Page 16 of The Reclusive Earl’s Scandal (Vows and Vanity #1)

The following afternoon, Rebecca returned from her tea outing, stopping short when she saw her father standing in the hallway, glaring at her.

“Yes, Father?” she asked tentatively, not confrontational, and stepped back when she saw his bloodshot eyes. She swallowed at the sight of her mother hovering in the doorway to the music room, her hands reaching for the duke, but never touching.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“To the tea shop,” she said. “With Lady Catherine and Lady Mary. I told you...”

“ Tea shop ,” her father sneered, scoffing. “Do you think we have the money for such things?”

“I do not know,” Rebecca bit back. “ Do we? You are the ones who handles our money.”

“Rebecca.” His voice dropped as he sauntered closer to her.

She didn’t see her father as a threat, but he was an unpredictable force, and Rebecca had only ever heard his drunken ramblings from afar.

He wasn’t violent when drunk, but he was accusatory, and Rebecca feared what he would say.

Every interaction with every suitor ran through her head.

Had one figured out the family’s secret? Had she slipped up and couldn’t recall? Had one seen through her carefully woven mask of wit and charm?

“I found my letter in the sun room,” her father said, and Rebecca jolted.

She remembered the day she had swiped her father’s correspondence before hurrying out to meet her friends and had not taken care to hide the stolen letter from sight.

“I do not peruse the room, and your mother would not read my letters. My eldest, however… my ever-so-calculating, clever eldest, who somehow sees everything and silently judges, silently acts … she was my first thought. Why was it there, Rebecca?”

Her heart sped up, and Rebecca, for a moment, could only stare at her father. Rage built within her, a slow thing that crept over her like a tidal wave that she knew she would drown in if she didn’t catch herself in time.

There was no point in lying, so Rebecca nodded.

“I did,” she said. “And I will not apologise because you certainly would not ever tell me the truth, so I had to find out for myself. You are gambling away we do not have. I know the furniture from the entry hall was not relocated. Resold, perhaps, but not relocated. I have searched the house top to bottom. Father, you cannot continue spending money we do not have! I read the debtor’s words. We could go destitu...”

“Silence.”

Her father’s order cut through the hallway, and Rebecca flinched into stiff quietness, biting her lip.

“You accuse me terribly, my dear eldest.” His voice softened, a mockery of comfort, and she hated this version of him, she thought. Her father didn’t come closer but he didn’t need to. His presence was overwhelming enough.

His auburn hair brushed away from his forehead in sweat-slicked layers, several strands hanging forward.

Gray eyes colder than any metal stared out at her.

Rebecca had gotten so much from her father in both looks and personality, but she had not inherited his penchant for terrible decisions. She hoped.

“I do not mean to accuse you, Papa,” she mumbled softly. “My words come from a place of desperation. Surely you understand. I am charming every suitor I can to keep word from slipping free about your—our finances. At this moment, I do not even know if I have a dowry.”

More silence filled the hallway, and her father’s anger scored across his face, offended at her doubt. “You have a dowry, Rebecca.”

“And how long will it be until you gamble or drink that away, too?”

“Rebecca,” her mother began, but she turned her gaze onto her instead.

“And you! Mama, I respect you, I respect you both greatly, but surely you cannot stand by and watch this happen. There are four more after me who will need gowns, tailcoats, new books for lessons, estates, ways to woo a lady or a suitor. What will you do?” Her eyes burned back onto her father.

“What will you do, if you do not stop wasting your own wealth?”

His eyes narrowed threateningly, but Rebecca held her ground.

Instead of moving back from him out of fear as he likely expected, she approached him.

She embraced her father as she had once done, back before alcohol didn’t numb everything for him, back when his world was soft enough with love instead of the burn of brandy and the adrenaline of a momentary victory at a gambling den.

“Papa,” she whispered, “Papa, I beg you, please put money aside into an account you cannot access easily. Have your accountant secured behind a code, or something! Please . My siblings and I need money for our marriages. My sisters will both be out within the next four years. They need security and opportunities.”

“It does not matter.” Her father drew back from her embrace, shaking his head. “They either will marry well, or they will not. That is out of my control.”

“How can they marry well when you know best that a man’s decision is guided often by the size of a dowry? Our name might not be enough to even see me into a good match, let alone them.”

“You have flirted with plenty of suitors,” her father muttered, the judgement and casual nature of his words stinging. “You have enough options if you stop being so picky.”

“Father...”

“And speaking of options,” he continued, and Rebecca took the moment to realize her mother had retreated into the music room, “I heard of your agreement with the Maudley boy. Perhaps you ought to be the one doing your siblings a favor and marry him before word gets out and he ruins your reputation.”

Rebecca drew back. “You would not have me do that. He is not of rank.”

Suddenly, the anger drained from her father, replaced with a weary exhaustion she had never seen before. Daring to move closer, Rebecca showed her concern. “Father?”

Her father glanced towards the music room, where the soft plucking of harp strings came, and he grimaced before walking into the drawing room.

Rebecca followed, unable to help her eyes being drawn to the bar where the bottles and glasses had been righted from earlier, if only to allow her father an organized place to drink, no doubt.

He sank into the leather armchair he’d sat in so often that it was indented with his shape. He reached to the side, to the rounded table that likely held his drink when he sat there alone, but there was none, the glass already emptied and cleaned away.

