Papa did not speak. His gaze remained fixed upon her, steady yet strangely distant, as though he were looking past her and seeing something else entirely. A tightness gathered about his eyes, subtle enough that she might have missed it had she not been watching so closely, but attempting to read his expression was like deciphering a foreign tongue.
“You have no right to make that choice,” said Papa in a low tone.
“I am one and twenty,” she replied, forcing her voice to remain firm whilst lifting her chin. “By law, I am free to choose.”
Mama scoffed. “‘Choose?’ What a ridiculously modern notion. What do love and choice have to do with marriage? No one I know would’ve dared suggest such a thing to our parents, and even if we had, I can assure you their response would not have been as benevolent.”
“Frederick is not in such a dire position as you believe, Mama,” said Thea, glancing between her parents, her brows drawing ever closer together. “With my dowry, we can be comfortable whilst he establishes himself—”
“Dowry?” asked Papa, straightening. “By law, we cannot compel or restrict you, but know this: we shan’t support you in this foolish alliance. If you marry Frederick Voss, you will be cut off from us, and you will be forced to accept the consequences of your poor decision alone.”
Thea’s wide eyes darted to her mother, but the lady rose from her seat and came to stand beside her husband, her hands clasped before her.
“You are the eldest,” added Mama. “We cannot have you set a poor example for your younger siblings, and we will not allow your rebellion to taint our name.”
For a long moment, Thea could only stare at them, her mind refusing to shape the meaning of those words.Cut off.The phrase echoed through her, hollow and cold. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t anticipated difficulties from her parents, but this?
Her hands grew cold in her lap as though ice buried itself into her very bones. Must she fight Frederickandher family?
Mama pressed a hand to her throat, her face pinched with distress. “I do not understand what madness has taken hold of you, Thea. Have we not given you everything? Raised you to know your duty and to comport yourself as a lady? And now you would throw it all away for a ruined man with no prospects? To subject yourself to being an impoverished outcast? For your family to be tainted by your husband’s scandal and ruin?”
Her voice trembled at the end, and she turned toward her husband as though seeking strength in his resolve. But Papa hadn’t moved. Hadn’t looked at her. His attention remained fixed upon his daughter, searching her face with an intensity she hadn’t known him capable of, and her breath caught.
A faint sheen glimmered in his eyes, so slight she might have imagined it, and his jaw worked once as though he were bracing against words that refused to be spoken. The restraint in him was almost a violent thing, and whatever surged within him was beaten down and locked away, leaving her to face the unfamiliar truth that something in this conversation had struck far deeper than she had ever believed possible.
“This matter is finished, Thea,” he said, his voice as emotionless as ever. “Clearly, you do not care about your future, but I will not allow you to throw it away. Think me a villain, if you wish, but I will protect you from yourself.”
Heat prickled behind her eyes, yet she could not draw breath enough to dispel it whilst the air sat thick and heavy in the room. A wild, desperate rhythm thumped in her chest, drowning out all reason, and as much as she yearned to cry out and make them see sense, her voice betrayed her, leaving her mute and aching with the knowledge that she was utterly alone in this battle.
Papa rose, his chair scraping against the carpet. “Go to your room. We will not speak of this again.”
Mama gave a watery sigh, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “It is for the best, my dear. You will see that in time.”
Thea stood slowly, her limbs stiff, but she curtsied out of habit, scarcely aware of the door closing behind her when she left. The corridor distended before her like something from a dream, stretching impossibly long, and the paintings along the wall were little more than smudges of color as she passed. Her steps made no sound on the carpet runner, and she could not have said whether she moved quickly or slowly; only that she was moving because instinct commanded it.
The afternoon light slanted through the windows, dull and gray but filling the house with that peculiar hush that came between the bustle of day and the quiet of night. Dust motesdrifted lazily in the beams, their unhurried dance a strange contrast to the storm that churned within her. Every breath felt too shallow, every heartbeat too loud.
Opening her bedchamber door, Thea paused on the threshold, her hand upon the latch as she spied Mina seated in a small chair by the window. Her cousin’s expression betrayed all the curiosity and concern swelling within her heart, but Thea’s words abandoned her as she crossed the room. Reaching for the coverlet, she mechanically brushed the edge, straightening it before sinking onto the bed as though her body had finally given up the effort of holding itself upright.
The faint creak of a floorboard warned that Mina was moving around behind her, but the hush between them stretched long and heavy, the kind that words could not reach. Thea felt Mina’s gaze upon her, steady and piercing, but she couldn’t look at her. The world felt distant now—its colors dimmed, its sounds muffled—as though she were watching life through a dirty pane of glass, unable to touch it or bask in its beauty.
A scrape of wood against wood, and then Mina appeared before her, setting the chair at the bedside. For a long while, they simply sat facing one another.
Then the tight, aching pressure in Thea’s chest gave way. A single, broken sound escaped her—half sob, half gasp—and once loosed, the rest spilled forth in a flood. Burying her head into the pillow, Thea pressed her hands to her face, but the tears spilled through her fingers, hot and relentless, wracking her body with trembling sobs.
“Oh, Thea,” whispered Mina, her hand hesitating before coming to rest lightly on Thea’s arm.
When the tears grew stronger, Mina shifted closer and ran her hand down Thea’s arm in slow, soothing strokes. The motion was simple, rhythmic, the kind one used to calm a frightened child. At last, Thea’s hand slipped from her face, falling limponto the coverlet, and Mina caught it gently, holding it between both of hers.
The two sat that way for a long while as tears stole her breath. Thea could not look at Mina, but she felt the small, anchoring warmth of the lady’s fingers around hers, the quiet proof that someone still held fast while everything else was falling away.
Once the tears were spent (or as much as they could be, for they replenished at an alarming rate), Thea quietly recounted the goings-on of the day. Terrible though they were.
“I am certain it will all work out in the end,” said Mina, though her lips pulled into a grimace as she spoke it. “That is silly to say, I know. But I have seen you and Mr. Voss together. There is no doubt that you two are meant for each other.”
“What does that even mean?” asked Thea with a shuddering breath, and she felt all the poorer for the question as Mina’s expression fell ever more.
“I do not mean to be flippant,” she said. “Simply that I cannot imagine anyone better for you than Mr. Voss. I feel certain that all will turn out right in the end. It must.”
