Page 25 of The Reclusive Earl's Scandal
Her heart sped up, and Rebecca, for a moment, could only stare at her father. Rage built within her, a slow thing that crept over her like a tidal wave that she knew she would drown in if she didn’t catch herself in time.
There was no point in lying, so Rebecca nodded.
“I did,” she said. “And I will not apologise because you certainly would not ever tell me the truth, so I had to find out for myself. You are gambling away we do not have. I know the furniture from the entry hall was not relocated. Resold, perhaps, but not relocated. I have searched the house top to bottom.Father, you cannot continue spending money we do not have! I read the debtor’s words. We could go destitu...”
“Silence.”
Her father’s order cut through the hallway, and Rebecca flinched into stiff quietness, biting her lip.
“You accuse me terribly, my dear eldest.” His voice softened, a mockery of comfort, and she hated this version of him, she thought. Her father didn’t come closer but he didn’t need to. His presence was overwhelming enough.
His auburn hair brushed away from his forehead in sweat-slicked layers, several strands hanging forward. Gray eyes colder than any metal stared out at her. Rebecca had gotten so much from her father in both looks and personality, but she had not inherited his penchant for terrible decisions. She hoped.
“I do not mean to accuse you, Papa,” she mumbled softly. “My words come from a place of desperation. Surely you understand. I am charming every suitor I can to keep word from slipping free about your—our finances. At this moment, I do not even know if I have a dowry.”
More silence filled the hallway, and her father’s anger scored across his face, offended at her doubt. “You have a dowry, Rebecca.”
“And how long will it be until you gamble or drink that away, too?”
“Rebecca,” her mother began, but she turned her gaze onto her instead.
“And you! Mama, I respect you, I respect you both greatly, but surely you cannot stand by and watch this happen. There are four more after me who will need gowns, tailcoats, new books for lessons, estates, ways to woo a lady or a suitor. What will you do?” Her eyes burned back onto her father. “What willyoudo, if you do not stop wasting your own wealth?”
His eyes narrowed threateningly, but Rebecca held her ground. Instead of moving back from him out of fear as he likely expected, she approached him. She embraced her father as she had once done, back before alcohol didn’t numb everything for him, back when his world was soft enough with love instead of the burn of brandy and the adrenaline of a momentary victory at a gambling den.
“Papa,” she whispered, “Papa, I beg you, please put money aside into an account you cannot access easily. Have your accountant secured behind a code, or something!Please. My siblings and I need money for our marriages. My sisters will both be out within the next four years. They need security and opportunities.”
“It does not matter.” Her father drew back from her embrace, shaking his head. “They either will marry well, or they will not. That is out of my control.”
“How can they marry well when you know best that a man’s decision is guided often by the size of a dowry? Our name might not be enough to even see me into a good match, let alone them.”
“You have flirted with plenty of suitors,” her father muttered, the judgement and casual nature of his words stinging. “You have enough options if you stop being so picky.”
“Father...”
“And speaking of options,” he continued, and Rebecca took the moment to realize her mother had retreated into the music room, “I heard of your agreement with the Maudley boy. Perhaps you ought to be the one doing your siblings a favor and marry him before word gets out and he ruins your reputation.”
Rebecca drew back. “You would not have me do that. He is not of rank.”
Suddenly, the anger drained from her father, replaced with a weary exhaustion she had never seen before. Daring to move closer, Rebecca showed her concern. “Father?”
Her father glanced towards the music room, where the soft plucking of harp strings came, and he grimaced before walking into the drawing room. Rebecca followed, unable to help her eyes being drawn to the bar where the bottles and glasses had been righted from earlier, if only to allow her father an organized place to drink, no doubt.
He sank into the leather armchair he’d sat in so often that it was indented with his shape. He reached to the side, to the rounded table that likely held his drink when he sat there alone, but there was none, the glass already emptied and cleaned away.
Rebecca held her breath, waiting for him to ask if she would make him one. In the end, he only sighed.
“Rebecca,” he began, his voice halting. He stared down at his loosely clasped hands. “When you were born, I remember holding you, and I remember promising you the world. I thought that there was no stone I would not turn for you, no barrier I would not remove. And now I have failed you, and when you have confronted me with these failings it only makes me more aware of everything, I bury beneath…” He gestured vaguely to that empty table.Beneath his drink.
“Was I too harsh?” she asked.
Her father shook his head. “You were right, and it shames me that it must come to being reprimanded by my own daughter. I cannot promise to change, not easily, and not overnight, but I want to advise you. Marry for love, Rebecca. I know what you are doing, and while I am proud and a selfish part of me wants you to continue, I know that as your father I cannot allow you to charm your way through a ballroom, make a name for yourself, in the hopes that marriage will save our own finances.”
Rebecca blinked at him, shock sliding through her. She had expected anger but she had not expected this, this moment of clarity and admittance.
“Do not do what I did,” he muttered. “Your mother married me for love; I married her for comfort and power, and it became love for a while, a love that faded just as quickly as it arrived. Now I am miserable with a passive wife who does not care whether I stumble home to her bed or wake up in the doorway of whatever tavern I drank dry.”
He grimaced, and Rebecca burned with secondhand shame for him. Other than that, to hear a more intimate side of her parents was unusual and she didn’t know how to navigate it.