Rebecca held her breath, waiting for him to ask if she would make him one. In the end, he only sighed.

“Rebecca,” he began, his voice halting. He stared down at his loosely clasped hands.

“When you were born, I remember holding you, and I remember promising you the world. I thought that there was no stone I would not turn for you, no barrier I would not remove. And now I have failed you, and when you have confronted me with these failings it only makes me more aware of everything, I bury beneath…” He gestured vaguely to that empty table. Beneath his drink.

“Was I too harsh?” she asked.

Her father shook his head. “You were right, and it shames me that it must come to being reprimanded by my own daughter. I cannot promise to change, not easily, and not overnight, but I want to advise you. Marry for love, Rebecca. I know what you are doing, and while I am proud and a selfish part of me wants you to continue, I know that as your father I cannot allow you to charm your way through a ballroom, make a name for yourself, in the hopes that marriage will save our own finances.”

Rebecca blinked at him, shock sliding through her. She had expected anger but she had not expected this, this moment of clarity and admittance.

“Do not do what I did,” he muttered. “Your mother married me for love; I married her for comfort and power, and it became love for a while, a love that faded just as quickly as it arrived. Now I am miserable with a passive wife who does not care whether I stumble home to her bed or wake up in the doorway of whatever tavern I drank dry.”

He grimaced, and Rebecca burned with secondhand shame for him. Other than that, to hear a more intimate side of her parents was unusual and she didn’t know how to navigate it.

Instead, she took her father’s hands. She really didn’t know what to do with this shifted perspective. For once, Rebecca had no words. She’d thought her parents were happy and in love. Aside from her mother’s passive ways, and her father’s vices, they had been a perfect ton match.

Perhaps that is why he is miserable , she thought idly. The ton pushes people together into their rigid boxes. Her mind drifted to Edward, with his furrowed brow and curled lip whenever he spoke about wives and matchmaking. She thought of her own ploys, trying to charm her way into a good marriage.

She even thought of Catherine and Mary earlier that morning in the tea shop, how they had been. The taste in her mouth from their company hadn’t gone, and Rebecca had shelved how they’d made her feel, but now she thought of the remark Catherine had made.

Heavens, I do hope Harry Maudley has not caught wind of your prancing across a ballroom, Rebecca .

There had been a glint in her eyes and a wicked curve to her smile that Rebecca hadn’t seen before.

It made her think of Edward asking about how genuine she was.

Mary, ever the follower of Catherine, had sniggered alongside her, leaving Rebecca tense and questioning.

She didn’t want to question her friends, but why would they rile her up about a sensitive thing they knew she was already worried about?

Between their strange behavior, her father’s revelation, and their dwindling coffers, Rebecca felt on unsteady ground.

The only thing that feels solid is Edward’s presence from the park.

She had not yet forgotten her mortification over her accidental suggestive comment of hiding together behind a vase.

When the drawing room’s silence grew too heavy, Rebecca finally found words.

“I do not love Harry, Father,” she whispered.

“He and I… yes, we had a connection, and I entertained a life with him very briefly, but I think that was more the childish indulgence in me, attention where I had not yet received it before entering society. I do not even think I like him anymore in such a way. Father, if you cannot protect my dowry, then protect me . Protect me from any claims Harry might make.”

Her father’s gaze met hers, ever so similar, except his eyes wandered, unable to focus due to his drunken state.

“If the Maudleys go public with false claims that I, too, might question, then I will do what I can.” He paused too long, and Rebecca’s breath caught.

“But if it goes too far then you understand what I will expect of you.”

Rebecca held his stare, dread and pain pooling in her chest. Once, she would have given anything for her father’s approval of Harry.

But now… now she didn’t want any of it. She wanted— blue eyes that could have turned colder over the years but were soft, gentle.

She wanted comfort and laughter, and Harry couldn’t provide any of that.

Not with this new anger she had seen glimpses of.

“Father,” she whispered.

“You will marry him should he proclaim anything about you.”

“And you will believe it?”

He waved a dismissive hand at her, the moment of tender advice vanishing. “You said it yourself that you had a connection. Why not simply continue it? It will not matter what I believe, anyway. The ton will push for it, and I must fall in line. As must you.”

Rebecca stood to her feet, pulling her hands to her chest. I hate you .

The childish whisper was on her lips but she didn’t dare let the words fall.

Yet her father glared up at her like he suspected them anyway.

The painful truth was that she didn’t hate him, not truly.

His actions, perhaps, but she sympathized for him more than anything.

Tears filled her eyes until her vision blurred.

Rebecca was fleeing the drawing room and burying herself in her bedsheets before she even realized she had moved away from her father.

He had ruined her life, and she would find a list of endless sacrifices to make to fix it, and she would have to do what was expected.

Deep in her chest, her heart broke, and Rebecca cried to herself until dinner was called.

When she arrived in the dining hall, the room was tense.

Rebecca was too aware of the cracks her father had shown her to pretend they weren’t there.

She couldn’t unsee it all now: every tugged-on mask, every false smile, every burned-out hope.

The weight of doing what she had to do to fix her father’s mistakes weighed on her, heavier and heavier, until, by the time she retired for the night, she fell into a dreamless sleep.