Page 14 of Lord of the Darkness

“I’m saying now is the time to take bold action,” said Hazelworth. “It’s almost as if she’s seeking a way out of this marriage. She’s looking for a man who will show her the love she imagines, the love she thinks she hasn’t found in you. My advice would be to keep her away from all men, for the time being.”

Ariana rose from her chair, incredulous.

“Am I not allowed to have friends now?” she demanded indignantly.

“Not until you can prove that you deserve them!” her father shot back.

In that moment, it was all too much, and Benedict did something he very rarely did – he lost his temper.

“Will you both stop?” he shouted. The whole family was beginning to exasperate him, and for a perilous moment divorce didn’t seem like the worst option, despite the enormous cost and the scandal it would cause. “Both of you, snapping at each other constantly…”

“If you don’t like it, I’m sure there are plenty of other, quieter families who would have happily welcomed you, but you signed the marriage contracts…” said Hazelworth.

Benedict didn’t fail to notice the threat in his voice.

“Forgive me, it’s just hard to think with all the yelling.”

He felt a dull throbbing behind his temples as if someone were standing behind him, shoving a long nail into his skull. It was the sort of headache which Benedict often got during moments of extreme stress – and his mother had suffered the same. The headaches made him fear that the illness which had eaten her away would one day take him too. He wanted to go upstairs into one of the guest suites, even though this was not yet his house, to lie down on the bed and think over what Ariana had done, and how he was going to respond, without Lord Hazelworth breathing down his neck. There was something unnerving in the man’s enthusiastic desire to see his daughter punished.

But after the events of the last hour, Benedict was beginning to fear that Hazelworth might not be wholly wrong. He had tried being gentle, soft and respectful, and so far, it wasn’t working. Maybe it was never going to work. Maybe his inadequacies as a husband and lover were driving her away. Maybe she did perceive him as weak.

Maybe it was time to at least try taking a different approach.

“Ariana, we’re going to discuss this when we get home tonight,” he said at last. He tried to affect a stern tone, but he was still painfully aware of the uncertainty creeping into his voice. “There are going to be some new rules. And you can argue with me and you can hate me as much as you want, but you’re going to obey me and you’re going to respect me, because we’re married to each other. Is that clear?”

Ariana yawned loudly and stared at the carpet.

***

The only thing which kept Ariana from tears was clinging to her sense of outrage. It was something she had learnt over the years of dealing with her father’s idea of justice. If she held on to her anger, she could at least delay the tears – usually long enough to get out of the room and away to cry in private.

She had submitted to this marriage because she had truly felt that she had no choice. She had only just today, however, realised exactly how trapped she had been – not just by her father, but by her grandfather’s will as well!

She had tried to resign herself to it, and, after the conversation in her bedchamber last night, had begun to wonder if this man she had married might actually be different – might wish to allow her thoughts of her own, rather than dictating everything to his own wishes.

But today had shown her how foolish that hope was.

It wasn’t that she had ever particularly liked Jasper – even when they had both been children, he had been annoying, treating her as if she were his possession in a manner which was horribly reminiscent of her father – but she didn’t hate him either. He did, she thought, genuinely care for her, in his rather odd and overbearing way.

His appearance today had shocked her, and she had been desperate to make it clear to him that he had to leave her alone. She had still, when she’d gone out to speak to him, been clinging to that faint hope that her husband might be different.

The hope which had now been crushed to dust and ashes.

After that one moment earlier when she had met his eyes, and thought that perhaps he shared her view of her parents ‘happiness’, here he was, only having barely disagreed with her father, changing his tune. Delivering her ultimatums, shouting and angry, as if she had done something utterly terrible – when all she had meant to do was to ensure that Jasper did not damage the small chance she had of her marriage being reasonable after all.

She stared at the carpet, ignoring his words, refusing to even acknowledge his telling her what she would do. If sullen resistance was the only chance that she had to exert some tiny amount of control over the situation, then sullen she would be.

Doing so would soon prove whether he would resort to physical punishment or not, would show her just how much she might need to do to protect herself. She glanced up at him from under lowered lashes. His expression was stormy, and the tension was apparent in his stance. He looked shockingly attractive still, and for a moment she wished that things were not as they were – that they’d had, as he had said, time to get to know each other before marrying.

But then, as she looked away, she remembered all of the rumours. Had his father been a dark and dangerous man, who had driven his wife mad, then killed her, as the villagers thought? And if so, how much of that darkness lived on in the man she had married?

She shivered, afraid in a way that no amount of her own hoarded outrage could warm her against, and wished with all her heart that things had been different, that her father had approved of the one man she had actually loved, that he had lived, that all of this need never have happened.

But that was foolishness too.

He was dead and gone, and she had to find a way to live on in this nightmare.

Perhaps she would go mad in the gloomy corridors of Darkmire Abbey too, and spend her life locked away in a tower indeed, wailing at the moon.