Her Stepmother Married Her Off as Punishment to a Ruined Man — But His Ruin Was a Disguise, and Her Dying Father’s Secret Deed Made Him the Only Husband Who Could Restore Her Inheritance and Avenge Them Both

PART 3

The wedding was small, cold, and conducted with the efficiency of a business transaction. It was held at Ashgate Hall in the drawing room because Cecilia had decided a church ceremony would attract too much attention. She had procured a private marriage by special license, and she had chosen the clergyman herself — a man who asked for no further proof of a groom than the name on the license, which Cecilia presented to him without a second glance.

There were no guests beyond the household. Dorothea and Piers, Cecilia’s son, bored and impatient, and a handful of servants ordered to attend. Rosamund wore a dress that had been her mother’s, altered in a hurry, because Cecilia had seen no reason to spend money on a new one.

Sir Aldis Blackwood was not what she had expected.

He was a tall man, perhaps thirty-five, with the kind of face that was handsome in a way that did not announce itself. Strong bones, dark hair touched with gray at the temples, gray eyes that were watchful and cold. He wore his ruin like a man who had long ago stopped caring what people thought of him. He did not smile at the ceremony. He did not fidget. He stood very still, and he watched. And when the time came, he said his vows in a voice that was low and steady and entirely without warmth.

Rosamund said her own vows in a voice just as steady, and she did not look at Cecilia once.

The ceremony took twelve minutes. When it was over, Cecilia kissed her on both cheeks — a kiss that meant nothing and was meant to mean nothing — and said, “There, that was not so terrible, was it? You have a husband now. You will be safe.”

Rosamund did not answer. She turned to Sir Aldis, who was standing by the window, and said, “When do we leave?”

“Now.” He did not pretend this was anything other than what it was. “The carriage is waiting. Say your goodbyes.”

He left her a quarter of an hour to gather her belongings, which fit in a single trunk. Everything that had been hers had been quietly redistributed to Dorothea. What remained was a handful of dresses, a Bible, and the locket with her mother’s hair — the one thing Cecilia had not thought to confiscate. Rosamund slipped Edmund’s letter into the lining of her trunk, and she did not look back as the house disappeared behind her.

The carriage was old, plain, and smelled of damp. Sir Aldis sat across from her in silence, and for the first hour neither spoke. Rosamund watched the countryside pass — her father’s familiar fields, then unfamiliar territory, then nothing but gray November sky and bare trees.

“You did not want this marriage,” Sir Aldis said at last. It was not a question. “No. Neither did I.”

He looked at her, and his gray eyes were unreadable. “But it is done, and we will make the best of it. I will not mistreat you. I will not humiliate you. I ask only that you do not make a spectacle of us. The world has already decided what it thinks of Sir Aldis Blackwood, and I would prefer not to give it more ammunition.”

“What does the world think of Sir Aldis Blackwood?”

“That he is a ruined man of no account who arrived in this county five years ago with nothing and keeps to himself.” He said it flatly, without emotion. “The world is largely correct about the ruin. I have let it think the rest.” He paused. “But I am done losing.”

There was something in the way he said it — a flatness that was not despair, but a controlled fury, like a man who had been burning for a long time and had learned to bank the fire. That made Rosamund look at him again.

“You speak as if you have a plan.”

“I have a plan.” He looked out the window. “I have had a plan for five years. It has required patience, and secrecy, and a reputation so thoroughly destroyed that no one would think to look at me twice. This marriage was not part of the plan, but it does not have to break it.”

He turned back to her. “I am sorry you were caught in it. You did not deserve to be sold like a parcel of goods. But I will not pretend this is a love match. We will be partners in survival, or we will be strangers in a cold house. The choice is yours.”

Something in the careful way he said it — as though he expected her to choose the cold house, and had already made his peace with that — caught at her. It was the first unguarded thing he had shown her.

“I choose,” she said slowly, “to find out who you really are.”

For the briefest moment, something flickered across his face that was not quite a smile. He looked away first.

Blackwood Hall was worse than she had imagined. It was a great house fallen into decay — a mansion that had once been grand, now stripped of its furnishings, its paintings, its silver. The rooms were vast, empty, and cold. The roof leaked in three places. The staff consisted of a housekeeper, Mrs. Norbury, a stooped, silent woman who had been at Blackwood Hall for forty years, and a steward, Mr. Galt, who looked at Rosamund with the particular weariness of a man expecting something worse.

“Is it always like this?” Rosamund asked, standing in the great hall with the dust rising around her feet.

“This is Blackwood Hall,” Sir Aldis said. “It has always been like this. It will not be like this forever.”

He said it with such flat certainty that Rosamund, who had learned to read the difference between hope and knowledge, believed him. That night, when Mrs. Norbury brought up a threadbare quilt and apologized for the state of the guest chamber, Rosamund found a second blanket already laid across the foot of the bed — worn but clean, smelling faintly of cedar, clearly fetched from somewhere better kept than the rest of the house. She did not ask who had put it there. She had a guess, and the guess warmed her more than the blanket did.