“They’re all boys,” Jere interjected. “She needs a man who can teach her domestication.”
I huffed in frustration. “Andyouneed a stick up your?—”
“Roselyn, dear,” Nahn warned lightly.
Jere bristled, his eyes alight with challenge.
“The fact is, Iris, your granddaughter sits on a high Hippogriff, detached from reality. I have tried—” Her words died on an abrupt cough. “I have tried to sway Jere to consider other options, but he has had eyes on her for some time. This, I must confess, is truly what brought us here today. We both know my condition is permanent. I want to make sure Jere is taken care of should anything happen to me.”
My heart pounded defiantly in my ears. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Your condition is quite stable, Mother.”
“Jere is convinced your granddaughter is the woman for him,” Baroness Jacostah continued as if I weren’t three feet away from her. If Jere were half the man he proclaimed himself to be, he wouldn’t need his mother to speak for him. “I think we could form quite a beautiful partnership through marriage to my son.”
My heart came to a crashing halt.
“With grooming and lessons on manners by some tutors from an Academy, she would make a satisfactory daughter-in-law. Her only duty would be to make my son happy and look pretty at court. Honestly, at this rate what else could she possibly be good for, if not a wife to my son?”
What the baroness wanted the baroness got. When it came to her son, rarely did she deny him.
“Baroness—”
“Jacostah, Iris, especially if we are to be in-laws!” she gushed. “Now I know times are tough, what with the king’s newest tax law and all. This could be a way to ensure your shop’s continued success, hmm? You’ve built such a thriving business that I wouldhatefor anything to happen to it.”
The silent threat lurking beneath her words hung in the air.Marry your granddaughter to my son, and you’ll continue to have my financial support. Deny my son’s wishes, and it will be the end of your shop.
Jere’s reputation as a spineless brute preceded him throughout the city. I’d done my best to dissuade his interests without inspiring the wrath of his mother, to no avail clearly. And after what the baroness had done to our grandfather years ago…
Hot adrenaline sent me storming up the stairs, not sparing any of them another glance.
“That means she’ll think about it,” Nahn said, her voice carrying after me. “We would be honored.”
I paused in the doorway of the room across from mine. My eyes lingered on my grandfather’s bony frame rocking in his chair. He hummed gently, staring off into the garden, no doubt listening to the music the wind carried.
My eyes stung. He’d never once pushed for me to marry the way Nahn did. I wanted to go in there and beg him to make Nahn see reason, but to do so would risk sending him into a fit. In our household, Nahn demanded quiet complacency.
I shut my bedroom door behind me. “Oh, I can’tstandthem.”
“Do you mind?” my brother Basil prompted from the ground beside his bed. “I’m trying to listen to the cards.”
“I do mind,” I fumed despite knowing Basil preferred silence during his readings. “They’re horrible people.”
A sigh. “Who?”
I faced my twin, finding him hunched over a tarot spread atop the faded yellow rug. Locks of his brown hair had slipped from the leather band at the nape of his neck, concealing his studious face from me.
“Jacostah and that wretched son of hers.”
I couldn’t process what had transpired. A marriage proposal, yes, but no question actually came with it. I should have seen it coming after all these years of Jere’s lurking behavior.
Basil flipped over a tarot card. “I told you someone important was coming today.”
“You could have warned me it would bethem.”
“My dreams aren’t always that specific.”
“I wish they were.” I went to the window and opened it with a firm push, the wooden frame groaning at its hinges. A cool draftrushed in, carrying the smell of rain-soaked soil. The storm had begun to lighten up finally. “If I’d known they were coming, I would have fled to the city by now.”
