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Father rubbed his face, the years appearing suddenly in his frown. “Oh, my dear…no. You wouldn’t be the wife of Jacques de Villiers, but instead, the wife ofTheodorede Villiers.”
The words struck me, making my mouth nearly too dry to speak.
“Wait,” I croaked out. “You want me…”
I lost my voice.
“Theodore is a man of great wealth and power,” Father returned. “He also has strong character and is quite popular with women in his city.”
“Women his own age, I’m sure! Father, you can’t set me up with a man twice my age!”
“A man your age has no assets.”
“Jacques as well? Surely his father will pass down his assets…”
Father sipped his wine, swishing it to the side of his cheek. “He has no inheritance.”
“No inheritance? Even the youngest have an inheritance. Not unless he’s—”
Father’s eyes flashed. All my words dried up in my throat.
Jacques was a bastard son. That would be the only reason he wouldn’t get an inheritance.
Father’s eyes softened alongside his shoulders.
“It’s not often that Monsieur De Villiers has the opportunity to spend time with Jacques without gossip and slander,” Father continued. “I had hoped that this family would be a safe place for them both.”
I folded my arms as I thought about it. It was quite a social rebellion to take in a bastard son. Lina was a bastard child herself, and I remembered the gossip and cruelty she faced from other staff members in our home when our mother decided to hire her. Thinking of her suffering—her lack of prospects and options—I couldn’t speak ill of such a family.
If Monsieur De Villiers was acknowledging Jacques in public, then he indeed a generous man. But marriage?
Father’s hands on my shoulders brought me out of my thoughts.
“If I had another option, my love, I’d give you an inheritance so large that you never had to set foot at the altar. But I’m afraid…”
He sighed in defeat. Recently he had held back his despair behind a wide, forced smile, but now he couldn’t seem to hold back his true feelings. It was clear there were no other options for us.
“We’re broke, aren’t we?” I asked.
He chewed his lip, his eyes glossing over. “This might be the last birthday you see in this house, my love.”
I clenched my teeth, nodding. Even without him saying the words, I could guess it: Father had spent the last of his money to celebrate my birthday.
How could I defy a man who loved me so? How could I take what was his for twenty-one years and then give him nothing in return?
At that moment, I had a vision of him as an old man with no home, healthcare, or food. It crushed my spirit. I could never allow him to reach that point.
“All right, Father,” I whispered brokenly. “I’ll do as you wish.”
***
It was hard to celebrate after that.
I wanted to forget the course of the future and spend my last moments as a single woman in reckless abandon, but the weight of the future was too heavy.
I instead removed myself from the party and walked out onto the ballroom balcony to look out onto the glorious ocean on the horizon in all its wonder, eventually turning my eyes up to the stars and getting lost in my own thoughts.
Marriage was the right thing to do. Father had given everything he had for our family, and I knew if there had been another way he would have ripped the sky apart to give it to me.
