Chapter Five: The Bargain

I had expected Lord Blackwood to offer money. I had not expected him to call it mercy.

He stood beside the library fire with his hands folded over the head of his cane. Alistair Blackwood was not an old man, but there was nothing soft in him. His eyes stayed on me as if he had already decided what I would accept.

“My father needs a wife,” he said. “Someone to sit with him, keep the household, and see to his comfort.”

“Your servants can do that.”

“Servants leave. A wife stays.”

He said it as though the difference were a matter of law and not choice. I looked at the silver-framed portrait on the mantel. Lord Reginald’s face was thin and pale. His eyes were closed.

“What happens to my family if I refuse?”

“Nothing that isn’t already happening.” Alistair tapped his cane against the rug. “The debts remain. Your father’s creditors may seize what little is left. The infirmary may lose its supply contract.”

It was not a threat. It was worse. It was a list of things he had already arranged.

“My father believes I’m marrying your younger son.”

“Your father believes what you chose to tell him.”

I felt heat rise to my face. I had lied because I wanted to spare him the truth. Now the lie had been placed on the table like evidence against me.

“I’ll marry Lord Reginald,” I said. “You will settle the family debts and leave the infirmary alone.”

“Agreed.”

“And no one will touch my mother or brother.”

Alistair’s mouth curved. “You bargain like a woman who believes she has power.”

“I bargain like a woman who knows you need someone willing to do this.”

For the first time, his expression changed. Not much. Enough.

He extended his hand. I did not take it.

“Your wedding will be held on Saturday,” he said. “The sooner my father has a wife, the sooner the arrangements can be settled.”

I left Blackwood House with no contract and no witness. I had only his word, and his word was worth less than the ring he intended to put on my finger.

Alistair had extended his hand as if the matter were settled. I kept mine at my side.

“I want the terms written,” I said. “The debts, the infirmary, my family’s safety. All of it.”

His gaze cooled. “You are in no position to dictate a contract.”

“Then you don’t need my consent.”

For a moment, the fire was the only sound in the room. He studied me with the patience of a man deciding whether a locked door was worth breaking. At last he called for his secretary and dictated the first two terms. He refused to include my mother and Ned.

“They are not part of the arrangement,” he said.

“They are the reason I’m here.”

He added a sentence promising their security while the marriage remained in force. It was not enough. It was what I could make him write before the secretary’s pen ran dry.

I left Blackwood House with a copy tucked inside my glove and no witness to the bargain. His word was worth less than the paper, but the paper could still be denied. I had bought time, not safety.

I went home with Alistair’s terms tucked inside my glove and the feeling that I had left part of myself behind in his library. My mother waited in the kitchen. She had set out tea; neither of us drank.

“I agreed,” I told her.

She looked at the ring on my bare hand, then at my face. “To Reginald?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Does he know you?”

I could not answer. My mother closed her eyes. I wanted her to shout, to call me foolish, to tell me she would rather lose the house than lose me. Instead, she reached across the table and took my hand as if she could hold me in place by touch alone.

“I thought I could keep you safe,” she said.

“You did. For a long time.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m trying to keep everyone else safe.”

Ned came down the stairs before the silence could settle. He had heard enough to know the shape of what I had done. His anger was quiet, which was worse than shouting. “You can’t marry a man you’ve never met just because Blackwood puts numbers on a page.”

“He will seize the house.”

“Then we leave.”

“With what money?”

“I’ll find work.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“I can carry a sack.”

“So can I. That’s not a plan.”

He turned away. I wanted to call him back, but he would only ask the questions I had no answers for. I had made the bargain because I believed it was the only choice that protected them. I did not yet know whether that belief was courage or a mistake.

At the infirmary, I told the matron I would be away for a few days. She pressed a small packet of herbs into my hand. “For the journey,” she said. Her fingers lingered on mine. “And for whatever waits at the other end.”

That evening I hid the Wren’s mask beneath the floorboard and tried to sleep. The brass token lay on the table, its royal crest catching the candlelight. If Blackwood had taken the medicines, he might have taken the grain too. If the royal storehouse was involved, then this reached farther than one greedy lord.

The knock at the back door came after midnight. Julian stood outside with rain in his hair and ink on his cuff. He had brought no guard, only a folded account page and the expression of a man who had learned something he wished were untrue.

“I found the name behind the missing supplies,” he said. “It’s Lord Blackwood.”