively seek to sabotage it. ”
The threat came loud and clear, and Phoebe stepped back, clutching her bare neck, aching to run up to her chambers to clasp her pendant for comfort.
She had always known her parents were this way. She was only seen as an investment rather than a daughter, someone they were supposed to love and cherish. Still, hearing it aloud made her heart ache.
“You are serious,” she whispered.
“Naturally.” Her mother tossed the reply out in an airy and flippant nature.
“You are honestly saying that the only worth I have to you is being a bargaining chip. My life means nothing. My wishes… my hopes and dreams… they are all folly. I am merely a pawn on a chess board.”
Her mother cackled shrilly. “Dear,” she drawled, with none of the affection such an endearing term should have, “the whole ton is dancing across a chess board. We are all pawns.”
“But you had a choice to make me more than that, to make me feel like your daughter. You could have loved me and treated me with kindness and…”
Suddenly, Phoebe ran out of steam. She could not continue lecturing to her parents when she could see that her words and pleas meant so little to them.
Both the Earl and his Countess blinked at her. Phoebe waited for them to apologize, to retract their words, even if it was hopeless. When neither of them said anything but instead stared at her as though she had gone quite mad, Phoebe stepped away again, backing towards the door.
“Then I shall retire to my chambers,” she said, ducking her head. “I suppose a lady who is a pawn must rest and look her best, as difficult as you may think that would be, Mother.”
Without waiting for a response, Phoebe disappeared out of the doorway, up the stairs, and into her chambers. As soon as she slammed the door, her eyes scanned her room, searching for where she had last put her writing journal.
When she saw the cream cover peeking out from beneath her mattress, she rushed towards it. Phoebe did not even bother with shucking off her gown. She hurried to her desk, dropped the journal, picked up her quill, and began to write.
Not about heartbreak, or a stifled girl, not necessarily, but she wrote of a golden-haired heroine who walked into a beautiful, royal ball with a mask made of swan feathers.
Her dress kissed her ankles as she descended the stairs, Phoebe wrote, smiling to herself.
She did not know what she would find that night, but she did not expect it to be the black-masked suitor who approached her at the base of the staircase.
“My lady,” he murmured. “You have bewitched me from first sight. May I have this dance?”
The lady gazed back at the handsome stranger, trying to find more of his face beyond the mask. Green eyes stared back at her, framed by warm, brown locks of hair.
Phoebe bit her lip, thinking of the Duke of Talwyn.
“You may,” the lady answered. “But should we not exchange names, first?”
“What are names but feeble labels to distract from the true point of meeting?”
“And what might that point be?” A coy smile lifted the lady’s mouth.
As she wrote, Phoebe felt strangely envious of her own character’s situation. When Phoebe had been given the chance, she had not been able to be so audacious. The moment a handsome stranger had given her attention, she had all but melted into an embarrassed puddle.
Her thoughts strayed to what the Duke had said when they had been separated by the wooden lattice.
Embarrassment can be overwhelmingly honest, so let yourself be honest with me. We cannot see one another, so where is the harm? I do not know your name, so there is no shame, no judgement, no eyes on you.
So, Phoebe poured that into her written passage.
“The point is that, without names, we may be whoever we wish. There are no eyes on us. You are the swan I must adore—”
“And who are you, then?” The lady interrupted. “A hunter whose arrow is pointed right at my heart?”
“If it wishes to be pierced and captured, then yes.”
Her breath stilted, and she finally let herself be guided down onto the dance floor.
The crowd parted for them as though they themselves were royalty.
Further along, on a dais, sat the true monarchs.
Princes with crowns, and princesses in their opulent, elegant dresses, their eyes assessing every guest and suitor, as if they wished to take one for themselves.
The lady counted four princesses and three princes, but she only had eyes for her hunter.
“Four princesses present, and yet you dance with me,” the lady noted, and the hunter smirked beneath his mask.
“A title does not make a woman appealing to me,” he told her. “But a voice? That is where the true beauty lies.”
“Beauty,” she echoed in a whisper. “What beauty do I have?”
Finally, Phoebe let herself put a bit of her own insecurity into the passage, and she indulged in how she might receive a response, based on what the Duke of Talwyn had said earlier.
“The sort that is infinite and endless,” he told her. “The sort that men would go to their knees for.”
“I am not anybody to bow to.”
“And what if it was not to bow, but to…” the hunter cocked his head. “Give you some other unspeakable pleasure?”
Phoebe clenched her bed sheets, biting her lip, wondering how far she dared to write this piece.
Her eyes glanced back over what she had written, half ashamed to admit she was letting herself project the Duke upon this character while she was daring to let herself be a beautiful swan-like lady who bested even princesses.
“What are you doing?” she whispered to herself, laughing self-deprecatingly. “You do not get to have such silly whims. You are Lady Phoebe, and you are betrothed to Lord Birchwood.”
She slumped back against her pillows, exhaling deeply.
“Lord Birchwood, the most awful man in existence. But he will be your husband, and even if he was not to be, it does not matter. You did not truly capture His Grace’s attention.
He was trying to charm you and embarrass Birchwood.
Charmers and flatterers know how to make ladies blush just for their own amusement. ”
Groaning, she tried to release her hopes, but her thoughts kept straying to the handsome Duke who had lingered upon kissing her hand. Who had stood up to her parents for her and had chased Lord Birchwood away just by applying a little pressure.
After a moment of setting down her writing journal, she picked it back up again and read over the last line.
“Do not entertain this notion further,” she scolded herself.
Yet, as the candle burned through the night, Phoebe found herself spinning her tales, crafting her words into something more magical than her own life. She dreamed of something that existed within the boundaries of Lord Spencer’s ball.
She envisioned what might have happened next if she had dared to stay inside that privacy booth.
Or if she had allowed herself to speak more freely with the Duke of Talwyn.
With Pyramus.
Whoever he was.