Page 31 of Duke of Diamonds
“And what duties have you fulfilled as the daughter you claim to be?” he demanded, his voice like a whip crack in the stillness.
Fiona opened her mouth, but her mother, desperate to intervene, spoke first. “Oh, George, do understand that?—”
“It is all your fault for raising me a little whore!” George thundered, slicing through Prudence’s words without so much as a glance in her direction.
Fiona’s hands curled into tight fists at her sides. The humiliation scorched her skin, but she refused to bow under it. She lifted her chin, forcing her voice to remain steady. “I am not a whore, Father,” she said, her words sharp as glass. “And Irefuse to stand here and listen to your insults. No matter the circumstances.”
Her father’s lips peeled back in a snarl. “You are just as shameless, are you not?” he growled, his tone dropping into a menacing rumble.
Fiona held his gaze, though her heart hammered painfully against her ribs. “It is not a lack of shame,” she answered evenly, “but a simple act of self-protection. Your words are too cruel.”
“Cruel?” George echoed, feigning disbelief as though the very notion were absurd.
He took a step closer, and Fiona’s every muscle tensed. “Cruelty,” he hissed, “is the shame you have brought upon my pristine name. Cruelty is you owing me everything and yet setting it all ablaze before my very eyes.”
The heat of her anger surged, mingling with a sorrow so deep it hollowed her out. “Oh, but you left me no choice, Father,” Fiona cried, her voice breaking.
The words seemed to strike something deep within George. A stillness fell over him, thick and foreboding. His eyes, wide with realization, flashed with renewed fury.
Before Fiona could draw breath, his hand struck her across the face with a force that snapped her head to the side.
Pain bloomed hot and fast across her cheek, and she stumbled, catching herself against the edge of a side table. Her hand flew to her face, cradling the sting as tears sprang, unbidden, to her eyes.
“You planned all of this,” her father spat, his voice low and shaking with rage.
Fiona did not answer. What would be the use?He will see only betrayal where there was survival.
Prudence rushed to her side, her arms coming around Fiona in a protective embrace.
“How dare you strike her, George?” her mother cried, her voice rising in a rare, desperate defiance that made Fiona’s heart twist anew.
Her father tore Fiona from her mother’s embrace with a glare so venomous it chilled her to the bone.
“How dare you give me a lightskirt for a daughter?” George thundered at Prudence, his words slicing through the room with savage finality.
There was nothing left to say. Nothing that might undo the damage.
Turning on Fiona once more, he pointed a trembling finger toward the staircase. “You will go to your room, girl.”
Fiona’s throat constricted, her chest rising and falling in uneven jerks.
“I shall decide what is to be done with you come morning,” her father added, his voice cold as iron.
Hot tears burned the backs of Fiona’s eyes, but she steeled herself against them, forcing her features into a mask of blankness.You shall not see me break. Not you.
Chin high, she curtsied stiffly—more mockery than respect—and turned without a word, climbing the stairs with mechanical precision. The moment her bedchamber door clicked shut behind her, however, her knees buckled.
Fiona slid down the door and crumpled onto the floor, the sobs she had swallowed bursting forth unchecked. Her hands covered her face as she wept, the violence of it shaking her slight frame.
I am either saved or ruined,she thought bitterly, pressing her forehead against the wood.
Most likely the latter.
Surely the Duke of Craton would want nothing more to do with her now. Surely he would not stoop to entangle himself further with a woman so marred by scandal.
At least you are free of Canterlack,a small voice whispered inside her.
But the comfort it offered was slight. For where she had wrested herself from the Earl’s cruelty, she had merely traded it for another’s. Her father’s.
