I glanced at Father. “You were in Rosden?” He’d mentioned nothing about it last night. Ever since the pneumonia he’d contracted the previous winter, my father’s health had never regained its robustness, and he rarely left the village on account of it. A trip to Rosden was the type of excursion he would have brought up, especially after Daniel and I had recounted our adventures of the day. We might even have laughed at our missing each other.
Father remained fixed on his paper. “Yes. Your mother and I would like a word with you after breakfast.”
With me? Alone? This did not bode well.
I glanced at my mother. Her brown hair was pulled into an immaculate bun, her posture was impeccable, and her gown, a vibrant green morning dress, matched her eyes.
Everything about her was a contrast to how I appeared. I straightened my own back and shoulders, but there was nothing I could do at present about my hair or the old dress I had flung on.
Perhaps they were upset about this morning. Or, worse, my failure at the Hickmores’. “Yes, sir.”
Eventually, Daniel escorted Alice out of the room with talk of a game outside. My toast and marmalade lay on my plate, my tea untouched. My father lingered over the paper and my mother sat over her plate as full of uneaten food as my own.
This did not bode well at all.
After a moment, my mother looked up. “Colin,” she said with a sigh.
My father turned to the last page before setting his paper down. With a frown tugging at his mouth and without looking my way, he rose and walked to the window, his back to me, staring out with his hands clasped stiffly behind him.
I shifted in my seat. “Father, I know I promised you that attending the Hickmores’ party would end in a proposal, but I can assure you the lack of one is not my fault. I was close, and I did try—”
“Margaret, I am not concerned with what occurred at the party. Indeed, I am content circumstances turned out as they have.”
“Yes, dear,” my mother said. “We have happy news.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Oh?” I asked tentatively. Neither of them seemed particularly overjoyed.
My mother glanced at my father. “Your father has found you a husband.”
I furrowed my brows. “I beg your pardon?”
“A very good match, too,” she continued. “He comes from an old, well-respected family. The estate is supposedly quite stunning.”
I shook my head. “Mother, you cannot be serious.”
Her lips thinned with dismay. She was very serious.
It was as though I had fallen into the lake, only it was winter and the water ice cold. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to make my own match, carefully selecting the man to ensure the future I needed. “There must be some mistake.”
“Your father has arranged a marriage for you, Margaret. There has been no mistake.”
The dishes scattered across the table painted a picture of comfort and happiness that mocked me. I focused on my father. “To whom? Why have you done this?”
He faced me, his expression set. “You are desperate to marry, are you not?”
I shook my head. “Desperate isn’t quite how I’d put it. Determined, perhaps, but—”
My father cut in. “The nuances don’t matter. It is a good match. And we will finally be settled with this whole business.”
The air in the room vanished. My father blamed me. Not for Edward, of course, but for the rumors that kept Daniel from proposing. And for the time since the engagement, for not securing a husband on my own. But it had taken time to recover, time for me to understand what I needed.
“Father, I’m sorry for the way things have turned out. But surely we haven’t arrived at this point.”
Yet my father’s expression and my mother’s clasped hands testified that we had, indeed, arrived at this point.
I clamped down on my rising fear, desperate to push past it and this situation. Perhaps I could still work something out.
A movement outside the window demanded my attention. Daniel’s face appeared, out of view of my mother’s sharp eye but clearly visible to me, his nose pressed against the pane as he surveyed the room. His eyes met mine and I suddenly thought of Mr. Northam. He was the key to my release.
I refocused on my father. “Go back to this man. Inform him I am no longer available. I didn’t tell you