Page 5 of Her Beast of a Duke
She was supposed to be the faultless, doted diamond.
Yet I have failed.
“All I mean to say,” Isabella went on carefully, “is that this can be fixed, I am sure.”
In truth, she was anything but sure.
Her mother’s hands flailed, her voice cracking with every word. “The audacity! The ruin! The—oh, everything?—”
Sibyl ventured softly, “M-mother, perhaps… not all is lost. Surely, we can still?—”
“Lost!” her mother shrieked, spinning toward her third daughter. “Do you think your innocence, your lack of scandal, changes a thing? You are far too young to understand the ruin already wrought!”
Sibyl fell silent, biting her lip as her mother collapsed into fresh hysterics.
See? Isabella asked herself.See how you have failed them already.
She ground her teeth and fought back against the terrible voice in her head. She could fix this—shehadto fix this.
“Marry, Isabella,” her mother finally pleaded. “Be wed before the end of the Season. This family is not strong enough to weather more shame. Please pickanyone.Any suitor you please, I will approve; your father will approve. Isabella, we are too old to endure such scandals. First Hermia, now you.”
The displeasure was all too clear in the curl of her mother’s lip, and Isabella fought not to cringe away from it. Her eyes fell downward to the rose-colored gown she wore, pretty yet simple.Her fingers fought not to curl into her skirts, a nervous tic she had developed.
She was strong, and she was beautiful, but her mind still sought ways to relieve her of the many masks she wore.
As soon as her mother’s eyes dropped to that tic, Isabella immediately stopped fidgeting.
“You will be engaged again before the Season ends,” her mother said decisively, and Isabella knew that was the only option she had.
Her stomach sank so heavily that she feared she would retch.
“Mama, maybe some more time would be best,” she protested. “Let the gossip die down before I attempt to find another suitor. After all, will a gentleman truly want me if I am… freshly abandoned at the altar?”
“Abandoned or not, you are still a diamond.” Her mother flicked a dismissive hand in her direction. Isabella’s teeth ground together as she lowered her gaze. “You aremydiamond, Isabella. I thought I made that clear enough.”
“You did,” she muttered.
“Speak up, darling. Now, do think of your sisters. Hermia did not think of you three when she got herself tangled in her ownscandal, and look at the embarrassment you all suffered. You would not want to put that onto poor Sibyl or Alicia, would you?”
Oh, you wretched woman, Isabella thought darkly, lifting a glare to her mother while her parents nodded smugly to one another as if they already anticipated winning this particular battle.
Through gritted teeth, Isabella finally relented. She had been groomed to be the performer, and she would be damned if she did not uphold that now.
“Is this truly what you think is best?” she questioned.
Her mother’s chin lifted, her hard gaze cutting back to Isabella. “Yes. Yes, I do. There must be a gentleman who’d swoop in and act the hero, Isabella. That is the way these things work, and you ought to know that by now. Simply look at Hermia’s husband. He could not move fast enough to save her when she needed it. And Sibyl… oh, she is ever so excited to find her true match. Please do not ruin it for her, Isabella.”
Guilt wrapped a hard ribbon around Isabella’s heart as she thought of her younger sister’s soft face, her bright eyes alight with hope that had not entirely been crushed, and the dreams she had spoken of for years.
Dreams that Isabella had always quietly dismissed, for that was not the way life worked, but she could not be the one who dashed her sister’s romantic ambitions so cruelly. If she did, she was no better than her mother.
Her youngest sisters, Sibyl and Alicia, were innocent. Sibyl, only a year younger than Isabella, was free to nurture her beautiful dreams of making an exquisite match with a dashing suitor. Alicia, who was three years Isabella’s junior, cherished similar hopes, despite all her practical tendencies. It was Alicia who would sharply rebuke anyone who dared to gossip about Isabella or Hermia. But still—she wanted, and deserved, to tread her own path, one that was not already littered and broken by the indiscretions of her older siblings.
“Fine,” she finally said. “Fine, Mother. Whatever you say.”
“Isabella, do not speak to your mother like?—”
But she was already storming out of the room.
