“You gave us empty rooms,” her mother snapped. “And bills no one wanted to open. We rationed ink! Fanny sold sketches to neighbors just to keep the cook paid.”
“I stitched hems until my fingers split,” Blanche added quietly. “I met with creditors behind the stables because I was afraid they’d embarrass us publicly.”
Her father blinked, his expression souring. “Which is precisely why I arranged the Bromley match.”
A beat of silence.
“What?” Blanche asked.
He shrugged, casually. “He was willing to pay. Handsomely. Of course, the man had… unfortunate appetites, but he was titled. And generous. I couldn’t afford scruples.”
“You were going to sell me?” Blanche couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She felt cheated, betrayed.
“I was going to secure your future,” he said.
“By selling myself to a man I didn’t love? To an arranged marriage with a complete stranger?”
Lord Gooldwer raised both hands, mock-defensive. “Well, you didn’t marry Bromley, did you? You aimed higher. You bagged a duke. Truly, you’ve done even better than I hoped, darling.”
The room turned to ice.
Blanche stood, not loudly—but with purpose. Her voice trembled with restraint.
“I wasn’tbagged. I wasn’tsold. Heath chose me because I’m more than a dowry and a father’s debt.”
“Of course,” Lord Gooldwer said, hands still raised in that infuriating gesture of soft dismissal.
She looked at him then, and all the fractured memories began to rearrange. Not into something beautiful, but into something she could finally name.
He never chose her. Not once. Not when he left. Not when he returned.
He chose what she could provide.
Lord Gooldwer must have noticed the pain and disappointment reflected in his daughter’s eyes. He was losing that battle. He was losing the opportunity to reconcile with them — if that was what he wanted.
“Blanche, you have to understand me,” he sighed. “I was unhappy. For years. The household was cold, the marriage?—”
“Convenient,” she finished. “Like Clara.”
The name fell like ice in the room.
Fanny’s head snapped up. “Who?”
Blanche’s breath stilled.
Lord Gooldwer hesitated, then smiled weakly. “She was a companion. Nothing scandalous. Just… gentle company.”
“Gentle company,” Her mother repeated, venomously. “Is that what you called her when you used the money from the family you abandoned to run away with her?”
“I deserved to be happy,” he said, louder now. “I built this life, I earned some reprieve.”
Blanche’s eyes didn’t leave his face. Her heart beat slowly, deliberately, like something testing its own walls.
Heath must have seen this.That thought slid through her like cold water. This—this calculation. This need is disguised as tenderness.
It was what he had been shielding her from. Not out of pride. Not to be cruel. But because he knew the truth could only bruise her deeper if it wore her father’s smile.
She had mistaken silence for manipulation. But now, watching Lord Gooldwer sift through his justifications like coin dust, she saw it clearly: Heath hadn’t robbed her of choice. He had tried to give her one worth making.
