The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1) (51 page)

“I realize,” Rowena continued, oozing the kind of mock-honeyed charm that Isla had grown to know so well, “that not everybody can be as happy as I am.”

“I hope that you are happy,” Isla said sincerely.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What?”

“Your tone seemed awfully…pointed, just now.”

“No.” Isla tried to smile, and failed. She felt suddenly anxious. “I was trying to be nice. You’re my sister and I love you and I
do
want you to be happy.”

Rowena sniffed, unimpressed. She hadn’t touched her breakfast. “I suppose you think you’re very superior, now that
you’re
marrying the duke.” She tried her own ale, made a face, and put the cup down. Isla wondered if Rowena was realizing, now, that marrying Rudolph would mean several more decades of drinking the same thin, sour Highlands ale. “But he wanted me first,” Rowena added. “And he would have married me, but for
your
interference. You should remember that. If he
really
loved you, Isla, he would have picked you first.”

“And if he’d really loved you, he wouldn’t have chosen me!” Isla cried, and far more loudly than she’d intended.

She’d had enough. She knew she shouldn’t let herself get so upset, not over something so cursedly stupid, but Rowena’s constant nitpicking was like the biting of a particularly pernicious gnat: what began as mere annoyance grew, through simple process of repetition, into unbearable agony. Rowena’s vanity was hardly a hidden attribute; she was undoubtedly soothing her own wounded pride at having been passed over, and nothing more. And yet, in that instant, Isla wanted nothing so much as to hit her. She stood up, determined to leave the table and end this fight before it had a chance to escalate. Which it would, if she knew Rowena. And herself.

Rowena sniffed again. “I just mean that maybe you should think about that, the next time you’re kneeling down in front of him like a common whore.”

Isla dropped her cup. It hit the table and rolled off the edge, onto the floor where it hit with a clatter. Isla didn’t notice. “What?” she breathed.

“I followed you.” Rowena’s tone was accusing. “That first night, after you told me that you
needed some air
. I knew you were up to something.”

“I care for him,” Isla said in a small voice.

“You disgust me.” And from Rowena’s tone, Isla knew that she meant what she said.

Isla stared at her across the table, at a loss. “But you care for Rudolph, surely you see that….” That when people loved each other, they wanted to be with each other. That there was nothing unnatural or wrong about desiring a man with whom she was in love. That she intended to marry. Did Rowena truly share no such feelings?

“Rudolph,” Rowena replied icily, “cares for me. And so he respects me.”

“And you don’t think—”

“He wants me
without
my having to suck his cock.”

“Rowena!” Isla put her hand over her mouth. “I did this for you,” she whispered. “For
you
. Because
you wanted to marry Rudolph
. And now you’d begrudge me even a little bit of happiness? Why? You got what you wanted—why is it so important that I be miserable?”

Rowena threw her cup at Isla’s head. “I hate you!”

And with that, she was gone.

Isla sat back down at the kitchen table, alone in the silent room. A few minutes later, the cook came back in from wherever he’d been. He grunted in acknowledgement, didn’t question her presence, and evidenced no surprise at finding the lady of the house sitting sobbing in his kitchen. Without further comment, he began preparing the night’s roast. After awhile, he handed her a ratty length of towel to use as a tissue. She blew her nose gratefully.

They were held hostage to the seasons, all of them. People grew and changed and grew apart, sometimes. And changed into different people: from themselves and from each other. Hart and Isla, over the years, had discovered more and more in common. But Rowena, the sister she’d loved almost like a child, and for whom she’d given up so much, clearly couldn’t see her for dust. She resented Isla for the sacrifice that she’d made; but whether for the fact that she’d made it or for the fact that it hadn’t turned out to be much of a sacrifice Isla wasn’t sure. There was a phrase in the Highlands:
the grass is always greener on the other side of the garden
. Perhaps Rudolph had looked better from a distance, a knight from a ballad that she could dream about at night rather than a flesh and blood man standing right in front of her. And perhaps Tristan seemed more desirable now, now that she’d witnessed how he treated Isla.

