Page 5

“Let’s go.”

Her father yanked her around, and the stranger disappeared behind a wall of silk and candlelight.

A footman appeared at her father’s elbow before she had even caught her breath. “My Lord. My Lady. It’s time.”

Her father crouched briefly to her eye level. It was the closest thing to gentleness he had shown her all evening, and it turned her stomach worse than his anger had.

“Be good,” he ordered. “Answer their questions prettily. Don’t embarrass this family any further than you already have. Do you understand me?”

“Father, please.” Her voice cracked despite her best efforts to keep it steady. She had become desperate. “Don’t do this. I’ll do anything! I’ll marry whomever you choose. I’ll stop refusing suitors, only don’t make me stand up on that stage like… like livestock at a fair.” She looked at the other women about to get on the stage with her, their faces downcast and sullen.

Her father’s lips twitched once, and for one second, she thought she had reached him. She almost sighed in relief. But then his jaw hardened.

He leaned closer, and his voice, when it came, was low so that only she could hear it. “Now you remember your duty? Stop this sniveling nonsense and do as I tell you. Heavens, how ashamed your mother would be of you.”

The words crushed her more than any avalanche could have.

Laura had spent most of her life believing—knowing—that she had killed her mother, the one person who might have loved her unconditionally. And in this lowest moment, her father picked up that old wound, rubbed salt on it, and pressed his thumb into it. He did it so precisely, so deliberately, because he knew it was the one thing that would make her stop fighting.

It worked.

She felt herself go still as a statue, felt the fight drain out of her as if he had cut a cord somewhere behind her ribs. She lowered her eyes to the floor and let the footman take her arm.

She did not look up again as the footman led her to the stage and positioned her beside five other silent women beneath the candlelight.

Nathaniel had intended to watch the room. Instead, he found himself unable to stop watching the green-eyed brunette who had stumbled into him.

“Gentlemen, it is the moment you have all been waiting for.” The auctioneer was a reedy man with an oily voice that made his skin crawl. “I will pose the same three questions to each woman on the stage as we present them to you in small groups,” he explained, and the auction began.

Nathaniel listened to the answers with half his attention while the other half remained fixed on the green-eyed brunette.

“How would you raise a child not your own, should your husband require it?” the auctioneer asked the women.

The first one stepped forward to answer, a pale girl with small eyes and shaking hands. “I would raise the child to honor and obey their father in all things, sir, exactly as I would honor and obey my husband.”

“Thank you,” the auctioneer purred, motioning to the next one.

The second was an older woman. Her hands were folded in front of her, and she looked calm and composed. “A wife’s place is never to question her husband’s guidance on how a child ought to be raised. That is entirely a father’s duty.”

The auctioneer again said his thanks.

The third woman gave a small, nervous laugh and glanced sideways at the watching gentlemen. “With a firm hand and firm discipline, I think,” she giggled. “Children want structure above all else. A strong hand!”

Next, it was the green-eyed beauty’s turn. She hesitated only a moment before answering. She did not shake, giggle, or flirt. Her voice almost trembled at the edges, but she steadied it quickly enough.

“I would ask the child what frightens them,” she answered, “before I told them what to do. So that I may provide a safe foundation to build a relationship centered on trust and mutual respect.”

A wave of quiet laughter rippled through the room, as though the answer was merely a ploy to be different from the others, to make herself stick out.

Nathaniel suspected her words were most sincere.

“How would you manage a household?” the auctioneer called out the second question.

The other women spoke of ledgers and linens, and ensuring their husband’s preferences were followed to the letter.

“I would listen to the servants who’d run the house before I arrived,” his green-eyed beauty said, her shoulders squared. “I would wish to learn what already worked before deciding what needed changing.”

“Talk to the servants?” a man next to him scoffed.