“I never asked to be!”
“I decided,” he rasped. “It was not up to you.”
“Should it not have been?” she asked plaintively. “Should my needs and happiness not have any bearing on your decisions at all?”
“Of course they do. But all acts should be performed in service of the greatest good. Inconveniencing one person—”
“Inconveniencing!”
“—to reunite two entire families, torn apart for generations—”
“Father, that’s not what would happen!”
“Of course it would. Such a sacrifice would prove—”
“—nothing at all,” she interrupted passionately. “When you were a child, perhaps the feud was indeed the demon destroying peace as you knew it, but decades have passed since then. Our side of the family certainly isn’t torn asunder. There is only you and me—”
“And if you would not do it for us, then at least think of Lord Oldfield and the rest of the Medfords, who have also been waiting for—”
“Nothing whatsoever. With the exception of the viscount, they await nothing, and want for nothing. I approached them myself at a ball, and do you know what they said? They cautioned me against this foolish betrothal. They invited me to visit any time I pleased. There is no rift, Father. It’s a new generation now. We can mend fences with a smile, not a grand sacrifice.”
Her father frowned. “Nonsense. Oldfield would have told me if there was no longer urgent need for an olive branch.”
“Would he have?” she asked softly. “Are you certain?”
A wrinkle of doubt crossed her father’s face.
Tabitha leaned forward urgently. “Did you know he was a gambler and a libertine?”
“Many aristocratic men play at cards and indulge in the occasional discreet affair—”
“Did you know he gambled away every penny of the fortune Hudson amassed for him, and half of my impending dowry, too? Did you know before Hudson announced it that he spent the hours before our vows to God in a brothel, rutting with whores?”
Her father closed his eyes as if blocking out the sun.
“You did know,” she whispered in shock. “You knew, and you were going to give me to him anyway.”
“I had heard rumors.” His chest rattled. “But the greater good—”
“To the devil with your ideals if they do not encompass your own family! What kind of man cares more about an impulsive promise made decades ago than he cares for his own daughter?”
Her father’s eyes flew open. “That’s not true. I love you, Tabitha.”
She stared at him. “You’ve never said so before.”
“I didn’t think it necessary.”
“Didn’t think it necessary?” she choked out. “I have spent my life trying to earn your love. Being the person you wanted me to be. Giving up hobbies I adored, accepting an unwanted betrothal to a man who holds me in contempt. Never once did you give me any reason to believe I was ever good enough for you, much less acceptable just as I am.”
Belated understanding crossed her father’s face at last. Understanding and… guilt.
“The rift that needs mending,” he rasped in horror, “is between the two of us.”
Tabitha gave a jerky nod. “I have been trying to cross the bridge to you my entire life. No matter how hard I tried, I never made it into your good graces.”
“You’ve never left my good graces,” the marquess said gruffly. “I was hard on you because I knew your intelligence and your capacity for good are limitless. You were already the best daughter a man could be blessed to have. I simply pushed you to be even better…”
Tabitha’s fingers tightened in her lap, turning the knuckles white.
