Outrunning a Forced Betrothal

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

ISABELLE

My mother’s voice echoed through the background noise in my head. She was definitely speaking to me, but my eyes remained locked on the family across the restaurant.

The children were out of control. Their mother whispered threats as they tore around the table, while her husband sat opposite her, his brows furrowed with disapproval.

Every few moments he would lean closer to her, forcing words through a clenched jaw, which resulted in her turning to the children with increased urgency, trying and failing to rein them in.

Out swung one glass door, children spilling onto the covered terrace where other diners enjoyed their meals; in swung the next door as they burst back into the room, running and giggling.

I couldn’t help the grimace creeping over my face. It was like an accident you could see coming but couldn’t look away from. My heart hammered, knowing their joyful games would end in tears in three, two, one…

The little girl tripped, landing on her knees. Fortunately, the mother stopped her fall for the most part, but naturally she erupted into tears, the cry breaking through the buzz of conversation.

“Isabelle, are you listening to me?” My mother’s voice broke through the haze, causing me to turn back to the table.

My sister followed my previous line of sight, her lip curling as she passed judgement on the couple. “The woman can’t control two children?”

I appraised her as she sat smugly between my father and mother in the booth of the restaurant we frequented on the outskirts of London. Although she had a large family, she had chosen to leave hers at home with the nanny.

Ester had four children. Four. She was a good mother.

Her children were polite, obedient, disciplined, and I loved them dearly.

But Ester was not kind, and I had wondered on several occasions whether her children would inherit that deficiency.

I prayed not. Perhaps hoped is more apt.

I truly hadn’t prayed in years. Not that I would admit that to my devoutly Christian family.

“I asked if you had finished packing your flat, Isabelle?”

“Not yet, Mother.” I tried to rein in the sigh. We had discussed this. “I have another week of working, and then my lease is up a week after that. I don’t have that much to pack.”

My job as a Graduate Teaching Assistant wasn’t much, but it was mine, a small token of freedom I planned to hold on to for dear life, even if only for a week longer.

Those of us who had yet to marry and have children weren’t permitted to work per se. Obtain an education, absolutely. Hold down a small job during that time, of course, but only if it was deemed an appropriate position.

My teaching assistant role supplemented my PhD, and although my thesis was finally submitted and I had been successful in my defence of my paper, the term hadn’t quite finished so I would work the technicality for as long as I could.

“Honestly, Isabelle, I don’t know why you bother.” My sister’s voice was shrill. “Father has let this all carry on for far too long.”

I observed Father for his input, but found him studiously ignoring her, gazing off into the middle distance, leisurely sipping his Scotch.

“You should be married with several children by now. I’ve never known anyone so old permitted to remain unwed.”

Ester was married at eighteen, and children followed at two-year intervals, like clockwork. Now at twenty-six, nearly four years my junior, she used every opportunity she could to emphasise how noteworthy my unmarried and childless state was.

Although it wouldn’t be that way for long. Cold dread washed over me at the thought.

“Thank you, Ester.” Father chose that moment to enter the conversation.

My mother responded to his endless support of my education choices with a small huff.

As head of the household and father to an unwed woman, he undertook all decisions on my life until I took a husband.

In this day and age, women held little to no autonomy. Our society prioritised the family unit and population growth, all thanks to the unfortunate decline in population that began several generations ago. Birth rates had fallen, marriage rates even more so, and society as a whole suffered.

Something had to be done! That something was now lovingly termed the Genesis Protocol, ‘be fruitful and multiply’, and the result? Society as a whole no longer suffers. Women do.

The propaganda would say it classified fertility and the nuclear family as a virtue, encouraging traditional gender roles and patriarchal authority. It allowed women to meet their biological destiny, to perform their duty to society, to create prosperity through proliferation.

Those more cynical amongst us might say it created arranged marriages for men who, without the political leaning, might have their elite DNA disappear from the human populace without record.

The horror of natural selection when you had been selected to be lost to attrition.

Our Genesis Protocol looked like marriage and motherhood as a female’s duty. But in reality, it enabled forced relationships, registry systems, breeding assignments, and child quotas as a political agenda.

But for the people, for the women, it was patriarchal control. Women no longer had legal identities in their own right, nor had they for decades; their spouse or father held authority over them.

We became cattle.

Some women accept it and thrive in it. Other women drown.

For my whole adult life, I have trodden water. My father, now returned to his daydreaming as his daughter and wife scold me, is Secretary of State for Social Order and Families.

He is the jailer of my prison, and I resent him as much as I love him.

Said jailer has tolerated my complicated dance through the loopholes of the rights of women in the education system, to hold out on the marriage for as long as I possibly can.

And that is how I find myself, just before my thirtieth birthday, my stay of execution expired.

“I mean, what is it? Three degrees? Why would you ever need that?” Ester blathered on.

I knew better than to interrupt her, and my mother adored these Isabelle-bashing sessions. She didn’t even try to hide the vindication she felt in my sister’s echoing of her own arguments with my father over the many years.

“Don’t forget the two placements,” I quietly mocked her, my father smirking slightly over the table at me.

Making the most of my father’s position in government, I chose to study policy and politics, of course not to be able to actually use them.

