A Lady's Journal

POV: Dorian

The rain has been falling since morning, thin and cold, but I barely feel it. I learned long ago to ignore discomfort — it was a small discipline, but discipline is how I rebuilt everything after my father died, and I see no reason to make exceptions for bad weather.

I ride toward Edmund Thorne’s castle and think about patience.

Seven years. Seven years since a single letter destroyed my family, and I am finally close enough to the end of it to taste it. My father had ridden to the capital trying to reach the king before a decision became permanent — trying to argue, in person, that the Voss lands on the border were worth keeping, that his family was capable of managing them, that whatever had been suggested to the contrary was a lie. He never made it. The letter saw to that.

I have read it so many times I no longer need to look at it.

My lord, I have spoken with the king regarding the possibility of redistributing the lands along our shared border. It is clear that your family lacks the means to keep the villagers under a firm hand. I have offered to be that firm hand, in the king’s name. His Majesty appeared open to the suggestion. I considered it my duty to inform you, so that you might make the necessary preparations to reduce your holdings accordingly.

No signature. Only the Thorne seal pressed into the wax: a falcon with its wings folded tight against its body.

My father had ridden out the morning after receiving it. He never came back. My mother had lasted a year, and then her heart stopped, as if it had simply decided there was nothing left worth the effort. I was eighteen years old and I buried them both and then I sat down and thought very carefully about what I wanted to do next.

What I wanted was to destroy the people responsible. What I did was learn patience first, because destruction without preparation is just noise.

The king had felt guilty enough about a newly orphaned heir to leave the Voss lands alone. I had spent the years since turning them into something worth having — restructuring debts, rotating crops, building revenue streams my father never thought to pursue. I had money now. More than enough for what I needed.

Which had allowed me to begin the first part of my plan two years ago.

Edmund Thorne was a greedy man and a profoundly stupid one, which made him convenient. I had spent those two years making certain that the right opportunities reached him — investments that looked sound, that came recommended through channels he trusted, that were in fact losing propositions I had constructed with considerable care. He had taken every single one of them. He was nearly bankrupt now. He thought he had simply been unlucky. Men like Edmund always believed that. It never occurred to them that their luck might have a name.

The marriage was the second part. The Thorne direct line was gone — drowned in a shipwreck during a crossing, all of them, leaving only a niece. Aria. Sixteen at the time of her parents’ deaths. Eighteen now.

I felt nothing resembling desire or mercy when I thought about her. Only the cold arithmetic of a plan that was almost complete. I would marry her. Through her I would access what remained of the Thorne fortune, because nothing seemed more fitting than using the money of the family that had tried to ruin mine to make mine more prosperous. She would inherit everything at twenty-one. I only needed to be her husband when that happened.

I imagine the years ahead. The slow erosion of her resistance. The nights I will take her without mercy, reminding her exactly to whom she belongs. She will probably think that her submission will awaken some gentleness in me — that I will see her fire extinguish itself in my presence and assume that will soften my approach. But I will use that fire against her.

A sudden thunder of hooves pulls me from my thoughts.

Two riders burst past me at speed, cloaks flapping in the wet wind, heading in the same direction. The first is a lean man in Thorne colors. The second is smaller, lighter in the saddle — short hair plastered flat by the rain, breeches, boots, a simple tunic. She rides with perfect balance, as if horse and rider have reached a long-standing agreement about how to move together.

I watch her go.

So that’s her, I think. Aria.

She doesn’t glance my way. Good. Let her stay unaware a little longer.

By the time I reach the castle, the horses are already being led to the stables. I catch a glimpse of her at a distance, arguing with the young man she rode in with, gesturing with the particular intensity of someone making a point they have already made several times. I hand Nightshade’s reins to a groom and follow a servant inside.

Edmund Thorne greets me in the great hall with the warm enthusiasm of a man who has been waiting anxiously and has decided to pretend otherwise. He is soft, balding, with eyes that move a fraction too quickly for someone with nothing to hide. I have been watching men like Edmund my entire adult life. I know exactly what he is before he opens his mouth.

