Chapter 2

Early the next morning, Mary summoned me to attend her in the parlour, as was the custom for a daughter-in-law to pay her morning respects.

The moment I stepped through the door, I found Sophia and Edward already stationed on either side of her, the very picture of a devoted couple paying court to their beloved matriarch.

I could not have felt more like an intruder in my own home.

I dipped into a curtsey. No one acknowledged my presence. Abandoning any further pretence of decorum, I crossed the room and seated myself by the window.

Mary's warm expression vanished in an instant. "You have all the grace of a milkmaid."

How utterly laughable. When the Price family had barely two coins to rub together, none of these boring formalities had ever troubled them.

But now that fortune had smiled upon them, suddenly I was the one lacking refinement.

Sophia allowed a delicate little smile to touch her lips and spoke in honeyed tones. "Dear Mary, you must make allowances.

"Charlotte was brought up in trade. She is not accustomed to the customs of gentlefolk. Surely we can forgive a little rusticity."

She paused, her voice softening but accusing. "And yet, now that Edward moves among the King's councillors, Charlotte simply cannot afford another misstep. The stakes are so much higher."

"As if she could grasp any of this," Edward scoffed, barely glancing in my direction. "You are the only one I can trust to manage this household properly."

"Precisely." Mary beamed at Sophia, the warmth flooding back into her cheeks. "You're the lady of the house from now on, my dear."

My stomach turned over, as though I had swallowed something alive and wriggling.

It was then that I noticed their attire with sharper eyes. Edward wore a doublet of deep forest green, embroidered with interlacing ivy leaves along the collar and cuffs.

Sophia's gown bore the same ivy motif, the delicate vines climbing the pale fabric as though the two garments had been cut from a single vision. They were a matched pair, fit for a bridal portrait.

Though the colours were restrained, the fabric itself was silk velvet so fine it drank the light and gave it back in subtle shimmer with every movement.

It would have cost a small fortune at any mercer's shop in the city.

That velvet belonged among my bridal goods. These two had plundered it from right beneath my nose.

And here I stood, wearing a gown I had kept in service for two winters, too frugal to replace it. I scarcely resembled the bright, well-dressed girl I had once been.

My eyes filled with scorn. "Such haste to play the devoted wife. Were a stranger to walk in at this moment, they might easily conclude the two of you have been carrying on in secret for years."

"How dare you!" Edward's palm struck the tabletop with a crack that echoed off the panelled walls. "To spew such filth. Have you no shred of shame left?"

"Edward," Sophia murmured, biting her lip as she plucked gently at his sleeve. "Charlotte is only distressed. Please, do not let her words find their mark."

Then, with the grace of a swan gliding across still water, she sank to her knees before me. "I love Edward with my whole heart. Truly, I do.

"But if this union brings you pain, I am ready to withdraw. I shall retire to a convent and devote the remainder of my days to prayer, for your happiness and for his."

With her back shielding her from Edward's view, Sophia lifted her chin and met my eyes directly. Her gaze shimmered with triumph, bright and taunting.

She tilted her head, and there, tucked among her curls, gleamed a hairpin of wrought silver set with a single pearl, fashioned in the shape of a flowering sprig.

It was my mother's hairpin. The last thing she ever pressed into my hands.

Heat flared behind my eyes. I lunged forward to seize it.

Edward threw himself between us in an instant, sweeping Sophia behind him as though shielding a lamb from the butcher's knife. "Do not test my patience further."

"Hand over the hairpin," I said, my voice cold and even as a blade.

"It is a mere trinket," Mary snapped from her chair. "If Edward chose to bestow it as a gift, so be it. You sit upon a hoard of gold and silver, yet you begrudge a single ornament. You shame this household."

"Return it." I locked my gaze upon Edward and did not blink.

I had told him once, long ago, what that hairpin signified. The sole keepsake my mother left behind.

I had always been so terrified of damaging the delicate ivory that I scarcely dared to unwrap it from its velvet cloth, let alone wear it in my hair.

And he had stolen it, stolen it and given it to another woman as though it were nothing more than a trinket from a market stall.

A flicker of recognition crossed Edward's face, perhaps the faint stirring of a conscience long buried. He hesitated. Then he turned to Sophia and told her to remove it.

Sophia's eyes darted nervously, but she obeyed without protest, lifting her hands to unpin the ornament.

As she extended it toward me, her fingers loosened. The hairpin slipped and struck the flagstone floor with a bright, brittle crack. The pearl fell off.

My chest heaved. Red bled into the edges of my vision. I did not think. I did not pause. My hand swung through the air and connected with her cheek in a blow that rang through the room.

A bead of crimson welled up where my fingers had landed, vivid against her pale skin.

Edward surged forward, his arm already lifting, but Yara seized his forearm and held him fast with a grip that belied her slender frame.

I stepped forward until I stood a breath away from Sophia's lovely, stricken face.

I hooked one finger beneath her chin, tilted her head upward, and whispered so that only she could hear. "A whore through and through. Keep her. She suits you perfectly as a plaything."

*****

After the shattering row that left the Price family in splinters, I walked out of Price Manor that very afternoon.

Edward made as if to follow, but Mary and Sophia drew him back with soothing words and artful tears.

With me gone, the household was left to shoulder the wedding preparations alone.

Sophia burned with the determination to outshine me in every particular, and the Price family indulged her every whim.

They sent out invitations far and wide and spent lavishly on every arrangement, sparing no expense they could ill afford.

All the while, whispers began to ripple outward through the town.

They spread tales of my jealousy, my ungovernable temper, my disgraceful lack of feminine virtue. Each retelling blackened my name a shade darker.

While the storm of gossip gathered and speculation swirled around my absence, I sat in the back room of my own shop, calmly turning the pages of a ledger.

A hand reached in through the open doorway and plucked the account book clean out of my grasp.

"You seem remarkably composed," drawled a voice. "The wedding is only days away. Have you some scheme brewing, or have you decided to let them be?"

I looked up to find William Goodwin sitting next to me, his handsome face tilted at an insolent angle.

William was the second son of the Goodwin estate. He harboured a deep aversion to politics and court intrigue, preferring the honest cut and thrust of commerce.

Whenever I needed to sell off an asset discreetly, his establishment was where I went. After enough transactions, familiarity had grown into something approaching friendship.

"You seem to have an abundance of leisure on your hands these days," I replied.

I remembered, with a clarity that still stung, the black mood that had consumed me in the first days after I left the Price household.

William had found me then. "I hear you have a sharp head for business," he had said without preamble. "I own a shop that is bleeding money by the week.

"If you can turn it around within a month, I shall give you half the profits every year thereafter."

When I followed him to inspect the property, my breath caught in my throat. It was the very same clothing shop my mother had left me, the one I had been forced to sell to fund Edward's ambitions.

I had never imagined it would find its way back into my hands like this, as though some quiet justice had been at work beneath the surface of events.

On the morning I opened its doors to the public, I gave the shop a new name: Dawn Boutique. Let the name mark my own rebirth.

"You sensed something was amiss with Edward long before any of this came to light," William said, his voice turning genuinely puzzled. "Knowing your temperament, why were you so forgiving for so long?"

"He was good to me once. Truly good." I spoke quietly, half to myself, not much caring whether William caught the words.

Then I straightened and met his eyes. "Would you care to accompany me to watch the Price family circus?"

A low chuckle rumbled in William's chest. "I would not miss it for the world."