by Rebecca King
As if Wilhelmina had heard her sentiments, the woman appeared in the hallway.
“What is all this shouting about?” she demanded, as if she hadn’t already heard every word that had been said.
“We shall discuss this later,” Arthur hissed at his wife.
“No. As usual you are going to hide in your study and pretend you know what you are doing while you drive this family to ruin,” Mabel shouted after him but her words were silenced by the resounding bang of the study door being slammed shut.
“Where do you think you are going?” Wilhelmina asked of Sian when she hurried down the stairs and tugged on her shawl.
“Out.”
“After that fop, I suppose. You are chasing after him like a common harlot,” Wilhelmina snorted indignantly.
“I am doing no such thing,” Sian protested. “How dare you call my morals into question?”
“So where are you going?”
“It is none of your business,” Sian snapped. “You are my father’s guest in this house, not mine. I am under no obligation to tell you anything about where I am going or intend to do.”
While Sian spoke, she was aware of her mother disappearing into the back of the house, obviously keen to get away from having to face Wilhelmina’s domineering attitude.
“It is about time someone took your scandalous attitude in hand and made you mind your manners, girl,” Wilhelmina snarled. Now that both of her parents weren’t there, Wilhelmina clearly saw no reason why she should not release the full force of her scorn and made no attempt to hide her utter contempt. “You need a firm husband to take you in hand before you ruin this entire family.”
“As if you haven’t already done that yourself,” Sian retorted. “Why, you turn up here in the early hours of the morning, unannounced, and rudely turn this entire house into chaos. You then have the audacity to demand money for doing nothing except make everyone’s lives insufferable. Well, I am not under any obligation to mind my manners in the presence of such overbearing, offensive arrogance, and I shall thank you to keep your nose out of my business.”
With that, Sian slammed out of the house. She was shaking so much she was physically trembling as she stormed down the driveway.
“Sian!” Her father shouted. “Sian! Get back here at once!”
But Sian didn’t stop. Her stride remained sure and steady as she made her way down the driveway. She had no idea where she was going but she didn’t stop. If she returned to the house, she was apt to do something rash like pack her belongings and take the first carriage out of town to get away from Wilhelmina, her father, the family squabbles, and yes, Ryan.
“Will you stop and listen to me?” Arthur snarled.
Sian gasped when her father caught her elbow in a fierce grip and yanked her around. Unlike the last time a man had manhandled her, her father’s hold was unpleasant and painful. Ryan had been gentle, tender, and gentlemanly. The stark contrast reminded her just how much of a bully her father could be when he had a mind to. A bully who didn’t care how much misery he put his family through.
“Get your hands off me,” she hissed furiously. Sian watched her father blink and slowly release her. “Don’t you dare manhandle me again.”
“Get back into the house,” Arthur growled.
“No. You might wish to listen to that harridan you call a sister, but I refuse to.”
“You will do as you are told if you wish to remain under my roof,” Arthur shouted. “Get back in there.”
Arthur’s face was florid. When he lifted his hand back as if to strike her, Mabel, who had charged after him, emitted a cry of protest. She clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror.
Everyone froze.
Martha chose that moment to emerge out of the trees. She too stopped to stare.
Arthur looked at each person in turn and found nothing but cold condemnation, fear, and loathing staring coldly back at him. The silence that settled over everyone warned him just how fractured his family had become. Slowly, he lowered his arm and stared in horror at his eldest daughter. For the first time ever, he finally began to see her for the woman she was.
Gone was the girl he had raised from a babe in arms. In her place was a strong, determined young woman who gazed back at him with maturity that was startling. He didn’t recognise her and wondered when she had left youth behind and embraced adulthood. Even Martha, who stood with her head tilted proudly from her safe distance at the edge of the drive, had blossomed into womanhood. Both of his daughters had grown up, and he hadn’t even noticed.
Sucking in a breath, Arthur made a decision. Looking coldly at each of his daughters, he then threw a dark look at Mabel before he squared his shoulders and turned to Sian once more.
“You are to be wed to Cedrick, and that is the end of it. I have already posed an announcement in the newspaper. It will be released in the morning.”
Arthur expected some sort of reaction. The silence that greeted him was cold, and isolated him even more, but now that he had spoken the words he couldn’t take them back. They hovered over everyone and seemed to fracture the assembled group of people to the point that it was difficult to remember a time when they had been considered a family. Well aware that he had now earnt everyone’s contempt, Arthur silently made his way back to the house. His gaze flickered to Cedrick, who beamed his delight and bowed politely at his soon-to-be father-in-law as Arthur swept into the house. Wilhelmina elbowed him sharply when Cedrick opened his mouth to call out something to Sian. She followed it with a warning glare and remained uncharacteristically quiet as Mabel and her daughters gathered together in the driveway and returned to the house. Without even acknowledging Wilhelmina or Cedrick, they filed into the house and preceded up the stairs to their bed chamber, or Sian and Martha’s in any case.
Once there, Mabel closed the door.
“I won’t do it, mama,” Sian bit out. Tears gathered on her lashes because she knew just how hopeless her situation was and how little her father valued her opinion. She suspected she could scream her rejection from the highest rooftop and he would blithely ignore her. “I will not marry that oaf.”
