should have clawed his eyes out.
He hadn’t wanted Karris. He’d wanted to show that Dazen couldn’t have what rightfully belonged to him. Karris might as well have been a tree for him to piss on after the last dog, reclaiming his territory.
She’d stumbled through the halls in that beautiful dress with half its buttons undone—the damned thing required the help of servants to button. She’d been seen, of course. Somehow she got home, not their home on Big Jasper that had burned to the ground, but to their apartments nearby. Her father had been waiting up, but he didn’t say a word, just stared at her. Her room slave had undressed her with trembling fingers, and when Karris had finally fallen in bed, the doorway of her room was darkened with her father’s silhouette. He wobbled, leaned against the doorframe.
“I could challenge him to a duel,” he said. “But he’d kill me, Karris, and then you’d be ruined. Hopeless. We’d lose everything our fathers have fought for for fifty generations. Maybe tomorrow will look better.”
She’d been winesick for two days, and when she’d emerged, Gavin had kissed her in public, seated her at his right hand, and treated her like a queen. It was like the night had never happened. Or like it had been beautiful.
Later she’d decided it was because everyone had been talking about the two of them as such a perfect couple, of how beautiful she was, and Gavin had decided she suited his image. So instead of casting her aside, he’d decided to go through with the marriage. But then he’d left and soon after fought the final battle at Sundered Rock.
When he came back, he seemed like a different man. He treated her with a genuine warmth, respect, so unlike the man who’d banished her from his bedchamber after he took his pleasure of her. It made Karris doubt that the night had happened at all. She could have convinced herself that it had all been a nightmare—until she found out she was pregnant. The very day she’d become aware of it, before she could tell him, Gavin had broken their betrothal.
She’d been sixteen, pregnant, and without any prospect of marriage. In other words, her father’s perfect nightmare. As soon as she was certain she wasn’t going to miscarry, she’d told her father. He demanded she see the chirurgeons and get it taken care of.
For the first time in her life, she’d refused her father. To hell with him. He moved to strike her. She pulled out a pistol. She told him she’d hollow out his skull if he dared to strike her. She told him he was a coward. She was going to bear Gavin’s bastard and let the world know it was his. To hell with him, and to hell with her father, and to hell with everyone. Bearing that child would be her first free act, and her revenge.
Her father had gotten down on his knees and begged. Literally begged. Please save our family, we can’t be the ones who let down all the generations of White Oaks who sacrificed everything to get us here. We and us, he said. He meant, I and me. He was the one who had destroyed the family and he knew it. He looked so small and weak, cold sweat gleaming off his balding head. Abruptly, she despised him. He’d been the absolute lord over her, and he was disgusting. She refused his pleas, and she felt pleasure at the sick, slack despair in his eyes.
Two days later, her father kissed the double barrels of a pistol and blew out his own brains. His ledger books were all in order. That was how he’d spent those two days. All the family properties had been sold to pay off their debts, leaving Karris enough to live on quietly for the rest of her life, enough to support her illegitimate child. Her father had taken care of everything. His suicide note had simply explained where the remaining monies were and told Karris where to go if she wanted to bear her child in secret. It didn’t beg her to do so. Indeed, there was no emotion in the note whatsoever. No curses, no forgiveness, no regrets. It was as empty as his skull after the musket balls passed through them. Just gore and black powder residue. Ordure and death. Hollow, messy.
She couldn’t stand to stay on the Jaspers, couldn’t endure the pity and the awkward glances. So she’d