Chapter 2

Mary's preference for Isabelle was an open secret in the household.

Isabelle, though born of a concubine, always knew how to say the right things and win people over.

Frequent, artfully penned letters and carefully crafted trinkets would arrive at the Kingston manor, each a tiny masterpiece of calculated charm.

Mary, utterly disarmed, doted on her as if she were the true daughter of the house.

"Isabelle has such a considerate heart," Mary would often remark. "Not like you, Charlotte. You may be her elder sister, but you lack a certain feminine softness."

Michael stepped forward then, his hand briefly closing around my elbow to grab my hand.

I stepped toward the silver service on the sideboard. With the maids dismissed, the task fell to me. I poured a cup for my father-in-law, Henry Kingston. Then, I filled a second cup for Mary.

She took the cup, took a sip, and her face instantly contorted. "Good heavens, girl! Is this meant to be coffee or iced water?"

Before I could offer a word of apology, her hand "slipped." The porcelain tilted, and the scalding liquid cascaded directly over the back of my hand.

Agony, white-hot and searing, lanced through me. The skin bloomed an angry, immediate red.

I clenched my jaw, locking the cry of pain behind my teeth, refusing to grant her the satisfaction.

Michael's gaze flickered to my injured hand. "Mother, that's enough," he interjected as he gently took my wrist. "It was a mistake. The carafe must have sat out too long."

"A mistake, certainly," Mary sniffed. "But if she lacks the basic competence to serve a proper cup of coffee, one has to wonder how she'll ever manage the demands of this estate."

As if summoned by the tension, a faint, delicate cough echoed from the doorway.

She was dressed in all white, her face pale and fragile, looking like she might collapse at any moment. "Forgive my intrusion... Charlotte, Michael. I heard voices..."

Michael released my hand as if it were hot iron and was at her side in three long strides. "Isabelle, you should be abed. The doctor was explicit about your rest."

"I only wished to see if Charlotte needed support on her first morning," she whispered, punctuating the sentence with another soft, handkerchief-muffled cough.

"This is all my doing. If I were not so wretchedly frail, Michael would have been home, and none of this unpleasantness would have occurred," she added.

As she spoke, her eyes turned red, on the verge of tears.

The scene was perfectly staged: Michael, all tender solicitude. Isabelle, the picture of self-sacrificing innocence. They could have been posing for a portrait of tragic, star-crossed lovers.

Mary drew Isabelle into a protective, one-armed embrace, shooting me a look of pure disdain. "There, there, darling. You are not to blame. Unlike some, who seem bred for clumsiness."

I just stood there like I didn't belong.

The throbbing pain in my hand had already begun to recede into a dull, distant pulse.

When my heart went numb, nothing else really hurt.

*****

Three days later marked the traditional post-wedding visit to my family home. Michael, playing his part to perfection, accompanied me.

Before my parents, he was the epitome of the devoted husband.

He pulled out my chair, filled my wine glass before it was empty, and even meticulously shelled prawns for me at dinner, his every gesture whispering of tender, newlywed intimacy.

My father's guarded expression softened visibly under the performance.

It was my mother who, reaching across to squeeze my fingers, went still. "Charlotte," she murmured, her voice low. "Your hand."

The burn on my knuckles was still an ugly, livid mark.

I offered a practiced, breezy smile. "A foolish accident with a tea tray. It is nothing."

She asked no more, but the worry in her eyes deepened.

After the meal, my father drew Michael into the library for conversation. I retreated to the sanctuary of my old bedchamber.

Isabelle followed me in and waved the servants away.

As soon as the door shut, that delicate, helpless look on her face disappeared in a flash.

She walked right up to me, picked up a pearl hairpin from my vanity, and said, "This is rather exquisite, Charlotte."

"If it pleases you, take it," I replied, my voice flat.

She smiled. "You've always been so accommodating. Just like with Michael. So willing to surrender what is yours whenever I express a desire for it."

I stared at her. "What is it you truly want, Isabelle?"

"Want?" She gave a light, airy laugh, twirling the pin between her fingers. "I merely wish you to understand a simple truth.

"Some things were never rightfully yours to keep. You may clutch them all you like, but they have no intention of staying."

Her voice dropped to a venomous whisper. "He has loved me since we were children playing in the orchard. He married you for your name, your lineage.

"I am the one he chooses. The poor, fragile creature he feels compelled to protect."

She leaned closer, her breath a ghost against my ear. "But don't worry. Now that you've given him the respectability he needed, I have all the time in the world to reclaim what's mine. Piece by precious piece."

"He's always been mine." With that, Isabelle dashed the hairpin onto the floor. It broke clean in half.

Before I could respond, her expression shattered into one of profound hurt. "Charlotte, how could you!"

The door flew open. Michael stood on the threshold, his eyes taking in the scene: Isabelle, weeping into her hands, and the broken ornament at my feet.

His brow furrowed in immediate disappointment. He strode to me, his voice tight. "Charlotte, I have apologized. Must you persist in this?

"Must you torment her when you know her health is hanging by a thread? Can you find no compassion in you?"

I did not speak. Explanation was a currency with no value here.

He had never chosen to believe me, not once.

With a weary sigh, he turned his back on me, taking Isabelle's hand gently in his. "Come, Belle. Let me take you to your room."

He walked out without even looking my way.

Alone, I knelt and gathered the two pieces of the shattered hairpin from the floor.

He had given it to me on my fifteenth birthday, slipping it into my hair himself as he made his youthful, earnest vow. "I'll be the one to put pearls in your hair when we're old and gray, Charlotte."

Now, it lay broken in my palm, a perfect, silent echo of the promise it once represented.