Females are unsuited to office, political or otherwise.

But the political leverage, that was priceless – the daughter of a Secretary of State studying her father’s policies.

It was an easy sell, a woman to add further gravity to their political stance.

And so that is what I did. I went to university, as many young women did, and I focused on family politics, policy and administration.

Each time my education came to a close, I argued the benefit of further study, more and more inclined to female governance and family issues, through my master’s and fellowships until ultimately my PhD in household governance and incentivisation.

Now, with the exception of those who wrote the policies themselves, I would be considered the next most educated on the topic.

Father saw me as his little advocate, the daughter who personified his policies.

Educated and compliant, and soon enough working, where my family life permits, to educate women and children in the virtues of our family-focused society.

“Why Teddy has waited so long, I will never know,” she sniped, hitting the sore spot she intended.

Teddy. Theodore Fairchild. My fiancé and father’s next huge political victory.

Teddy and I had known each other since we were young. Our families had been involved in politics for generations. His father was the leader of the opposition to my father’s political party. Although the opposition was too generous, they were the same beast in different-coloured pantaloons.

Our engagement was agreed upon when we were teenagers, and at the time it didn’t bother me. I considered it to be the way things were, and I liked Teddy. He was sweet, kind, funny, and he was also handsome.

Teddy was still handsome, but he had lost the other desirable traits, which was deeply unfortunate, given I would be marrying him in a few weeks.

I used to take some comfort in the fact that my engagement was a point of extreme annoyance for my sister, Ester, born to be a wife and mother to a football team.

She would have been the perfect wife for the high-born politician. Imagine the Christmas cards.

“It’s my sparkling personality.” Arguing with her would be a step too far, so I fuelled her ire.

“Unlikely.” Here she goes. “You think you’re above your station, Isabelle. The Fairchilds will crush that out of you.”

Her pretty face turned venomous, and I felt my control crack.

“If you want him so badly, perhaps a divorce is in order? Poor Sam.” I didn’t know which would enrage her more, mentioning divorce – a divorced woman was a scandal, a failure – or mentioning her husband.

Ester loathed me talking about Sam, although he and I got on extremely well – maybe that was the issue. She was possessive of men, both those she had claim to and those she had no right to, including dear Teddy.

“Enough, girls.” My mother cut the argument short. “Isabelle, we will collect you on Friday. You will be home before your thirtieth birthday celebration. You will not stay here a day longer than you have to.”

“I have no interest in a social celebration, Mother.” I could feel the defeat crawling over me even as I protested against my upcoming birthday party.

“This is for your father, not for you. Your education is a feather in his political cap; you will smile and support our family. If anything, you can help to justify the benefits of your father allowing this education charade to continue as long as it has.” Mother frowned before schooling her features.

“You will attend, and you will respect your father, his office, and meet the expectations laid upon his daughter.”

I searched my father for an ounce of support but found none.

“I have worked tirelessly with our seamstress on your dress for this. It will be perfect. And you.” She shot me a cold glare. “Will be perfect.”

“Isabelle, my dear.” Father drew my eyes, knowing full well that a lecture from my mother would only have the opposite of its desired effect.

“It is appropriate. You can do the rounds briefly, and Teddy will be there. Consider it a good opportunity to catch up before the nuptials.” My stomach roiled.

“And, as a treat, I have organised a little gift.”

Ester turned to him, outrage ready on her painted lips, her beautiful face screwed up in jealousy.

“Your father has agreed to a girls’ trip before your wedding. Your sister and I, and a couple of your friends, as he sees fit.” Mother beamed at him.

I raised an eyebrow. I was too direct with my father, but I considered it the price he had to pay for what his office stood for.

“Sophie?” I asked, already knowing Mother would flip. She hated my friend, especially because Sophie was another beautiful loophole in our society.

Sophie was married, but she was also the exception to the rule.

She and her wife coloured inside the lines, and therefore there was nothing the government could do about her lifestyle and the freedom it afforded her.

Unless they chose to expand their sphere of control from maternity to sexuality, and that was a step too far politically, damned right too.

But nonetheless, Mother hated the flexibility that Sophie’s life showed still existed within the system.

A hatred that both she and her youngest daughter had in common.

They conformed, believing it made them special, but it disgusted me.

And the conflicting emotions my family brought out over such a short lunch date made my skin prickle.

“No, Sophie.” Mother pretended she had a say.

Barely a beat passed as I held my breath – I couldn’t do a weekend alone with my mother and sister.

“Fine.” Father shrugged, knowing he couldn’t really object to her on any grounds without my parroting his policies back at him.

I liked to think he secretly enjoyed the opportunity to spar with me, although he was extremely selective about when he did.

But for today it was one-nil, Isabelle. “I’ll have my assistant share the details with you and authority of movement. ”

The smile lifting my lips was brief. Like a gust of wind through a fledgling fire, my small spark of joy was snuffed out because the realisation settled over me. This was little victory in a lifetime of lost freedom.

My reality was that I had no choice in my flat, nor in my birthday party, nor in any of my future. But worst of all those losses was the fact that I had no say in the upcoming downgrade of my life to the enforced family plan.

I had three weeks to the day until my beautiful but cruel fiancé would be installed, like a virus, into my life.