That it was all a sham wouldn’t matter nearly as much to Rowena as it did to Isla, a bit of irony that was not lost on her.

The cook had propped open the door to the kitchen gardens to let in some air. The dog, wagging happily, trotted in its spit cage. The wheel moved beneath its paws and, by an elaborate mechanism turned the long, wicked-looking bar of iron bisecting the fireplace. The dogs, mongrels most of them, loved the spit cage and vied with each other for the chance to use it. Dogs, Isla decided, were strange. But not so strange as men. Dogs, at least, knew that they were trotting endlessly to no purpose. They did it for the sheer pleasure of trotting; they didn’t care that the wheel never moved. Only men pretended that their labors meant something.

The seasons turned; the spit turned. The kitchen was beginning to overheat. In an hour or two, the air would be so thick with smoke and sweat that breathing it would be nigh on unbearable.

I
sla went in search of her father. The kitchen was getting too hot and besides, she had to face him sooner or later. She found him in his office, surrounded by ledgers and looking exhausted. He was alone. She sat down in the chair opposite without waiting to be asked and regarded him thoughtfully. He eyed her back, a good deal more warily.

The fire crackled. The silence stretched. Finally, realizing that she wasn’t going to leave, he closed the ledger in front of him and sat back in his chair. “Hello, dear. What a pleasant surprise.”

It was the first time they’d been alone together since Isla’s encounter with Father Justin. The earl hadn’t come to her room to check on her, or asked her how she was. No mention of the incident had passed his lips within her hearing. Isla only knew that he
did
know because Hart had eventually told her about their conversation. Hart, whom Isla felt like she’d barely seen.

“Hello, Father,” she said.

The earl made pleasant conversation for a few minutes, commenting on the lovely boar they’d had for dinner the night previous and obviously working himself up to something. He pointed out that the wind had been quite chill; Isla agreed. He ruminated on whether the fall hunting season would prove a bountiful one; Isla suggested that, given the paucity of food available over the summer, probably not. The cold, wet weather had made berries and grass and other things that animals ate rarer than usual and in consequence many of the forest’s offspring had died. There would be few yearling bucks, or fatted beavers.

“I, ah….” The earl trailed off. “I wish,” he said, sounding pained, “that you’d do more to get along with Rowena.”

“That
I’d
do more?” Isla blinked, unwilling to credit that she’d heard him right.

“Well yes.”

“You can’t be serious. I’ve bent over backwards to be nice to her, these past few weeks, and to overlook how she’s treated me. But she’s been a—a malicious hag!”

“She’s doing the best she can. You, on the other hand…if you were only a little sweeter to her, dear, I’m sure she wouldn’t have to get so upset. Just be a little sweeter, a little more thoughtful.” He smiled encouragingly.

His advice was so insidious; it was so easy to believe, as Isla had indeed been raised to believe by her family, that everything was her fault. And, indeed, that everything was her responsibility. Her father’s words tapped into the core of her own insecurities: that the manor was failing because she, Isla, was inadequate. That she was responsible for how everyone treated her and for holding up the entire manor on her shoulders. He’d spoken these same words before, or versions of them, over the years; they wormed into her, leaving her frightened and discouraged and faintly nauseated. And, above all, frustrated beyond the power of words to convey.

“No,” she said firmly.

“What?” He blinked.

“I’ve been nothing but kind to Rowena her entire life—these past weeks included. She, on the other hand, has been nothing but a spoiled brat.”

“But,” he countered, his tone wheedling, “you must understand her position.”

“Her position?”

“She’s marrying Rudolph, and he’s….” The earl made a dismissive gesture.

Isla’s cheeks flamed with a fresh rush of hot, ungovernable anger. She controlled herself only with great difficulty and when she spoke, her tone was grating. “She
wanted
to marry Rudolph. She
specifically told me that she wanted to marry Rudolph, and that she had no interest in any other man
. I sacrificed my own future, my own happiness, so that she could have what she wanted—as I always have. And now you’re asking me to give up just a little bit more of myself. When does it stop? When I give up so much that I vanish utterly?”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“I don’t see why I’m supposed to feel sorry for her!”

