‘You are no longer to be married to the Duke of Kendal. There is... It is only that I thought the man dead and I did not imagine I would have to honour any prior agreements.’
‘This is the first I’ve heard of any agreements.’ She folded her hands in her lap and affected a bland expression. There was no point or purpose to arguing with her father. At best, protestations fell on deaf ears. At worst, she often caught the edge of his temper.
Penny had no wish to engage with her father in either state. And so, it was best to remain bland. Her emotions upset him. So much so at her mother’s funeral that he had locked her away for days after.
And so she had learned to lock her feelings away. She felt them still, echoing inside her chest like a cry in an empty room. But no one could see them. No one could use them against her.
Later, she had learned this particular method of dealing with him. Rational responses. Forcing him to repeat his statements multiple times. She’d read once about negotiating tactics in war and had internalised the lesson.
Her father’s one virtue was that he was in possession of a rather good library. More for vanity than his actual use, but she’d made use of it and often.
Books had been her companions growing up in this house where her father was rarely in residence and staff came and went like spirits in the night.
She’d long suspected the disappearance of staff was due to lack of payment, for she knew they had joined the ranks of the peerage who had title, reputation and a position in society, but no money to support any of it. Their home was a metaphor for the position. Stately, large and crumbling inside.
The ornate, tarnished gold that adorned the ceilings and door frames seemed a mockery of what they were now. All gilded with no substance.
The paper hangings in the drawing room had been a rich blue once, faded now to a mottled navy. What had formerly looked like expensive, damask silk now looked like worn paint. It didn’t much matter, as her father hadn’t entertained here since her mother’s death when Penny was five.
Her father didn’t have to announce their dire straits for it to be obvious to Penny.
Penny wasn’t a fool. She spent her hours reading and watching. When there was someone around she talked to them. Servant, chaperon, even the falconer who lived on the estate. She would talk to anyone. She hated silence. Silence created fertile ground for terrible memories and awful feelings to rise up to the surface, and that didn’t accomplish anything. However, asking endless questions was the simplest way to find common ground with a person and she’d discovered that not everyone was like her father. Not everyone told her to be quiet the moment she made a noise. And so, she asked. And asked and asked.
How the household worked. What London society was like. How long it took for an egg to become a chicken.
She remembered everything.
It might not soothe her loneliness, but it helped her put together a clear picture of the world. Of the reality of the situation she and her father were in.
‘I did not require your opinion to be given, Penelope, you did not need to be consulted. But you will marry the Scot.’
She was in disbelief. Her face was hot, as if she’d stuck it in the fire where her toast had just been made. Her hands were cold as ice, as though she had some grave illness.
It felt a blessing because it was better than the absolute despair that was just beneath it. But there was no point giving in to that, nor the rage she could feel beginning to churn inside her.
She didn’t know what horrified her more. The fact her hopes were being burned to the ground before her eyes, or the fact that she was having difficulty controlling her response.
If she spoke out of turn, her father would fly off into a temper and then not only would she be less an engagement to a duke, she would know nothing of her current situation.
Her father, when challenged, was all bluster and rage and no useful information at all.
‘Have you spoken to the Duke of Kendal, Father?’ she asked, choosing her words and tone carefully.
She wanted to yell. To scream and cry and fling herself on the ground like a child denied a sweet. But being a child, free to release emotion whenever it welled up in her chest, had ended when her mother had died.
Mourning was supposed to be worn on your body. Signified by the colour. It wasn’t supposed to overtake who you were. To run rampant through your chest leaving jagged, painful wounds that felt as though they would never heal.
She had learned to keep her feelings hidden away. She had a jewellery box that had been her mother’s and, while she’d inherited no jewellery—all sold to pay the estate’s debts—she’d treasured the heavy wooden box with its gold lock since she was small. She kept stones and feathers inside, little trinkets she’d collected on the grounds. Treasures her father couldn’t sell, but that marked the years of her life, years spent wandering the grounds alone. Things that mattered only to her.
When her mother had died, she hadn’t understood. One of the boys who worked in the stables had told her it meant her mother was being put in a wooden box under the ground. She’d started to wail. A deep, painful sound that had come from the depths of who she was. And her father...he’d been so angry. He’d screamed at her to stop. Uncaring of all the servants who witnessed it. He’d carried her into the house and set her in the centre
