Chapter Four
Silverdale Manor
“But, Papa… you must invite him. Did you not hear what I said?”
The old man bent over a cluttered table in an equally cluttered solar simply nodded his head. “I heard you.”
“He’s a de Wolfe!”
“A de Wolfe, indeed.”
Amata sighed sharply because her father didn’t seem to have the same sense of urgency that she did.
“If you truly wish for me to marry well, now is your chance,” she said. “Send word to Edenthorpe and invite him to come to Silverdale. Papa, are you listening to me?”
Hugh de Branton was writing something, very carefully, on a piece of prepared parchment that was held down on the edges by rocks to keep it flat.
A learned man and minor warlord who was a distant cousin to the Duke of Doncaster, he wasn’t nearly as ambitious as his daughter.
She was determined to be someone, to marry well, and he was content with what he had.
Yet, in her quest to marry higher than her station, her ruthlessness knew no bounds. Neither did her envy, and her slant against her cousin, Dacia, was nothing new.
Hugh suspected that’s really all it was.
“I am listening to you,” he said patiently, dipping his quill into the inkwell by his right hand. “You want me to invite a de Wolfe son to Silverdale to sup.”
“I do!”
He paused and looked at her. “Did you not stop to consider that he is at Edenthorpe for a reason?” he said. “He must be there on business. We have no right to lure him away from his business with dear Cousin Vincent.”
That wasn’t what Amata wanted to hear. Frowning, she plopped down on a stool next to her father’s table.
“Papa, if you do not take the chance, I shall never have what I want,” she said. “Of course he came to Doncaster on business. But when the business is over, he can come here if you invite him. He will not come without an invitation.”
Hugh’s gaze lingered on his oldest daughter’s anxious face. “This could not have anything to do with stealing him away from Dacia, could it?”
Her frown deepened but she wouldn’t look at him. “I do not know what you mean.”
Hugh snorted softly and went back to his document. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “Little Dacia, your cousin whom you pretend to like but secretly envy to the point of hatred. A lass who will inherit everything you want.”
“That is not true!”
Hugh dipped his quill in the inkwell again.
“You have tormented that girl long enough, Amata,” he said.
“You visit her, take her clothing, her jewelry, and she never stops you because, unlike you, she has a kind and generous heart. You speak badly about her to anyone who will listen and, still, she does nothing. Jealousy is an ugly thing, Daughter. It makes you ugly yourself.”
Amata’s features tightened. “That is a terrible thing to say to me.”
“Then do not make me have to repeat it,” he said calmly. “I will not send an invitation to the de Wolfe knight. His business is not with us.”
Amata came off the stool in a huff, furious at her father. “Then I shall be an old maid and torment you all the rest of your days!”
“You have already done that,” he said. “So much like your mother, you are. Cruel and vain, although I have tried to raise you otherwise. I have tried to show you that a kind heart is what all men would like in a wife, but I suppose your mother’s influence was too great.
Therefore, I am still not sending an invitation to the de Wolfe knight.
Why would I want to saddle his good name with your petty and envious soul? ”
With a scream of frustration, Amata stormed out of the chamber, tears of rage in her eyes. The man wouldn’t do as she asked. He rarely did. She didn’t even know why she had asked him, only that she had been hoping against hope that, for once, he would do what she wanted.
This could not have anything to do with gaining the upper hand on Dacia?
She wasn’t going to admit it even though it was the truth.
Dacia did have everything Amata ever wanted – money, prestige, titles.
Everything. It was true that she pretended to love her cousin.
It was true that she visited Edenthorpe with some regularity just to bask in the richness of the duke’s residence.
Amata slept in Dacia’s lavish bed, dressed in her lavish gowns, and helped herself to her perfume and baubles and bangles.
When they were young, Dacia even had her own miniature castle built near the stables where the girls would pretend that they were princesses. Everything Amata had always wanted.
All of it belonging to a woman made ugly by the marks all over her face.
Amata had tried to warn de Wolfe about Dacia.
He hadn’t listened.
In fact, no one listened to her. Neither her father nor the de Wolfe knight.
But Amata had her own network of friends, young women from lesser houses around Doncaster, and even some village maidens, women who were the daughters of the merchants or other prestigious positions within the village.
Amata was the ringleader to this group of young women who would follow rather than lead.
And they listened to her.
Dacia used to be part of that group when she was quite young, but once Amata’s jealousy got the better of her and she began to whisper about Dacia behind her back, that paranoid nurse took her into the walls of Edenthorpe and never let her join the group again.
Amata and her gossiping friends had defeated the sweet young girl with the freckles all over her face.
Though for some reason, Dacia never seemed to blame Amata for that particular incident.
As her father said, she tormented Dacia… and still, Dacia embraced her because she didn’t have any other friends. Now with the addition of a handsome young knight, the torment would continue in earnest.
If de Wolfe wouldn’t come to her, she would go to de Wolfe.