“Lord Voss,” he says, clasping his hands together. “You honor us. Shall we speak in my solar?”

The solar is a pleasant room — large windows on three sides, green things growing along the sills, the smell of earth and something faintly floral. Edmund gestures me toward a table set in the center of it all. We sit. I do not waste time.

“Fifteen thousand gold coins,” I say, “in exchange for a binding betrothal contract. Your niece Aria will become my wife on her twenty-first birthday. Until then, I will provide additional funds to maintain the estate.”

His eyes do exactly what I expected them to do.

“Fifteen thousand,” he repeats. “That is a princely sum, my lord. May I ask why you would choose my niece? There are ladies with finer connections.”

“Your niece is an investment,” I say. “The moment she turns twenty-one and the marriage is consummated, the family lands and her full dowry become mine by law.” I hold his gaze and watch him calculate. “You understand investments, I believe. The girl is an asset you have been maintaining at considerable cost. This arrangement benefits us both.”

He licks his lips. “She is spirited,” he says, as if this were a minor administrative detail. “But obedient when it matters. She will be yours.”

“Call her.”

He rings for a valet and gives quiet instructions. We wait. I look at the plants on the windowsill and think about patience.

Aria arrives a few minutes later, still in her riding clothes, cheeks flushed from the cold. Her hair is tousled, damp strands framing a face that is striking rather than conventionally pretty — sharp cheekbones, green eyes, a mouth that looks like it has never learned to arrange itself into a polite smile. She smells of rain and horse and leather. She is also, I notice, quite small — the kind of small that makes everything about her bearing quietly absurd, as if someone has put a great deal of will into a very compact frame and expected the world to accommodate the imbalance.

She looks at me once — brief, dismissive, entirely unimpressed — then turns to her uncle.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to introduce you to Lord Dorian Voss,” Edmund says, with the careful brightness of a man defusing something. “He has made a most generous proposal. You will be married when you turn twenty-one. It is an excellent arrangement, and one your father would have —”

“We are all adults here.”

I almost smile. I can’t entirely help it — she is barely tall enough to look Edmund in the eye, her boots still muddy from the ride, and she has delivered that line with the absolute gravity of someone chairing a council of war. The absurdity of it catches me off guard for exactly one second.

Then she continues.

“You needed money and decided to sell me. You could simply have said so. I am capable of managing the Thorne estate myself. You have always been more obstacle than guardian.”

The smile fades before it has fully formed. I look at her — really look, past the small frame and the muddy boots — and understand that this is not performance. There is no tremor in her voice, no sideways glance to measure the effect of her words. She means every word of it. She has clearly meant it for a long time.

Edmund’s face goes white, then floods dark red, then goes white again. He rises from his chair, sits back down, rises once more, his hands fisted at his sides.

“How dare you,” he says, very quietly. “After everything I have —”

She looks at him with a calm that is more devastating than any raised voice. Then she turns that same calm toward me. I hold her gaze for exactly one second before she looks away, back to her uncle, as if I am a piece of furniture she has already decided isn’t worth arranging around.

“I have better things to do than stand here while two men discuss buying and selling me like a broodmare,” she says. “If you’ll excuse me.”

She turns and walks out without waiting for permission.

I watch her go.

Breaking a woman who comes in already fighting is a different kind of pleasure than breaking one who has never learned to defend herself. More work. Considerably more satisfying. A slow smile touches my lips before I can stop it.

Edmund has already begun apologizing — wild, her parents let her run loose, I’ve had to be very firm — and I let him talk while I think about the girl who has just walked out of the room as if she owns it.

“Consider the betrothal arranged,” I say, when he pauses for breath. “My secretary will draft the contract. You will sign it before I leave, and the first payment will follow within the week.”

His eyes light up with a hunger he doesn’t bother to hide. He is already spending the money in his head.

“Will you stay for dinner?” he asks. “I’ll have a room prepared. You could leave in the morning.”

“Of course,” I say. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

I think of many things that would give me greater pleasure. Most of them involved Edmund on his knees in the mud, alongside his niece. All in good time. I had spent seven years learning patience. A little more will cost me nothing.