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his on our own.”
“The only way of stopping father from marrying us off is to do something that makes us unmarriageable,” Sian hissed.
“Like what?” Martha sighed. “What can we do that just makes it look as if we are ruined but doesn’t actually ruin us?”
“Grow warts or something?” Lucinda shrugged and looked just as helpless as everyone felt.
“Well, I am not going to sit around here and have that oaf foisted on me. I am going to marry Isambard and only Isambard,” Martha sniffed.
“You can’t do that if we go to Aunt Sophia’s,” Sian sighed.
“I am not going to leave him,” Martha wailed. “I won’t. I can’t.”
“Well, if your father doesn’t want that to happen and we do then we shall just have to arrange your wedding without his involvement,” Mabel announced defiantly. “I am your parent as well and have just as much right to agree to your union as he does. If he won’t agree to it, I will and that is the end of the matter.”
Martha brightened considerably. “You mean, we can have the wedding without his permission? Can we do that?”
“I can assure you that we most certainly can. I mean, you don’t need Arthur to sign any contract or hand over any dowry. There is no reason why you cannot marry if I give you permission to do so,” Martha informed her, hoping desperately that she was right in her assumptions.
“What will the vicar say? He will want to speak with father about the donation to the church, won’t he? Then there will have to be the formal announcements made and the banns read in church on Sunday,” Sian countered. She hated to dash Martha’s hopes but didn’t want either her or her mother to get carried away. They would only have their carefully laid plans thwarted in the long run, and it would be heart-breaking for them all.
“Can we get married without our father’s permission?” Martha’s eyes were alive with hope.
“Yes, you most certainly can.”
While her mother and Martha discussed how they were going to get around the formal arrangements of Martha’s wedding to Isambard, Sian turned her attention to the scene outside the window. The plans resolved Martha’s fight to marry the man she loved but did little to resolve her own situation. Suddenly, the weight of helplessness hung heavily over her. Sian sucked in a breath to try to quash it, but her wayward thoughts turned to the prospect of being married to Cedrick anyway, and left her even more melancholy.
In the back of her mind, an awful scene played itself out in her destructive mind. It was of her standing at the altar, flowers in hand, her view of the church obscured by a heavy veil. When it was lifted, the hopeless desperation that hovered over her began to eat away at her soul because she found herself staring into the smirking face of Cedrick, the man she was truly starting to despise. The thought of having to stand and even say the words that would bind her life with his made her want to tear her hair out in despair. She wanted to rage at Fate, and shout at her father until he began to hear some common sense. Until he began to hear her, but she knew it would be futile. If there was one thing her father did, it was never revoke any of his decisions. Once his mind was made up he stuck to it no matter what anybody said.
“It is what has driven us into this mess in the first place,” she whispered.
Sian panicked. It seemed to bubble up from a hot cauldron of despair. It welled until it overflowed and swept through her veins, snatching all trace of warmth from within her. It left behind an icy emptiness that was suffocating. Tears stung her eyes. She tried to draw in a breath, but her lungs just wouldn’t work so she had to pant instead. The tears on her cheeks weren’t felt because the pain that sprang forth from the centre of her chest was so intense that she couldn’t focus on anything else. She knew then that she would live the rest of her life in the closest thing to Hell it was possible to imagine. The thought of having Cedrick touch her, kiss her the way Ryan had was enough to make her feel sick. She wanted to smack something, to scream and shout, to throw things and rage with all the wildness in her soul. She wanted to stomp her feet and shake her father and force Cedrick back into Wilhelmina’s carriage and make him go away.
But of course, she could do none of those things because she didn’t have the right to. She didn’t even have a say on her own future; in who her own husband was. It was horrifying to think of the kind of life that lay before her. The barrenness. The cruelty that Cedrick seemed to enjoy so much.
“I would rather die,” she hissed.
“Sian?” Mabel murmured, looking truly alarmed.
Sian jerked when her mother placed a hand on her arm. She looked blankly down at it and shook it off. Blindly, she stared at her mother, as if she didn’t recognise her. Not even her mother could get her out of the fate that awaited her. Deep in the back of her mind, a part of her knew that if she went to Sophia’s she would temporarily escape but at some point, she would have to return and would only face the same problems. Nothing would actually be resolved by going there.
“I am not. I won’t do it. I won’t. I can’t. I won’t. I can’t.” Sian, shaking her head, backstepped to the bed chamber door.
“But dearest, you could marry Ryan,” Mabel offered gently.
“He doesn’t love me!” Sian cried. “He doesn’t. I love him but it is unrequited. He doesn’t love me.”
Sian whirled on her heel, yanked the door open, and raced out into the hallway. Later, she would have no memory of charging through the house, of shoving Frances to one side, of the resounding clatter of the plates Frances carried being smashed as were dropped. She wouldn’t be able to reflect on her father frantically bellowing her name, or Cedrick doing his best to race after her. Sian was lost to everything except the tears that blinded her, the wind that tugged her hair free of its pins, and the desperate fear that stole all trace of hope from her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
“What do you mean ‘she has gone’?” Ryan demanded. He glared at Arthur, who stood pale and shaken in the doorway of his study. “Where? Who with? When? What have you done to her?”
“She ran out of the house a couple of hours ago and hasn’t been seen since,” Mabel whispered tearfully. “The girls are out looking for her right now.”
Ryan’s gaze flew to Arthur. “Why are you not out looking for her?” he snarled.
Arthur didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze fell to the floor, but he remained stoically silent.
