“And what is the nature of this agreement?” Laila asked, staring at him pointedly. She felt she already knew the answer, but still, she demanded it be drug forth from his unwilling lips.
“Our debts will be absolved upon his and your union in matrimony,” Edward finally spat out. “It is high time you were married in any right, and this match will bring us both honor and prestige, as well as solvency.”
“As well as rid you of your debts!” Laila spat back.
“Ourdebts!” Edward insisted, his grasp tightening around the wine cup.
The hall settled into a silent state of shock for a time. Laila stared incredulously at her father, feeling the fumes of hatred and rebellion steeping from the forge in her belly. Her brothers exchanged baffled looks. Then it all broke at once.
“Father, you can’t!” Jacob protested.
“This is extortion!” Matthew cried.
“I will not!” Laila challenged, standing abruptly at the table.
“This is not a discussion!” her father bellowed.
“It very well is!” Laila parried. “I am not a thing to be sold! Least of all to that villain of a man!”
“That is precisely what you are!” Edward shouted back. “I have given you more liberty than perhaps any other lady in this Kingdom, and this is how you repay me? Obstinance? Refusal? You should be proud to do this duty for your family!”
“Father, truly he is wretched,” Jacob added. “I can think of ten better matches, both in age and temperance.”
“What of the Earl of Devon?” Matthew pleaded. “Long has he had an eye for Laila.”
“It has already been agreed to!” Edward shouted again, thumping his cup against the table. “I will not renege on a bargain, leastwise one so advantageous!”
“It is not for me!” Laila said. She felt her face growing hot with rage. If only her mother was still alive to speak sense into the old, bitter man.
“Why must you think only of yourself?” Edward said his face twisting. “Have you no care for your family and our house? You disgrace yourself!”
“Father, it is you who disgrace yourself,” Jacob said, standing beside Laila. “To bow to this twisted moneylender of a lord. How can you give our sister to such a creature?”
“This is the way of things, damnit!” Edward bellowed once again. “I will not be challenged! My word is law in these lands, and the law will be followed!”
“I—” Laila wanted to scream further, to let loose her rage and fire upon the whole of the hall, but she could not find the words. She was lost, baffled, and angry, and so without another word, she turned and fled from the hall into the pouring rain, the doors flapping open behind her.
“Laila, wait!” Jacob called out and followed her into the rain after casting a sideways glare toward their father.
“As the oldest, you must see the reason in this,” Edward growled at Matthew as the rain washed into the hall with the wind. “We all knew she would marry eventually.”
“Not to a monster,” Matthew said back, rising solemnly from the table.
“Go then on and see to them,” Edward replied. “She will come around.”
“See to yourself,” Matthew said back and marched out into the yard to find his siblings.
“Is that how you would talk to your father?” Edward called after him, but soon the sound of the wind and the rain drowned out everything else.
