AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That was Angelina’s first inkling that something might actually be truly wrong.
“Have you told her?” Petronella demanded. It took Angelina a moment to realize she was speaking to their mother, in a wild and accusing tone that Angelina, personally, would not have used on Margrete. “Have you told her of her grisly fate?”
Dorothea glared at Angelina, then turned that glare back on Petronella. “Don’t be silly, Pet. He’s hardly going to chooseAngelina. Why would he? She’s a teenager.”
Petronella made an aggrieved noise. “You know what men are like. The younger the better. Men like him can afford to indulge themselves as they please.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Angelina said coolly. She did not add,as usual. “But for the sake of argument, I should point out that I am not, in fact, a teenager. I turned twenty a few months ago.”
“Why would he choose Angelina?” Dorothea asked again, shrilly. Her dirty-blond hair was cut into a sleek bob that shook when she spoke. “It will be me, of course. As eldest daughter, it is my duty to prostrate myself before this threat.For all of us.”
“Do come off it,” Petronella snapped right back. “You’re gagging for it to be you. He’s slaughtered six wives and will no doubt chop your head off on your wedding night, but by all means. At least you’ll die a rich man’s widow.” She shifted, brushing out her long, silky, golden blond hair. “Besides. It’s obvious he’ll choose me.”
“Why is that obvious?” Dorothea asked icily.
Angelina knew where this was going immediately. She settled into her seat, crossing her ankles demurely, because Mother was always watching. Even when she appeared to be concentrating on her needlepoint.
Petronella cast her eyes down toward her lap, but couldn’t quite keep the smug look off of her face. “I have certain attributes that men find attractive. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Too many men, Pet,” Dorothea retorted, smirking. “He’s looking for a wife, not used goods.”
And when they began screeching at each other, Angelina turned toward her mother. “Am I meant to know what they’re talking about?”
Margrete gazed at her elder two daughters as if she wasn’t entirely certain who they were or where they’d come from. She stabbed her sharp needle into her canvas, repeatedly. Then she shifted her cold gaze to Angelina.
“Your father has presented us with a marvelous opportunity, dear,” she said.
Thedearwas concerning. Angelina found herself sitting a bit straighter. And playing closer attention than she might have otherwise. Margrete was not the sort who tossed out endearments willy-nilly. Or at all. For her to use one now, while Dorothea and Petronella bickered, made a cold premonition prickle at the back of Angelina’s neck.
“An opportunity?” she asked.
Angelina thought she’d kept her voice perfectly clear of any inflection, but her mother’s cold glare told her otherwise.
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, young lady,” Margrete snipped at her. “Your father’s been at his wit’s end, running himself ragged attempting to care for this family. Are these the thanks he gets?”
Angelina knew better than to answer that question.
Margrete carried on in the same tone. “I lie awake at night, asking myself how a man as pure of intention as your poor father could be cursed with three daughters so ungrateful that all they do is complain about the bounty before them.”
Angelina rather thought her mother lay awake at night wondering how it was she’d come to marry so far beneath her station, which seemed remarkably unlike the woman Angelina knew. Margrete, as she liked to tell anyone who would listen, and especially when she’d had too much wine, had had her choice of young men. Angelina couldn’t understand how she’d settled on Anthony Charteris, the last in a long line once littered with titles, all of which they’d lost in this or that revolution. Not to mention a robust hereditary fortune, very little of which remained. And almost all of which, if Angelina had overheard the right conversations correctly, her father had gambled and lost in one of his numerous ill-considered business deals.
She didn’t say any of that either.
“He’s marrying us off,” Petronella announced. She cultivated a sulky look, preferring to pout prettily in pictures, but tonight it looked real. That was alarming enough. But worse was Dorothea’s sage nod from beside her, as if the two of them hadn’t been at each other’s throats moments before. And as if Dorothea, who liked to claim she was a bastion of rational thought despite all evidence to the contrary, actuallyagreedwith Petronella’s theatrical take.
“We are but chattel,” Dorothea intoned. “Bartered away like a cow or a handful of seeds.”
“He will not be marrying off all three of you to the same man,” Mother said reprovingly. “Such imaginations! If only this level of commitment to storytelling could be applied to helping dig the family out of the hole we find ourselves in. Perhaps then your father would not have to lower himself to this grubby bartering. Your ancestors would spin their graves if they knew.”
“Bartering would be one thing,” Dorothea retorted in a huff. “This is notbartering, Mother. This is nothing less than a guillotine.”
Angelina waited for her mother to sigh and recommend her daughters take to the stage, as she did with regularity—something that would have caused instant, shame-induced cardiac arrest should they ever have followed her advice. But when Mother only stared back at her older daughters, stone-faced, that prickle at the back of Angelina’s neck started to intensify. She sat straighter.
“Surely we all knew that the expectation was that we would find rich husbands, someday,” Angelina said, carefully. Because that was one of the topics she avoided, having always assumed that long before she did as expected and married well enough to suit her mother’s aspirations, if not her father’s wallet, she would make her escape. “Assuming any such men exist who wished to take on charity cases such as ours.”
“Charity cases!” Margrete looked affronted. “I hope your father never hears you utter such a phrase, Angelina. Such an ungrateful, vicious thing to say. That the Charteris name should be treated with such contempt by one who bears it! If I had not been present at your birth I would doubt you were my daughter.”
Given that Margrete expressed such doubts in a near constant refrain, Angelina did not find that notion as hurtful she might have otherwise.
