“A bet?”
“He was at the club last night. Came home late, told me the whole story. Unburdened his guilty conscience.” Thomas’s voice had a bitter edge. “He was playing cards but kept losing. Lost until he had nothing more to bet. Except … your dowry.”
Those two words hung in the air for a moment, frozen. Isolde’s mind slowly put together the pieces for her. It was impossible, ridiculous, unbelievable. And yet, she believed it. Of course her father had done this. She suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
“He bet my hand in marriage in a game of cards.”
Thomas didn’t have to answer; it wasn’t a question. She forced herself to suck in a breath, then another one, until her breathing steadied.
“To whom?” she asked.
“The Marquess of Hartington.”
Isolde frowned, though more in surprise than anything.
“Hartington? The estate next door?”
Thomas nodded glumly. Isolde took in the picture her brother made, slumped in the chair, looking for a moment like a much younger version of himself – the little boy pouting because the world was cruel, and he didn’t think that was fair.
Her heart clenched in her chest. Even with everything her father had done, she’d never have expected him to do something this horrible. She was surprised to find that she could still be disappointed in the man, still feel betrayed by him.
She’d thought she’d grown numb to his poor decisions and the disasters they wrought long ago. Apparently, not.
She shoved away a panicked urge to cry. She could not afford tears because she had to solve this, like she’d solved all the other problems her father had made. She focused back on Thomas. At least she would always have him and Cornelia. The two most important people in her life.
And she wouldn’t allow this to change that. She stood up, straightening her spine.
“Well,” she said, forcing a cheerfulness that she definitely did not feel, “I shall just have to find a way out of this.”
Thomas perked up a little.
“Do you think you can?”
“What else can I do? And what can’t I do when I have you and Cornelia to help me! We’ll manage somehow; we always do.” She frowned a little. “We really must do something about Father, though, Thomas. He can’t keep going like this, or there will be nothing left.”
“You let me worry about Father,” Thomas said, rising to stand beside her. “It’s my inheritance on the line. You’ll have more than enough to do trying to figure out a way to end this engagement.”
Isolde sighed. “I suppose he will come to call soon. The marquess, I mean.”
“What will you say to him?”
She considered the question, then set her mouth in a determined line.
“Let us see whathehas to say tome.”
***
The marquess called in the early afternoon that same day, and Isolde wondered bitterly if he was that eager to claim his ill-gotten prize.
She had spent the intervening hours sifting through her memories of him, a tall boy who lived in the house across the fields, who often seemed to be looking for an escape from that house.
His skin and thick chestnut hair were always touched with gold from the sun. She remembered him as kind, never lording his title over other children, and that he’d been particularly sweet to Cornelia, little more than a baby when they’d last met.
She wondered how a boy like that grew up to be a man who bet a woman’s future in a card game. Then again, she reminded herself grimly, it had technically been her own father who had brought her future into play. The Marquess of Hartington had just seized the opportunity.
Her father, never one to brave an unpleasant situation – and likely still worse for the wear from his night of drinking and gambling – had still not appeared by the time the marquess arrived.
Isolde had considered using that as an excuse to turn the man away, but that would only have prolonged the inevitable, so she asked that he be shown into the drawing room.
