Page 13

CHAPTER 13

H ester and Nancy, however, looked utterly bewildered. They glanced between Fiona and Anna, their confusion almost comical if the situation had not been so grave.

They deserve the truth. They deserve more than the half-truths I have given everyone else.

“What is she speaking of, Anna?” Hester demanded, her bonnet askew in her agitation.

“You know something we do not,” Nancy added sharply. “Now spill it out, or I shall surely burst.”

Anna turned to them, her expression shifting from secrecy to resignation. “Fiona was not merely entertaining suitors, as you believed,” she said. “She was betrothed. To the Earl of Canterlack.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

Say it plainly. Say it without shame. He does not own your shame any longer.

“You never said a word,” Hester said, her voice filled with hurt surprise.

“”Perhaps because it was never my choice, and I’d held off hoping to make a more desirable match,” Fiona said with a rueful sigh.

Or at the very least, a match that did not make my very skin crawl.

“Oh, poor darling. You should have told us nonetheless. What are friends for?” Nancy said.

“Did you despise the match so much?” Anna asked.

Fiona drew a breath, tasting the bitter memory of it. “He’d been… unkind. Both in words and...” She paused, but there was no sense in softening the truth. “And in actions. I could not imagine binding myself to such a man for a lifetime.”

The collective gasp that followed was sharp, cutting through the quiet.

“Oh, dear,” they breathed almost as one, their horror plain.

Fiona lifted her chin. “I was desperate,” she said softly. “Desperate enough to choose scandal—ruin, if need be—over life shackled to him. My father would not hear a word against him, so… I had no other recourse.”

And if Craton had not intervened… God only knows what would have become of me.

A stunned silence fell, stretching long and uneasy.

“We are dreadful friends,” Nancy said at last, her voice thick with regret.

“Neglectful and oblivious,” Hester agreed, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“You suffered all this alone,” Anna murmured, her hand still wrapped tightly around Fiona’s.

“How could you have known,” Fiona said quickly, her voice low. “I told no one. I bore it in silence.”

Because admitting it would have made it real. And I was not yet brave enough for that.

She drew a breath and, emboldened by the tide of confession already loosed, added, “Craton has offered for me.”

The words hung in the air, heavier than even she had anticipated.

A new, awkward silence took hold. Her friends exchanged glances laden with meaning she could not quite decipher.

There it is. They doubt him. Just as they doubted Canterlack, though they had good cause.

“At least he has done the honorable thing,” Anna said at last, though a thread of uncertainty wove through her words.

Hester bit her lip, the motion betraying her worry. “But… what if he is just as bad as Canterlack?” she asked, the fear naked in her tone.

“You do not truly know him, after all,” she added, her hands wringing nervously.

“Oh, but we cannot let you throw yourself into another storm, Fiona,” Nancy said, her voice firm. “Not after what you have endured. I should hate to think what trials might await you there.”

Fiona drew a slow breath, gathering her thoughts before speaking.

“I may not have known Craton long,” she said, lifting her gaze to meet her friends’ eyes, “but I am certain of this—he possesses a kinder heart than the world gives him credit for.”

She shook her head, a small, almost wistful motion. “He has made just as great a sacrifice in all this as I have. He was under no obligation to aid me. Yet he did.”

He could have turned his back, washed his hands of the matter. But he did not.

“And now,” Fiona continued, her voice steady though her fingers twisted in her skirts, “he has offered to take me out of utter ruin.”

The memory of his hand reaching for hers, of the choice he had given her before the door swung open and fate overtook them, flared vividly in her mind.

He offered me a future when he owed me nothing at all.

She still could not fathom why he had gone so far, why he had bound his future to hers with such deliberate care. It had not been part of their bargain. No promises had been extracted from him. And yet...

There is a magnanimity in him. A goodness he keeps hidden, even from himself. A side I would very much like to know.

Perhaps even a side the world ought to see.

Nancy nodded slowly, smoothing an invisible crease from her gown. “I suppose you are right,” she said thoughtfully.

Anna moved closer, the bed dipping under her weight. “If this is what you truly wish, Fiona,” she said, her hand warm atop Fiona’s, “then we are here—utterly and completely.”

Hester gave a quick, jerky nod. “We simply want you to be safe.”

Fiona managed a smile, though it trembled at the edges. “I will be. I am certain of it.”

Or at least, more certain than I have been of anything else.

“The Duke is safe,” she added quietly. “Safer than Canterlack. And—” her voice dipped, almost a whisper, “—certainly safer than my father.”

That earned her a trio of fierce embraces, her friends wrapping their arms around her tightly, as if they could shield her from all the hurt that had already been done.

For a moment, Fiona allowed herself to lean into them, to draw strength from their loyalty.

Hester pulled back first, brushing at her skirts. “Now that I think on it,” she said, tapping a finger against her lips, “nothing has been heard of Canterlack since last night. It is as though he has vanished.”

Fiona tilted her head, considering this news, but found—to her faint surprise—that it roused no feeling at all.

Let him disappear. Let him vanish from my life as if he had never darkened it.

She cared nothing for his fate. She was free of him. Or so she prayed.

“So—” Hester said, her face lighting with mischief as they settled back onto the bed, “when is the wedding?”

The question sent the others into fits of teasing, each tossing out absurd guesses about gowns and flowers and the number of guests.

Fiona smiled, laughed even when required, but she felt oddly apart from it all, as though she watched them through a pane of glass.

I am saved, am I not?

Then why do I feel as though I have stepped from one prison into another?