Honor's Players - By Holly Newman Page 0,19
near the water so she jumped onto the rock to scold her baby sister. Suddenly the rock tipped forward and unthinkingly she pushed her sister to shore before she tumbled backward into the water.
Though afterward she could see there had been no danger for the water was not over her head, she panicked, and her mother ran to pull her out. Somehow—Elizabeth was never sure how—her mother also lost her balance. Screaming, Elizabeth clamored to her like a mad thing. Her mother tried to get up, but her long skirt tangled her legs and Elizabeth was thrashing and kicking too much. Her screams and Helene’s crying woke her father, and he came charging down the bank to haul his wife and daughter out of the water just as dark clouds closed over the sun and a sharp spring wind kicked up to remind them of the season. The drenching and the return of the cold spring weather caused Lady Susan’s illness to return. This time she did not recover. While she was ill, Lord Monweithe banished his children to their nursery and haunted his wife’s room. Lady Susan tried to tell him in a hoarse, cracking voice how Elizabeth had been protecting Helene. He shushed her and begged her not to strain herself. In the nursery, Elizabeth sobbed and clung to Hattie. There was no calming her for she knew something dreadful was going to happen. Four days later, her mother passed away in her sleep. From that day, and for many years, Lord Monweithe could not bear to look at Elizabeth. In his mind he knew he could not blame the child for his beloved wife’s death, but in his heart he did. As he could not reconcile his feelings, he chose to pretend Elizabeth did not exist. Over the years, though the pain grew less, his manner of ignoring his elder daughter became habit. He ceased even to realize what he was doing.
Elizabeth’s maid was putting the final adjustments on her hat when there was a sharp rap on the door. Before she could respond, it was flung open, banging against the wall, and Lord Monweithe angrily strode into the room. He had waited fifteen minutes, and now they would be twenty minutes late. Though Elizabeth wished she could be late forever for this wedding, she was resigned to the event now. She took heart and drew strength from knowing they would be twenty minutes late to the church.
After seeing Lady Romella and Helene off, Lord Monweithe had waited downstairs for Elizabeth, his only companion his port bottle. At first, he took to the port when vague doubts about the correctness of this hasty marriage flitted through his mind. As the minutes passed, so did those doubts, to be replaced with a sense of injury and an insidious fear the marriage would not take place; that Elizabeth’s seeming bid ability of late was a sham to cover her plans to humiliate him further. With the second glass of port came the conviction that those indeed were her plans and an equally strong conviction arose on his part to see the marriage go through. The older she became, the harder it was for him to even look at her. Though her hair was darker and her eyes brighter than his dear departed wife’s, in face and form, she was her twin. At one time he had irrationally blamed Elizabeth for her mother’s death. That was long ago. There were times when she was growing up he had wanted to draw her to his chest to hug, only to be met with bitter, waspish, angry words. He’d never known how to reach that tiny wraithlike creature with her condemning gold eyes.
He knew she had been devastated by her mother’s death, yet at the time, he’d had no room in his heart to comfort her—so great was his own grief. Unthinkingly he pushed her away, pushed her into the cursed shrew she was. Through the years he’d never been able to rectify his error and give her the love she needed. Perhaps marriage would cure her. Yes, he decided, babes were what she needed. That and a change of scene, away from her own family. He would not let her throw away a chance for happiness. He owed her that chance and owed himself some peace, he’d decided foggily before storming up the stairs.
“What missish nonsense is this?” Lord Monweithe paced Elizabeth’s room in a tight circle, his color rising. “If