Her steps echoed, though she hardly heard it. She was consumed with the swirl of thoughts in her head as her father’s demand slowly began to sink in. It wasn’t until she was back in her chambers with her door shut and locked behind her that the full weight of it all hit her.
Charlotte sank to the floor, not bothering to even try to make it to the sofa before she collapsed.
“Married to Laird Knox,” she whispered, her fingers pressed to her lips as the foreign words passed over them.
Her excuse to get out of the study and away from the conversation was not completely a lie. If she was to be ready to leave the only home she had ever known in a matter of days, there was a long list of things she and her maids would have to see to.
She would need to make sure all of her gowns were cleaned and tailored perfectly. She would request a new dress or two along with a new set of nightgowns and stays that were more suitable for a bride than a maiden. If she was lucky, she would be able to talk the seamstress into crafting something splendid enough for her to wear as a wedding dress, but with such little time between now and her departure, she wouldn’t hold her breath.
Of course, she would ransack the library and take all of her favorite books with her. She couldn’t leave it to chance if Laird Knox would have the same stories or let her order her own copies once she was there. And then there was all of the packing. She would have to decide which of her girlhood things were worth taking with her to her new home and which would be left behind.
There was one thing she knew she couldn’t take with her, though—Alec.
He had been the first boy to ever catch her attention. Luckily, or maybe unluckily for her, he had returned her affections. Their friendship grew from a shared interest in horses to brazen flirting to something much more romantic over the course of one particularly sunny summer. That had been two years ago. In the time since, he had proven to be her only companion.
She knew that this day would come. Alec, as handsome as he was, was nothing more than a stable boy. He had hopes of becoming the stable master one day, but even that jump in station would never be enough to garner her father’s permission for them to marry. As the daughter of the Laird, she had always known that her duty, the role she played within the clan, was to be groomed and trained into becoming the perfect wife so that eventually, her father could select a husband and she would get shipped off. Since before she could remember, she was told that her marriage was to bring allies and resources to the clan, that she would be a great help. It was that knowledge that had kept her from ever letting things go too far with Alec, even if he had gotten insistent on more than one occasion. She knew that one day, she would be sent off to a stranger that she would have to call husband and Alec would have to stay here.
After spending the last two years involved with Alec, she had thought that the idea of leaving him would make her more upset than it did. And while there was a pang of despair at the thought of losing the only person in the world who truly knew her, she was more so resigned to her fate.
Suddenly, sitting on her bedroom floor in a heap felt silly and dramatic. Her father’s plans for her were not a surprise, even if she hadn’t known about the timing or the identity of her future husband. She had always been a pawn moved around by the players of the game and never of her own accord. This had always been her future, now it was time to face it.
