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A virgin sacrifice to a dark king.
“You must ask him for what you want,” Margrete told her, her voice matter-of-fact, but her eyes dark. “A piano, for example.”
“He has already promised me a Steinway.”
Margrete moved the skirt of the wedding gown this way, then that. “You must not be afraid to make demands, but you must also submit to his.” Again, a touch of her dark gaze in the mirror. “No matter what, Angelina. Do you understand me? With a smile, if possible.”
Angelina expected her sisters to chime in then, making arch comments about sex and their experiences, but they were silent. She looked in the glass and found them sitting on the end of her bed, looking...she would have said lost, if they had been anyone else.
“I’m not afraid of his demands,” she said.
It wasn’t until her mother’s gaze snapped to hers again that she realized perhaps she ought to have been.
“You must remember that no matter what, you need only call and I will come to you,” Margrete said then, as if she was making her own vows.
Angelina could not have been more shocked if her mother had shared sordid details of her own sexual exploits. “I... Really?”
Margrete turned Angelina then, taking her by the shoulders so she could look into her face.
“You’re not the first girl to be ransomed off for the benefit of her family,” Margrete said in a low, direct voice. “My father lost me in a card game.”
There was a muffled sound of surprise from the bed. But their mother did not wait for that astonishing remark to sink in. Margrete lifted her chin, her fingers gripping Angelina’s shoulders so hard she was half worried they would leave a mark.
“Life is what you make of it. Some parts are unpleasant, others regretful—but those are things you cannot control. You can always control yourself. You can school your reactions. You can master your own heart. And no one can ever take that from you, Angelina. No one.”
“But Papa...” Angelina was turning over the idea of a card game and her severe grandfather in her head. “Papa was not a murderer.”
“All men are murderers.” Margrete’s dark eyes flashed. “They take a daughter and make her a woman whether she wants it or not. They kill a girl to create a wife, then a mother. It’s all a question of degrees, child.”
And with those words, Margrete took her youngest daughter by the hand and led her down the grand, restored stair to the ballroom, where she handed Angelina off to her father.
The father who hadwonher mother, not wooed her, as Angelina had always found so hard to imagine.
The father who did not look at the daughter he was sacrificing to line his pockets even once as he marched her down the aisle, then married her off to a monster.
CHAPTER FIVE
BENEDETTOTOLERATEDTHECEREMONY.
Barely.
God knew, he was tired of weddings.
His angel walked toward him, spurred on to unseemly haste by her portly father, who was practically salivating at the opportunity to hand her over to Benedetto’s keeping. Or to her death. That Anthony Charteris had not required Benedetto to make any statements or promises about Angelina’s well-being showed exactly what kind of man he was.
Tiny. Puny. Greedy and selfish to his core.
But then, Benedetto already knew that. If Anthony hadn’t been precisely that kind of man, he wouldn’t have come to Benedetto’s notice.
As weddings went, this one was painless enough. There was no spectacle, no grand cathedral, no pageant. The words were said, and quickly, and the only ones he cared about came from Angelina’s mouth.
“I do,” she said, her voice quiet, but not weak. “I will.”
He slid a ring onto her hand and felt his own greed kick hard enough inside that he could hardly set himself apart from Charteris. What moral high ground did he thinkheinhabited?
Soon,he told himself.Soon enough.
The priest intoned the words that bound them, and then it was done.
