CHAPTER 1
HOLMWOOD HOUSE, ENGLAND
“What are you doing? Charity! Stop this madness.”
Charity pulled the glass back out of her sister’s reach and toward her own lips. She couldn’t see the glass, couldn’t see the shimmer of the claret, but she could feel the cut glass distinctly, and she knew well enough by now how to find her own lips after being blind for so long.
“Charity!” Her sister’s voice was outraged, the voice piquing higher and higher. “At this rate, you will not be able to see straight when you go downstairs. Oh…”
Charity laughed so hard at her sister’s mistake that the wine shot into the back of her throat and up behind her nose. She spluttered, realizing just how mad the whole situation was.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean... Oh, I should think through my words more.”
Charity made no effort to comfort her sister. There was a time when she and Edith had been incredibly close, living in and out of one another’s pockets, but that seemed like a great distance away now. They were different people, no longer the same souls they had been as children.
Edith was a successful wife, a known party planner amongst the ton, famed for her balls and inner parties. She was the woman often talked about in scandal sheets as being the celebrated hostess, the lady whom every other woman in London was envious of.
In contrast, Charity was the blind sister. She was the one who stayed at home at her father’s insistence, no matter how much she tried to plead against it. She was the imposed prisoner in her own household.
“I amenjoyingmy drink,” Charity said as she leaned forward out of her seat, reaching for the carafe on the table nearby. She heard her sister slide it away, the glass scraping against the wood. Charity flattened her hand to the wood. “Return it to me, Edith. I do not take your things away from you.”
“It is for your own good.”
“My own good!?” Charity spluttered, standing up and raising her glass to her lips, downing what was left inside of it. The thick burn of the wine in the back of her throat was pleasant, giving her a tingle of freedom in a moment that felt truly dark and isolated. “You said the same thing about tomorrow.”
“That is because I believe it to be the case,” Edith said emphatically.
Charity waved a hand at her sister in disapproval and walked around the settee. She put down just one hand, so she could feel her way around the settee toward the window. She knew the layout of this chamber, just as she knew any other. She was in an upstairs parlor, one much more private and kept for the family. If Charity had her way, she’d happily spend the whole night here, away from the ball downstairs that her father was hosting with Edith’s assistance.
“This is good for you,” Edith said, her voice following Charity enough to show she was shadowing her across the room.
Charity stopped by the window and flattened her hand against the glass. It was an old habit of hers, one that kept cropping up. It didn’t matter that she could not see what was out beyond that cool glass, she still liked touching the window, for it was the one thing that separated her from the wider world. These windows might as well be the bars on her prison walls.
“Are you not always saying how you wish to no longer be trapped in this house?” Edith hissed behind her. “This way, you are out of here at last.”
“I would be exchanging one prison for another.”
“Do not let our father hear you talk so. You know he does not like your sharp tongue.”
“I am well aware, for I have felt his wrath enough times.” Charity had been quiet over the years. She had been the ‘wallflower’ others had labeled her as, for what other way was there to be? She had been quiet, dutiful, and done as she was told, with her temper only occasionally rising enough for her to be punished by their father.
Yet she could not stay quiet any longer. She would not be that wallflower and stay in a corner if her future was now laid out before her in such a fixed way.
“You would see me married to a man twice my age,” Charity said with a hooded voice. “A man known for his crudeness, his arrogance, not to mention the fact he has lost one wife already.”
“Oh, do be reasonable, sister.” Edith walked around her. Charity noted the waiver of the footsteps and her sister’s hesitant voice. “Baron Tynefield is a powerful man. With his connections, imagine what could happen to this family’s reputation. For my husband’s balls and parties, for our brother’s club, everything could fall into place.”
“I beg your pardon?” Charity jerked her head toward her sister, who sharply inhaled in return. “Do not imagine I am now losing my hearing as well as my sight. I am merely amazed that when I point out to you that I am to be a prisoner, you plead with me to go to that prison for thefamily’ssake.”
“Charity–”
“I thought families were about love, care, and happiness. Not reputations and connections.”
“You just do not see things the way they are. Let us be practical.”
Determined to put distance between herself and her sister, Charity stepped away, returning around the settee once more. She reached for the table, and this time, managed to find where her sister had put the carafe. She topped up her glass, eagerly. She’d already had so many glasses, she had lost count, and she was unsteady on her feet, having to plant her heeled shoes slightly apart.
Earlier that evening, her maid had helped her dress in what she was told was a pale blue gown that matched her eyes. The kind maid had said she was beautiful, dressed perfectly for the ball, but Charity had no wish to be seen in it. She even debated spilling wine all over the gown in the hope it would give her an excuse to stay upstairs for longer.
