“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth, rubbing my cheek.
“Interesting. I’ll call Dr. Lennon and have you put on birth control immediately. In the meantime, I’ll have Sally get you the morning after pill.” She picks up my stepfather’s phone on his desk and begins to dial when I speak.
“I’m already on it.”
She eyes me up and down with her hand paused on the phone. “How?”
“He had Gavin put me on the shot.”
“Well…that’s good at least.” She hangs up the phone and runs a hand over her perfectly curled hair. Not really touching it, more of a nervous habit. “I mean it’s not really a concern I guess since he wouldn’t want to knock you up.”
The way she says it makes me want to ask why not, but I don’t want her to think I’m trying to get pregnant, so I word it carefully. “Lords need to reproduce.” I mean, the Spade brothers are out of Barrington. They should have already settled down and had two or three kids by now. But the email the Lords sent me didn’t show him having a Lady. It had said denied. Do they know something that I don’t? If he did kill their fathers, is that his punishment? Not to get to have children?
“They were all going to breed with Ashtyn.” Anne is the one who speaks.
I don’t like the way she says the wordbreed. “She’s dead,” I challenge. “One of them was her twin brother.” That I just found out at lunch. “So…not all of them. Plus, even if she didn’t have one with her twin, that would end up making them incest down the line. If she had a girl with one and a boy with another, and those two got together when they were supposed to take over,” I blabber, trying to do the math in my head.
Anne laughs. “There are ways to control the sex of the children. If the three Spade brothers each knocked her up with girls, then they would be given to high-ranking Lords after graduation. A new line of Spade brothers would be brought into Carnage to take over.” She waves her hand in the air.
“But none of them have kids now.” I dig.
“Of course not. Things changed for them when Ash and her brother, Adam, disappeared on them. Their fathers were killed, and their rules…were bent,” Anne states.
I frown, not knowing what she means by that but not asking any further. I’ve heard enough for one day, and my face now throbs. I want a bottle of wine and bed. I look at my mother who stands silently next to her friend. “You still haven’t answered my question on who I’m supposed to marry.” I circle back around to that. I’m not leaving until I get an answer.
“I don’t know?—”
“Bullshit!” I shout.
She goes to slap me again, but a hand wraps around her wrist, stopping her. “Give us the room,” my stepfather demands.
“Bill—”
“Now,” he barks, making her jump. I’ve never seen him raise his voice to her before.
“We need to leave in ten.” With that, she huffs and rushes out with her best friend, slamming the door behind her.
He walks over to his desk that sits in front of the large floor-to-ceiling windows and lights up a cigar. Then he pours two glasses of brandy, offering me one. I shake my head, mumbling, “No thanks.”
He nods and sets it on his desk. “A Lord wakes up every day prepared for it to be his last.”
I frown. “Meaning?”
“Meaning your father had strict instructions left for me when I was gifted your mother.”
I swallow nervously. “What…what were they?” Bill and I get along, but we’ve never been close, and we sure as fuck have never spoken about my future or my father.
“You were to marry a Lord by the name of Winston Garvey.”
Annabelle Garvey…I don’t love it. “When?” I ask, not really sure I want to know. Once you have a date, the clock starts ticking. It makes me think of Haidyn’s hourglass that he always seems to have with him.
“Well, by your father’s orders, over a year ago.”
I frown. “Then why haven’t we been forced to wed?” Maybe the Lord is refusing me. There are cases when those assigned a Lady end up picking someone else.
“He’s not available as of right now.”
“I don’t understand.” Dear God, I hope he’s not seventy years old and married, and they’re just waiting for his wife to die first. I never stopped and took the time to think that he wouldn’t be around my age.