“I know you are not.”
“If you don’t, father will try to force me to,” Martha cried. “And I am not going to marry him either.”
“Well, you can thwart him by marrying Isambard, with or without his agreement. I don’t have anybody to marry me,” Sian moaned.
“Ryan would,” Martha offered helpfully.
“He hates me,” Sian cried. “Ryan Terrell doesn’t even see me as a woman, much less a future wife. He wouldn’t ruin his family name by being saddled with the likes of me.”
“Don’t put yourself down, Sian,” Mabel ordered.
She sucked in an indignant breath and straightened the skirt on her dress as she prepared to battle, only what she was going to use as a weapon to fight this particular war she had no idea yet.
“We will all thwart him. Oh, I know I should have listened to my father. He warned me that Arthur was a cold fish. He told me, but I just wouldn’t listen,” Mabel bit out. “Now am I going to live the rest of my life regretting it.”
“But father never used to be like this. There was a time when he used to laugh and play with us. Now, it is as if he just doesn’t like us anymore,” Martha moaned.
“I did put his surly behaviour down to his worry over this financial crisis your father has gotten us into, but I suspect it is more than that,” Mabel murmured somewhat absently. “Right, well, we aren’t going to get anything done standing around here talking about it. We have to do something.”
“What?” Sian held her hands out in a beseeching gesture, but her mother couldn’t come up with any solutions either.
“Can’t we ask Ryan to help us?” Lucinda asked.
“No. He would just tell your father. From what I have heard this morning, Ryan is just as annoyed with him as we are,” Mabel sighed. “Besides, this is a family matter. We have to deal with t
his on our own.”
“The only way of stopping father from marrying us off is to do something that makes us unmarriageable,” Sian hissed.
“Like what?” Martha sighed. “What can we do that just makes it look as if we are ruined but doesn’t actually ruin us?”
“Grow warts or something?” Lucinda shrugged and looked just as helpless as everyone felt.
“Well, I am not going to sit around here and have that oaf foisted on me. I am going to marry Isambard and only Isambard,” Martha sniffed.
“You can’t do that if we go to Aunt Sophia’s,” Sian sighed.
“I am not going to leave him,” Martha wailed. “I won’t. I can’t.”
“Well, if your father doesn’t want that to happen and we do then we shall just have to arrange your wedding without his involvement,” Mabel announced defiantly. “I am your parent as well and have just as much right to agree to your union as he does. If he won’t agree to it, I will and that is the end of the matter.”
Martha brightened considerably. “You mean, we can have the wedding without his permission? Can we do that?”
“I can assure you that we most certainly can. I mean, you don’t need Arthur to sign any contract or hand over any dowry. There is no reason why you cannot marry if I give you permission to do so,” Martha informed her, hoping desperately that she was right in her assumptions.
“What will the vicar say? He will want to speak with father about the donation to the church, won’t he? Then there will have to be the formal announcements made and the banns read in church on Sunday,” Sian countered. She hated to dash Martha’s hopes but didn’t want either her or her mother to get carried away. They would only have their carefully laid plans thwarted in the long run, and it would be heart-breaking for them all.
“Can we get married without our father’s permission?” Martha’s eyes were alive with hope.
“Yes, you most certainly can.”
While her mother and Martha discussed how they were going to get around the formal arrangements of Martha’s wedding to Isambard, Sian turned her attention to the scene outside the window. The plans resolved Martha’s fight to marry the man she loved but did little to resolve her own situation. Suddenly, the weight of helplessness hung heavily over her. Sian sucked in a breath to try to quash it, but her wayward thoughts turned to the prospect of being married to Cedrick anyway, and left her even more melancholy.
In the back of her mind, an awful scene played itself out in her destructive mind. It was of her standing at the altar, flowers in hand, her view of the church obscured by a heavy veil. When it was lifted, the hopeless desperation that hovered over her began to eat away at her soul because she found herself staring into the smirking face of Cedrick, the man she was truly starting to despise. The thought of having to stand and even say the words that would bind her life with his made her want to tear her hair out in despair. She wanted to rage at Fate, and shout at her father until he began to hear some common sense. Until he began to hear her, but she knew it would be futile. If there was one thing her father did, it was never revoke any of his decisions. Once his mind was made up he stuck to it no matter what anybody said.
“It is what has driven us into this mess in the first place,” she whispered.
Sian panicked. It seemed to bubble up from a hot cauldron of despair. It welled until it overflowed and swept through her veins, snatching all trace of warmth from within her. It left behind an icy emptiness that was suffocating. Tears stung her eyes. She tried to draw in a breath, but her lungs just wouldn’t work so she had to pant instead. The tears on her cheeks weren’t felt because the pain that sprang forth from the centre of her chest was so intense that she couldn’t focus on anything else. She knew then that she would live the rest of her life in the closest thing to Hell it was possible to imagine. The thought of having Cedrick touch her, kiss her the way Ryan had was enough to make her feel sick. She wanted to smack something, to scream and shout, to throw things and rage with all the wildness in her soul. She wanted to stomp her feet and shake her father and force Cedrick back into Wilhelmina’s carriage and make him go away.