“And besides, ah….” The earl fiddled with his quill. He looked uncomfortable. “Rowena tells me that you’re, ah, quite content with His Grace.”

This was insupportable. “She did not!”

The earl, who had never wanted daughters, poured himself a drink. “Rudolph is a nice enough boy, but he’s not rich. Barring some extraordinary feat of courage of which I don’t believe him capable, the best he can hope for is to inherit his father’s manor and populate it with a brood of his own.” Meeting Isla’s gaze squarely, he blinked. Peregrine Cavendish had these rare, startling moments of honesty sometimes; moments that proved, to Isla at least, that there was more going on inside his head than he chose to let others believe. If he weren’t such a weak man, he might have been a great one.

“She
wanted
to marry him,” Isla repeated.

The earl sipped his brandy. “Sometimes, getting what one wants isn’t everything one dreams.”

Isla wondered if he was speaking from personal experience. He, like most of her family, had spent so long obsessing over what he didn’t have that he’d never appreciated what he did. Isla’s mother had loved him, and Hart’s mother had loved him; neither woman had gotten the treatment she deserved. Isla’s mother, for all her flaws, had meant well. She’d gotten a good deal more bitter over the years, because she’d been denied the love she needed. Denied the chance to be appreciated, in her own right, for her own unique qualities. Hart’s mother’s expectations had been much lower, given her station and position in life; but she, too, had been more of a distraction to the earl than a partner.

Had he begun to see himself more clearly, in the twilight of his years?

“I wouldn’t care if Tristan had nothing,” she said softly. “You must know that his wealth matters little to me.”

“Then all the more reason to spare a little kindness for Rowena, eh?”

Isla threw up her hands in disgust. “I’ve run this manor—for you—for years now without support. I’ve given
everything
to you, to her, to everyone who asked it of me and what have I asked in return?” She’d asked for nothing, as they both knew; her question was rhetorical. “I’m sick of being treated like your sacrificial lamb! Do this, don’t do that, study this, don’t study that, be more ladylike, be less ladylike, run the manor while simultaneously singing and dancing and becoming an expert in tapestry weaving, find a husband.

“Stand aside so the prettier daughter can marry the rich man; no, on second thought, marry the rich man so the prettier daughter can be happy. After all, who cares if has a penchant for killing off his wives? Then send me off, for all you know to my death, with the advice that
I should be a little sweeter to my dear sister, martyr that she is, for having the misfortune to be marrying the same man she claims to have been in love with since she was twelve
. No! I think I’ll pass!”

She stood up. “I came in here to tell you about the new overseer but now I wish I hadn’t bothered.”

The earl settled back in his chair, apparently unmoved. “Yes, I know about him. Hart told me, this morning. He says the man seems very nice. He promises to raise the estate’s revenues, so we really can’t complain. What, you don’t like him?”

“Is that all you care about?” Isla stared at him, aghast. “Revenue?”

The earl finished his second brandy. “You’re unwell, and should rest.”

“That’s your answer for everything: drink and sleep.”

“Isla, that’s enough.”

“I hate you!”

“You should consider your position,” he replied, a new coldness creeping into his voice. “As a woman, and as—”

“My position?” she repeated. “My position?” She shook her head slightly. What was she to her father, exactly? A bargaining chip? What was Rowena? How much did he care about either of them, and how much had he ever? He’d hardly defended himself against the charge that he was sending her to her death. For all he knew, he was; for all
she
knew, he was. She wanted to believe that Tristan loved her, after his own fashion, but she’d wanted to believe a lot of things over the years. “Tristan cares for me,” she told him, partly to convince herself. And at any rate, he wasn’t going to not marry her simply because she’d displeased her father. If Peregrine Cavendish thought that anyone cared what he thought, he’d gravely mistaken his own significance to the situation. Whatever he might tell himself, Tristan didn’t care what the old man thought.