Still, out of respect for her parents, whom she’d loved, some small part of her felt obligated to Adam. By blood or by an unforeseen connection. Maybe it was because she knew they shared parents—a mother and father whose memories felt as if they were fading away faster than a short gust of wind—that she wanted to know her brother. To like him. To get along. He was the only connection she had to the parents she’d lost. Perhaps he would be able to share with her memories of his own about their parents so she might get to know them better through his eyes.
“Adam!” she shouted through the door, slamming her hands against it, wincing at the pain of having rubbed the skin raw with her pounding. “Let me out!”
Her pleas for release were a daily mantra since he’d started locking her in here and one that was slowly making her go mad—in addition to her voice now being all crackly.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, and she backed up several paces, watching the handle to see if it would shift downward. Praying that it would move. Willing whoever was on the other side to let her out, let her out, let her out!
There was a slight jingle, the sound of keys, and then the very distinct sounds of the door being unlocked. The click and grind echoed in the silent chamber.
Seconds later, Adam was staring right at her, the hard angles of his face—so unfairly like their father’s—rigid, not a loving bone in his body, nor a care when he stared right at her. While she kept in the back of her mind that he was her blood relative, her brother, it did not appear that Adam harbored the same familial emotions.
“You’re acting like a madwoman.” His voice was harsh, and his lips curled with disgust.
“You locked me in here like a madman,” she retorted.
“Because you’ve threatened to run away.” He said it as if he were explaining to a toddler how the world works.
Rhiannon gritted her teeth. “Because you’re trying to marry me off to that blackguard.”
Adam gritted his teeth right back. “That blackguard is my friend.”
Rhiannon cocked her head to the side, pursing her lips and giving her brother a look that said she didn’t believe a word he said. “Is he, though?”
The muscle in the side of Adam’s jaw flexed, and when he next spoke, his voice was harder than before. “He is, and you’ll respect my decision and the union.”
Rhiannon held back a grimace. “You make it hard to respect you. I barely know you, and the minute you reappeared back into my life, it was with harsh words and cruelty.”
Adam laughed, the sound grating. What she wouldn’t give to return to her uncle’s castle and never set her eyes on her brother again.
“Cruelty?” he said. “You don’t know the half of it. You grew up spoiled with Uncle, and now you think the world owes you something. ’Tis about high time you learned the place of women in society. You are chattel. Nothing more than a vessel to carry the heirs of the man you wed.”
If he’d slapped her, she might have been less shocked. “I pity the woman who is forced to marry you.”
Rhiannon held her brother’s gaze, her head high, waiting for Adam to retaliate.
“You will behave,” was all he said, and she supposed she should be grateful that he hadn’t laid hands on her. Not now, and not ever. His cruelty was different. His cruelty meant he took her freedom and forced her to wed a man demanding payment for gambling debts—she was little more than chattel. A payment for her brother’s disastrous habit.
The man Adam had demanded she marry was not one her parents or her uncle would have chosen for her. Born into nobility, she’d been groomed her whole life to take up a position as mistress to some grand castle or house. Now, she’d be relegated to wife of a gambler, a man who claimed to be a merchant but whose true income lay in lending money to men who had no hopes of winning, and then charging interest. Scrubbing the floors and cooking meals while birthing babies from a man she didn’t love and who, in turn, didn’t love her was not a life she wanted to be consigned to. And that was the exact impression her brother had given her of her new future. All to pay his balance. She didn’t even know what kind of “merchant” her future husband was.
The only information Adam had felt necessary to share was that she was the payment for a sizable debt her brother owed. Oh, how far they’d fallen. If her parents knew what was happening, they’d roll in their graves, and she wouldn’t blame them. Uncle, if he were here, would have laughed in Adam’s face.
She was rolling on the inside, her stomach twisting into a thousand knots, and trying not to vomit.
“I hate you,” she said, all the venom she felt pushing out of her in a breath.
Adam laughed and rolled his eyes. “You’re a petulant child. Your husband will teach you your place, and then maybe you’ll learn to have respect and show it when it’s due.”
Rhiannon bit her tongue when she wanted to start screaming at him. To rush him and shove him and force her way out the door, but she knew doing that wouldn’t help her situation in the least. Her brother was easily six inches taller and several stone heavier. She might have the element of surprise, but he would quickly be able to overpower her, and then where would she be?
Locked in the room again.
So, instead, Rhiannon changed tactics. It appeared Adam did not react well to anger. Perhaps softness was what he needed to be swayed. She ducked her chin and said, “Fine. I will learn respect. I’m sorry for being so…obstinate. In a show of mercy, will you please let me outside for just a short walk? At least to get Goosie. She must be beside herself without me. Have your strongest and fastest guards follow me if you don’t trust me, but I need air. If I wither away in this chamber, I will be worth nothing to you or the man you’ve promised me to.”
She kept her face as meek looking as she possibly could, an expression that was unnatural for her. But Adam, who knew his horse better than he knew her, didn’t pick up on her pretenses. Perhaps he thought so highly of himself that his will alone would have subdued her in such a quick fashion. My God, his idiocy knew no bounds.
Adam let out a massive sigh and stared at her as if she were a lost child in need of a home—which she kind of was at the moment, hoping Douglass would come through for her.
“You poor thing,” he said. “And that stupid pet of yours. The manners they taught you at Appleby are atrocious. But I suppose that should be expected. Uncle was always weak, and Douglass was always a spoiled brat.”