But of course, she could do none of those things because she didn’t have the right to. She didn’t even have a say on her own future; in who her own husband was. It was horrifying to think of the kind of life that lay before her. The barrenness. The cruelty that Cedrick seemed to enjoy so much.
“I would rather die,” she hissed.
“Sian?” Mabel murmured, looking truly alarmed.
Sian jerked when her mother placed a hand on her arm. She looked blankly down at it and shook it off. Blindly, she stared at her mother, as if she didn’t recognise her. Not even her mother could get her out of the fate that awaited her. Deep in the back of her mind, a part of her knew that if she went to Sophia’s she would temporarily escape but at some point, she would have to return and would only face the same problems. Nothing would actually be resolved by going there.
“I am not. I won’t do it. I won’t. I can’t. I won’t. I can’t.” Sian, shaking her head, backstepped to the bed chamber door.
“But dearest, you could marry Ryan,” Mabel offered gently.
“He doesn’t love me!” Sian cried. “He doesn’t. I love him but it is unrequited. He doesn’t love me.”
Sian whirled on her heel, yanked the door open, and raced out into the hallway. Later, she would have no memory of charging through the house, of shoving Frances to one side, of the resounding clatter of the plates Frances carried being smashed as were dropped. She wouldn’t be able to reflect on her father frantically bellowing her name, or Cedrick doing his best to race after her. Sian was lost to everything except the tears that blinded her, the wind that tugged her hair free of its pins, and the desperate fear that stole all trace of hope from her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
“What do you mean ‘she has gone’?” Ryan demanded. He glared at Arthur, who stood pale and shaken in the doorway of his study. “Where? Who with? When? What have you done to her?”
“She ran out of the house a couple of hours ago and hasn’t been seen since,” Mabel whispered tearfully. “The girls are out looking for her right now.”
Ryan’s gaze flew to Arthur. “Why are you not out looking for her?” he snarled.
Arthur didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze fell to the floor, but he remained stoically silent.
“God, you utter disgrace,” Ryan hissed with cold contempt.
Mabel threw Arthur a dour look as well, her gaze equally as condemning. “He has been selfishly sitting in his study without a care in the world. This is all his fault. He seems determined to ruin the entire family. I have no idea what he thinks he is doing, but we are quite clearly surplus to requirements.”
“What caused it?” Ryan squatted down so he could look up into the woman’s misery laden eyes.
“I have the finances to try to fix,” Arthur replied dully.
“I am not talking about you, Arthur,” Ryan snapped disinterestedly. He looked at Mabel. “What made her run?”
Mabel sucked in a breath. “He seems determined to marry Sian off to that Cedrick fellow of Wilhelmina’s, just because Wilhelmina has told him to, and told Sian this morning that he has made his mind up. He is afraid of his sister, you see? She holds something over him that he just cannot fight.”
“Do you know what?”
Arthur slunk back into his study.
Mabel shook her head. “Whatever it is, Wilhelmina knows she can get away with anything. She asks for more money; he finds it from somewhere and gives it to her without question. He has taken to selling things from around the house now. Do you know that? We have tailored the spending down as much as we can and recycling and repairing practically everything we can. Anything of value is gradually disappearing yet Wilhelmina turns up and demands more money or this bill to be paid or money for something else, and Arthur just hands it over. Now, she has told him that she demands our daughters are married off because
she deems it so. I think it is just because she wants any money Arthur has to be spent on her rather than his daughters. Anyway, she has made it clear that she wants them married and has palmed Sian off with that awful Cedrick. I have tried to tell Cedrick to go home, that he is not welcome here, but all three of them ignore me.”
“What has Arthur told Sian? What has her so upset?”
“There is to be an announcement in the newspaper, of her engagement to Cedrick, apparently. He has arranged it,” Mabel whispered, throwing a condemning look at the now empty study door. “God, I hate him.”
She couldn’t withhold her tears after that and was so busy giving in to them that she didn’t see Ryan’s wince. He had no idea if Mabel meant she hated Cedrick or her husband but didn’t ask.
“I will be back soon,” Norman mouthed from behind Mabel before quietly letting himself out of the room.
“Sian objected again.” It wasn’t a question.
“You didn’t see her face, Ryan. She turned into someone I didn’t recognise and ran out of the house as if the hounds from Hell were on her heels. She was whispering something about rather being dead. Then it started to rain, and she hasn’t come back. She has been gone for two hours, but we cannot find her anywhere,” Mabel gasped around her tears.
Ryan immediately turned to leave only to stop and look back at Mabel.
“Come on, you may as well come with me,” he suggested gently.
Mabel didn’t hesitate to fetch her shawl and followed him out of the house. “Where are we going?” she asked when he led her across the garden to the low stone wall which bordered the property.
“I will leave you at my house where the staff can take better care of you. Let’s leave him to stew in his own juices. It will do you good to get out of there for a while, and away from Wilhelmina. Where is she by the way?”
“She went into town with Cedrick. They should be back anytime,” Mabel replied.
“Take a word of advice from me; stay away from the house for a while. I will leave you at my house and then go and see if I can find her.”