Page 84 of Prince of Masks
The available aristos aren’t of the greatest variety. Most eligible debutantes and bachelors are betrothed already.
Not many options when it comes to replacing a betrothed of years. Even for the likes of Dray, it will be a challenging process to chase a debutante he prefers. Of course, he can always out-bid her contract. Most fathers will annul engagements already in place in favour of someone like Dray Sinclair.
But Asta…
Oh—fuck.
Eric.
My heart slingshots through me.
No.
No, no.
I can’t let that panic settle.
I stomp down the thought before it can take root.
I’ll worry about it later, when I’m not surrounded by wolves in silk.
“Who knows what men get in their heads sometimes,” Mother sighs and looks out at the rugby game just as Oliver tackles Dray into a puddle of brown rainwater.
I grimace.
That tackle looked a little personal, a little harsh.
I didn’t know Oliver intended to play today.
“Dray has another in mind,” Amelia says it as though she is assuring us. “He pursues her now.”
It isn’t Dray I’m worried about.
Not that I’mworriedfor Asta, but… I get it.
I’m on a shitty boat of ill suitors and no engagement, and she just climbed aboard.
Now I’ll have even less chance of securing a good husband with someone like Asta available.
“I trust my son,” Amelia concedes with a firm nod, a false read of my queasy look. “Dray does what is best and only after careful, patient consideration. This was not done in haste. It has been inthe works for some months now, and—well, it is what will be, and so we cannot fuss over tangled threads.”
I pray for her.
Whoever his victim is, she has my sympathies.
Maybe Asta had a lucky escape.
No, that’s not right.
As much as I would like it to be, Dray is a villain in my life, not Asta’s. As far as I am aware, he treated her as an equal, he never infringed on the same freedoms he took for himself—gambling, dating or sleeping with others,autonomy—and he indulged her whims with fancies and jewels, as a suitor should.
I doubt he would turn wicked after their wedding day. The root of his viciousness with me is hatred for what I am.
17
I sway on the swing bench down the terrace, and my shadow, Serena, sits beside me.
We watch the game ahead on the flat grass field. It’s hard to make out who is who, what with the misty distance between us and that they are all caked head-to-toe in mud.
