Page 68 of Her Scottish Duke


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“Why is everything always my fault?” David called, not moving from his position and where he hid behind the newspaper.

“I wonder why,” Margaret muttered, just as Rose and Harry started a tug of war over the shawl.

“Let go!”

“You let go.”

“Enough!” The rage had erupted in Charlotte like a volcano. She stood straight and put the vase so heavily down on the hall table, she felt she might have cracked it. The heavy clatter made everyone fall silent, as much as her shout did. “Do I really have to shout at the two of you again?”

Charlotte challenged her siblings. Rose had fallen limp on one end of the shawl now, pink in the face. “Do I have to shout to beheard by my own mother and father, too?” She jerked her head toward her mother in the doorway of the living room.

Margaret’s face was unreadable as she stared back at Charlotte.

“I am so tired of this. Of all of this,” Charlotte continued loudly. “Of trying to curb your fights and your outbursts all the time. Of trying to create some semblance of a peaceful and proper family. I’m ashamed of it. I’m tired of it all. I just cannot be bothered to do it anymore!”

She flung herself toward the staircase, just as her father appeared in the doorway behind her mother.

“It’s called high emotion, Charlotte,” he called coolly up to her. Margaret was poking him in the chest, trying to stop him talking, but he continued on regardless. “You have to accept people are not ornaments. We’re not going to be like that porcelain vase and stand perfectly still even when we’re cracking.”

“What about when I crack? Hmm? What about when I have an emotion?” Charlotte spun around halfway up the stairs, gripping the banister. “When was the last time I lashed out like this? When was the last time I came to you for help with my emotions or what was I feeling? I bottle it up. I keep it locked tight, because… because it’s what we have to do,” she added miserably.

She swiped the skirt of her gown to the side, allowing her to run up the staircase. She couldn’t remember the last time she had run upstairs but was fairly confident it was before her debut.

Her blood pounded in her veins, making her heartbeat echo in her ears. She raced away across the landing, aware that voices were now murmuring in the corridor far below, though she didn’t strain to hear what they said. She just kept running into her bedchamber. Once inside, she shut the door behind her loudly and flung herself onto the bed.

She felt like a child in her anger, and that frustrated her even more.

I have come down to their level now.

She huffed loudly and threw her hands over her face, doing her best to hide from the outside world.

“I wouldn’t be in this mess,” she whispered quietly. “My heart wouldn’t ache so, if it wasn’t for all of them.”

She knew it was a bitter thought, but once lodged there, she couldn’t erase it. If her father hadn’t lost so much money in investments, then perhaps she would still have a dowry. Maybe she could have fallen in love some time ago and be married happily by now, without ever the possibility of falling in love with the Duke of Rodstone appearing.

If her mother and siblings were not so apt at embarrassing them all, then maybe another gentleman of thetonmight have considered marrying her even without a dowry. Yet to marry a lady of thetonfrom such a humiliating family who also did not have a dowry? It was unthinkable!

She had been forced into this path in life, forced into the Duke of Rodstone’s path too, where she fell all too easily for him, only to have her heart broken.

When is he leaving? He did not say when he was leaving.

She released her face and stared up at the ceiling. She could still hear the distant murmurs of her family across the house, but at least no one was shouting anymore. She dreaded having to go down for dinner and facing them all again, when she heard footsteps in the corridor.

She presumed it would be the lady’s maid. With hope, she sat up on the bed, an idea occurring to her. She would ask for her maid to bring her some food in her bedchamber tonight, pleading a headache was keeping her bedbound. At least she wouldn’t have to look her family in the eye until tomorrow then.

There was a light tap at the door.

“Come in,” she called to her maid. “I think that I’ll have dinner in…” She trailed off, for in the open doorway was not her maid at all. It was her mother.

Margaret wore that same impassive look she had worn downstairs, of which Charlotte could make no sense. She walked slowly into the room and closed the door behind her, not saying a word as she moved. When the door was closed, she first went to the window and peered out.

“I think of the world like a window, you know,” Margaret said softly, her voice almost icy in its distance.

Guilt coiled in Charlotte’s stomach at her outburst.

“I think of myself as looking out upon it.” She pointed at the window. “I see the people moving about, what they’re thinking and doing, but I never let it touch me. Never.” She shook her head. “If I opened the window, every thought or feeling anyone had out there would affect me. It would be like leaving the window open in a storm.”

That guilt grew worse. Charlotte shifted on the bed, her hands balling in the bedsheets beneath her.