He’d banished her to her room, and roared at the staff she wasn’t to come out until she’d stopped crying.
And there she’d stayed. For nearly three days. She’d felt as though she was in that wooden box the boy had said her mother was in. She’d felt buried in misery. And then she’d taken her mother’s jewellery box down from her vanity and had brought it into bed with her. Held it close against her chest. And when she’d had a feeling that was too big, too bright and sharp to be contained in her chest, she’d imagined locking it away in that box.
She hadn’t cried since then. Not for years. She simply put her feelings in the jewellery box. With all the stones and feathers and other precious things she could not afford to let her father touch.
It was what she did now. She imagined locking all of her fear, her anger, her sadness, away. Those feelings wouldn’t help her now.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet, but there is nothing—’
‘Only,’ she said, cutting him off, trying to disguise the desperation in her voice, ‘I am certain the Duke will know what to do and will have some means of assisting us as our engagement is common knowledge. And I have purchased my trousseau.’
Paid for by the Duke, of course, as her father could never have provided her with the trappings required by a duchess.
And the Duke’s family...his sister and his ward, his mother. She was supposed to live with them. She was supposed to have real friends.
The bit of toast in her stomach was now sitting heavily.
Penny’s engagement to His Grace, the Duke of Kendal, had been her father’s greatest triumph. It had been evidence to him that perhaps having a daughter had some value.
For him to dissolve such an arrangement and offer her hand to a soldier, a Scottish soldier at that, spoke of a situation so desperate she could scarcely fathom it.
She loved the Duke and everything he represented. Everything about him. From his lovely manners to his exquisitely formed face and his perfectly manicured manor. The one good thing her father had ever done was put her in the position to secure the match.
It had come as a shock to her. She’d never been given a proper debut. It was a match borne from geographical luck and she was not foolish enough to think otherwise.
The Duke’s grand country estate was only an hour’s ride away. One day when she’d been out walking she had discovered the Duke’s sister, lost and covered in mud. She’d brought her back to the house and given her tea and toast.
It had been a great shock when the Duke himself had appeared to ferry his sister home.
His mother had sent her thanks and an invitation to tea.
It had been the beginning of something Penny had never even dreamed of. A fantasy too fine for her to have ever spun for herself. Perhaps, she might have dreamed it, but only if she imagined first that she were someone else and not simply Penelope Hastings.
She would never know the full circumstances of why exactly the Duke had chosen to marry her rather than a girl who had graced London’s ballrooms for the Season. Though as she had got to know him she had made some guesses as to why.
Penny knew she was beautiful. Along with that empty jewellery box, beauty was the only thing her mother had left her. She knew, though, that it was not her beauty that appealed to the Duke of Kendal. Rather she imagined he took great pleasure in circumnavigating the rabid mothers of the marriage mart and finding himself a wife who was respectable, free of scandal and entirely his choice.
Her father’s pleasure in the match was self-serving on his part and she knew it. She also didn’t care. Without a good marriage she would be left with nothing. It was a matter of survival. She had expected to be forced into marriage to a toothless old man whose lack of hair on his head was to be compensated for by the gold in his purse.
She had expected something like this.
And to be given the Duke, only to have him replaced, was a blow to her heart, her hope, her pride, that she had not expected.
Her father had found a way to be worse than her every expectation.
Because he had given her something sweet, a dream spun from sugar and gold, then burned it to dust before her.
She’d been sure her father had lost the ability to hurt her. Disappoint her.
She’d been wrong.
‘He has informed me that he will be procuring a special licence. And after that, you will return with him to Scotland.’
Without thought, Penny pushed herself back from the table and sat for a moment. Then she stood slowly, the room tilting as she did, though her feet remained firmly planted on the ground.
She was not only losing her future husband, but also the plans for her future. The beautiful jewel box of a withdrawing room at Bybee House was not faded. Rather the paper hangings were a cheerful pink, with gold detail and ornate marble like twisted vines over the walls and ceilings. She’d already imagined sitting there for hours and sewing, reading, petting a cat.
She had planned on getting a cat. One she would keep in the house and not out in the barn simply to trap mice.
To say nothing of the Duchess of Kendal, the Duke’s mother, who had become so dear to her. His younger sister and his ward, who had become such good friends to her. Who had made her feel as though she might not have to be lonely any more and she could have friends that existed outside the pages of a book.
She hadn’t felt like that in a long time. Not since...well, not since Lachlan. A servant who had worked on the
