CHAPTER ONE #2
“Generous.” The word tasted like ash on her tongue. “He is purchasing me, Papa. Like a horse at Tattersall’s. There is nothing generous about it.”
“He is saving this family.”
“He is saving you.” The accusation flew from her before she could stop it, hot and raw and utterly unforgivable, and she watched her father absorb it, watched him diminish somehow, grow smaller in his chair until he seemed like a shadow of the man who had once taught her to ride and called her brave.
Part of her wanted to take it back, the child in her who still remembered being cherished, being protected, being safe.
But the woman she had become could not make herself form the words.
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant sound of Frederick’s laughter somewhere in the house, innocent, joyful, oblivious laughter that made something twist painfully in Lysandra’s chest. Frederick was twelve, all gangly limbs and boundless energy, convinced that he would grow up to be a soldier like his grandfather.
He did not know that his schooling hung in the balance and that the future he dreamed of had been gambled away at card tables and in hells she couldn’t bear to imagine.
Catherine was sixteen and sharp enough to suspect how bad things were, she had begun asking pointed questions about why they no longer kept a lady’s maid, why Lysandra’s gloves had been darned three times, but even she didn’t know the full truth.
And Arabella. Sweet, romantic Arabella with her dreams of a London Season and a handsome suitor who would surrender his heart to her entirely once he cast his eyes upon her from across a crowded ballroom.
Arabella who pressed flowers in books and practiced her curtsey in the mirror and spoke with breathless excitement about her debut, never understanding that the Season cost money they did not have, that the gowns and gloves and dancing slippers she dreamed of were as far beyond their reach as the moon.
They are why I am going to do this, Lysandra realized, and the knowledge settled into her bones like an old wound accepting its scar. They are why I have always done everything.
She had been fourteen when her mother passed away, fourteen and suddenly responsible for a household and three younger siblings and a father who had retreated so thoroughly into his grief that he’d barely noticed when she’d taken the reins.
Fourteen, and already learning to calculate which bills could be delayed and which must be paid immediately.
Fourteen, and lying awake at night trying to find a way to make the household money stretch another week.
Fourteen, and holding her mother’s locket to her chest while silent tears tracked down her cheeks, grieving in stolen moments because there was no time for grief when there was so much to be done.
Eight years. Eight years of managing, of economizing, of smiling through meals that grew progressively smaller, of turning her own dresses twice and pretending she preferred the older styles because fashion was so changeable anyway.
Eight years of watching her father spiral downward and being powerless to stop him, of covering his absences with polite fictions, of shielding her siblings from the truth because children should not have to carry such weights.
And now this. The final sacrifice. The inevitable end to a story she should have seen coming from the very first night her father came home smelling of cards and desperation.
“He took a man’s life,” she said again, but the fight was leaving her voice.
She could feel it draining away, replaced by the familiar numbness of acceptance that had become her constant companion over the years.
How many times had she accepted the unacceptable?
How many times had she swallowed her own desires and done what needed to be done?
This was simply one more brick in a wall she had been building since she was fourteen years old. “Five years ago in a duel.”
“Lord Andrew Sefton. It was ruled self-defense.” Her father’s tone suggested he was reciting something he had memorized, perhaps from the solicitor’s letter. “The magistrates found no grounds for prosecution.”
“And yet he retreated to his estate and has barely been seen in society since.” She had heard the whispers, of course, everyone had.
The Duke of Stormhaven, once one of the most eligible bachelors in England, handsome and wealthy and possessed of an ancient title, now a ghost story that mothers used to frighten their daughters into propriety.
Behave yourself, or you’ll end up wedded to The Beast of Stormhaven.
He lives alone in a crumbling castle on the moors, and the last woman who went there was never seen again.
The last part was nonsense, of course, as far as anyone knew, there had been no women at Stormhaven since the duke’s mother had passed away years ago, but that had never stopped the tale bearers.
“What kind of man hides himself away for five years, Papa? What kind of man kills another man and then vanishes from the world?”
Her father’s silence was answer enough.
Lysandra released the chair and walked to the window, looking out at the modest grounds that had once been beautiful and were now merely adequate.
The gardens needed tending, the roses her mother had planted were overgrown and the hedges were ragged with neglect.
The lawn was in dire need of cutting and the stone cutting.
The stone bench where she had sat reading on summer afternoons was cracked down the middle, a victim of last winter’s frost that no one had bothered to repair.
Everything is falling apart, she thought. It has been falling apart for years, and I have been standing in the middle of it with my hands outstretched, trying to hold up the walls.