Read Chapter 20: A Bond Forged

The brooch lay between them on the writing desk, its emerald catching the candlelight like a watching eye. Cordelia had placed it there without ceremony, without preamble, and now she stood with her arms crossed, waiting for the color to drain from her husband’s face.

It did.

He had come in from the rain moments ago, his coat still beaded with water, summoned back by whatever urgent message had dragged him from their bed at midnight. She had been waiting in his study, not bothering to hide. The pretense of secrecy had worn thin between them.

“You went through my things,” he said quietly.

“Your shaving kit,” she corrected. “A strange place for a marriage token. I thought perhaps you kept it close to your heart in some other fashion, but no. It’s just hidden, like everything else about you.”

Lord Ashworth—Marcus, she reminded herself, she had earned the right to his Christian name—reached for the brooch, but she snatched it back first.

“Amelia Marlow,” she said. “Not Amelia Ashworth. A Marlowe by birth. And this was a betrothal gift, wasn’t it? Given to her by a man who loved her. But it was in *your* keeping, so either she gave it back, or you took it from her corpse.”

His jaw tightened. “Cordelia.”

“I stood in a seer’s hovel and learned that my husband was ruined paying a ransom for a wife I was told was dead in childbirth. I found a portrait of a girl in your wall, hidden behind a panel, with my grandmother’s handwriting warning of broken vows. And now I hold a betrothal token that belonged to a woman who was never actually your wife—was she?”

The silence stretched. Rain lashed against the window glass. Somewhere below, a door slammed, and Cordelia could hear the hurried footsteps of servants attending the late-night arrival who had summoned him away.

Marcus moved to the decanter and poured himself two fingers of brandy. He did not offer her any.

“She was my brother’s betrothed,” he said at last.

Cordelia felt the words land like stones in her chest. She had prepared herself for so many possibilities—that Amelia had been his first love, that he had married her for her fortune, that she had died in some tragic accident he blamed himself for. But his brother.

“Your brother,” she repeated. “The one you never speak of.”

“There is a reason for that.” He drank deeply, then set the glass down with more force than necessary. “Thomas was the heir. The golden one. Our father’s pride, our mother’s comfort. He ran through the family fortune with gambling and worse before he was twenty-five, and when our father died, he inherited a title drowning in debt.”

“And Amelia was his salvation?”

“Her father was wealthy. Sir Hugh’s sister had married well, and the Marlowe name carried weight in certain circles. Thomas courted her, won her, and her dowry was meant to save us all.” He laughed, bitter and short. “But Sir Hugh vetted his prospective nephew with more care than our father ever did. He discovered Thomas’s debts, his mistresses, his—appetites. The engagement was called off publicly and with relish.”

Cordelia looked down at the brooch. “Then why did she die with this in your keeping?”

“Because Thomas didn’t give up. He couldn’t. Without her dowry, he was finished. Transportation for debt, most likely, or a conveniently fatal duel arranged by his creditors. So he came to me with a scheme.” Marcus’s eyes met hers, and for the first time, she saw something raw and unguarded in them. “He asked me to marry her instead. Quietly. Without ceremony. The debt would pass to me as her husband—the Marlowe name was tainted by scandal, but the Ashworth lands were still worth something. Her father would accept a different son-in-law if the offer was good enough.”

“You married your brother’s betrothed to pay his debts.”

“I married her to save his life,” Marcus corrected. “And she agreed. God help me, she agreed because she loved him, and he had convinced her that this was the only way they could ever be together. She would marry me in name, bear no children by me, and when Thomas had rebuilt himself abroad, they would—what? Run away together? Create some scandal that would destroy her reputation and his?”

He shook his head, disgust curling his lip.

“I was thirty years old and had never been so foolish as to think love was worth anything. But I believed in family. I believed that Thomas would grow into the man our father thought he could be. I signed the papers, paid off his most pressing debts, and installed Amelia in this house as my wife.”

“The ransom,” Cordelia said. “Mother Vetch said you paid Sir Hugh a fortune.”

“He discovered the arrangement within a month. Perhaps a servant talked, or perhaps he had always suspected. He had Amelia taken from her bed on the night of what should have been her wedding night to Thomas—the night she was supposed to be mine, as the world saw it.” Marcus’s voice dropped. “He demanded ten thousand guineas for her return. I sold everything. The lands in Kent, my mother’s jewels, my commission. I stripped myself to the bone.”

“And she came back.”

“She came back broken.” He turned away, staring into the fire. “Whatever he did to her in those weeks, she was never the same. She wasted away over the following year, fever taking her slowly, piece by piece. I sat with her at the end. She asked me to give Thomas the brooch, to tell him she was sorry she had not been stronger.”

Cordelia’s hand closed around the emerald. “Did you tell him?”

“Thomas is dead, Cordelia. He died six months after she did. A duel in Paris, over a gambling debt he could not pay.” Marcus’s laugh was hollow. “I used the last of my borrowed funds to bury him beside her. The family plot holds two graves I paid for with money I did not have and filled with secrets I could not speak.”

The weight of it pressed down on her. She had imagined so many versions of this man—cold, calculating, fortune-hunting. She had never imagined this.

“The first wife story,” she said slowly. “The rumor that Amelia was your wife, that she died in childbirth. You let people believe that.”

“Better that than the truth. That Thomas had fathered a child on her before she was taken—a child that died with her, or was never born at all. The scandal would have destroyed my mother. My grandmother.” He met her eyes again. “Your grandmother. She knew. She helped me bury the truth.”

Cordelia’s breath caught. “The Dowager knew Amelia?”

“She knew everything. She was the one who arranged the marriage contract between us—did you think that was coincidence? She wrote to me before I ever met you, with terms that protected the estate and promised me means to recover if I agreed to take you on.”

“And my children?” Cordelia pressed. “The conditions concerning our future children. What did she demand?”

Marcus was silent for a long moment. Then he reached into his coat and withdrew a folded parchment, sealed with the Ashworth crest. He held it out to her.

“Read it,” he said. “And then tell me what you intend to do about the fact that your grandmother intends to take your firstborn child from us the moment it is born.”

Cordelia’s hand trembled as she took the document. The seal broke easily beneath her finger. She unrolled it, scanning the cramped legal script, and felt the world tilt beneath her feet.

The words blurred and reformed. *Custody. Sole guardianship. In the event of any issue of the marriage, the Dowager Lady Ashworth shall assume full authority over the child’s upbringing and education, and neither parent shall interfere.*

“She means to raise our child,” Cordelia whispered. “To train them in the gift. To make them her weapon.”

“She means to repeat whatever she did to you, and to your mother before you.” Marcus stepped closer, and for the first time, his hand found hers, warm and steady. “I did not know the full terms when I signed. I was desperate. But I will not let her have our child, Cordelia. Not if you stand beside me.”

She looked up at him, at this man she had married in coldness and distrust, and saw the same fire she had felt burning in her own chest all these years.

“Then we will find a way to break it,” she said. “Whatever it costs.”