Chapter 3 - The Test
860 Words
Lord Ashworth shifted impatiently. “Well. I trust you can both manage a few minutes of conversation without a chaperone. I have estate business to attend to.”
Elara’s eyes went wide.
He was leaving? Already?
They had only just met, and already her future father-in-law was abandoning her to the mercies of his terrifying son.
Before she could protest—not that she would have dared; Lord Ashworth was not the sort of man one protested to—the door clicked shut behind him.
And she was alone.
Completely, utterly alone with Silas Blackwood.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Elara stood frozen in the middle of the library, painfully aware of every breath she took, every shift of her weight, every rustle of her gown. Across the room, Silas sat rigid in his high-backed chair by the fire, watching her with those winter-sky eyes.
His hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
He looked, she thought, rather like a man preparing for battle.
Or perhaps for execution.
Say something, she urged herself. Anything. Don’t just stand there like a startled rabbit.
But what did one say to a man who had just been presented with a bride he clearly did not want?
The silence stretched.
And stretched.
And stretched.
Elara’s mother had always said silence was a sign of good breeding. That a lady should wait for a gentleman to speak first. That she should never, ever fill an awkward pause with nervous chatter.
Elara’s mother was not currently trapped in a dusty library with a brooding, sharp-eyed man who looked as though he might bolt for the door if only his body would cooperate.
“You have so many books,” she blurted, turning toward the shelves as though they might rescue her from the tension. “Have you read them all?”
A beat of silence.
Then, flatly, “Most.”
She turned back. He was still watching her. Still tense. Still braced, as though waiting for something unpleasant to occur.
Progress, at least. He was speaking.
“Which is your favourite?”
“Agricultural texts, primarily. They’re dull, but useful.”
Elara blinked. Of all the answers she had expected, that was not among them.
“I’ve never read an agricultural text,” she admitted. “Are there pictures?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think I’d like them.”
Something in his jaw tightened.
“Miss Pemberton,” he said, voice sharpening, “you are not required to entertain me.”
She paused.
Ah.
There it was.
Irritation — clean and unmistakable.
“I wasn’t aware I was entertaining you,” she said mildly.
His fingers flexed on the chair arms.
“You need not pretend,” he continued, more curtly now. “My father has made his expectations abundantly clear. Politeness is sufficient. Performance is unnecessary.”
Elara studied him more closely.
The tight shoulders.
The watchful stillness.
The unmistakable edge of a man already braced for disappointment.
Something in her chest softened.
“I’m not pretending,” she said quietly.
His expression hardened.
“No?”
“No.”
The word landed gently.
Which, apparently, irritated him far more than protest would have.
His temper snapped.
“You may find the novelty wears thin,” Silas said, voice suddenly rougher, sharper. “It usually does. You may as well understand the situation plainly, Miss Pemberton.”
His hand struck the blanket over his legs — once, hard.
“I am a cripple.”
The word fell into the room like broken glass.
Silence rushed in behind it.
His eyes locked onto hers, cold and challenging.
“Well?” he demanded. “Do you truly wish to be shackled to one for the rest of your life?”
There it was.
The test.
The cruelty born of long practice.
Elara did not flinch.
She did not look away.
For a moment, she simply regarded him — not with pity, not with horror…
…but with a level steadiness that clearly unsettled him.
“Well,” she said at last, calm as you please, “I don’t imagine my wishes have much bearing on the matter.”
His brow furrowed.
That was not the response he had expected.
“My father has accepted your father’s arrangement,” she continued matter-of-factly. “Which means I am to be here regardless of whether you are charming or insufferable.”
A pause.
Then, with quiet steel:
“And I will be thoroughly damned if I spend the rest of my life making the worst of what cannot be changed.”
The words settled between them.
Silas went very still.
Not the guarded stillness she had seen before.
Something else.
Something… shaken.
Elara folded her hands neatly in her lap.
“So,” she finished briskly, “you may be as cross as you please, Mr. Blackwood, but I intend to make the best of a bad situation.”
For the first time since she entered the room, Silas Blackwood had absolutely no idea what to say.
And he found, to his profound irritation…
…that he was staring at her.
- Writer
