“On the way out, I saw Lady Bexley, and she looked at me as if I were a stray dog.”
“Mothe,r you need to listen to me,” Prim said.
But her mother already collapsed on the sofa, holding her head.
“Everyone will look at us like a laughingstock. Our reputation ruined.”
“How can we go to the Remington ball today? We can’t possibly show our faces. Not after this.”
Prim couldn’t believe the way her parents thought. This letter made her look like a foolish wife and Leo, their son-in-law, as a dishonorable rake. The fact that they couldn’t show their faces in the balls affected Camilla and Myrtle more, but they didn’t even mention the twins in their worry.
“Mother, Father,” she tried one last time to talk reason. “You know better than the sheets lie to sell even more.”
“What we know,” her father raised his finger, “is that you allowed the Duke to treat us like this.”
“Excuse me?” Prim couldn’t believe her own ears.
“You cannot even control your husband,” her mother continued.
“How can you allow him to disregard us that way?” It was her father’s turn.
Prim took a step back under this assault by her own parents. It would be more than enough to have the sheet spreading lies but to have her own parents talk to her like that. She thought that now that she was married to a Duke, they would finally be happy.
“I can’t believe that my own daughter,” her mother rose with determination, “would marry a man that would allow us to flounder while you live in such luxury.”
“I will not allow anyone talk to my wife this way.”
The room went instantly cold, and everyone stood absolutely still. There was an angry predator on the prowl, and the instincts of everyone in the room were to avoid angering him more. Leo stepped into the breakfast room, his face a mask of rage.
“Your Grace,” Prim’s father muttered.
“Perhaps you should start addressing your daughter the same way, so you willbe reminded of her station.”
“We were merely talking to our daughter. After this edition, we are found in a dire situation.”
Something inside Prim snapped. She was right. She was not just their daughter anymore. She was a Duchess of her own accord.
“Yourdire situation?” Prim hissed and stepped forward. “You read some lies in the papers, and your first thought is to come into my house to accuse me?”
Bitterness rose in Prim, years of swallowed words and stifled ambitions, a lifetime of being told to be smaller, quieter, less for the sake of their standing. It boiled over, a cauldron of grievance.
“You read this, and you do not come to comfort me, you don’t ask or even care how this makes me feel. How diremysituation is!”
“Prim, we didn’t think…” her mother muttered.
“Of course, you didn’t,” Prim said, her head shaking. “You never do! When I was dragged in the mud, all you thought about was how it would affect you and how Lady Bexley look at you. You thought of how it embarrassedyou, not how it affected me, or Camilla, or Myrtle.”
Her parents huddled together at her justified attack. She took another step forward, and her parents, for the first time, seemed to see not their well-behaved daughter, but a woman wearing a crown of justified anger.
“For years,” Prim continued, “I made myself smaller. I smiled when I wanted to argue. I agreed when I wanted to challenge. I dimmed my own light because you told me that it would frighten away the kind of man you deemed suitable.”
“We never wanted to do that,” her father defended, his look straying to the Duke standing like a sentinel behind Prim.
“And yet you did it nonetheless!” Prim finally said after all these years. “I was declared the diamond of the season, and instead of being happy and helping me, you reduced me to a pawn in your schemes. You let the girls be defenseless in their debut season, worrying about your image and convenience.”
They both looked away in shame, perhaps realizing for the first time what their actions truly meant. Prim was shaking with unchecked nerves, the adrenaline of her effort running through her.
“And now you come into my home to accuse my husband of being dishonest,” she added. “I will not allow it.”
