Page 11 of Claiming his Cursed Duchess
Her pride kept her chin high, even as her aunt launched into a tirade.
Lady Claridge gestured widely, making sure her brightly colored skirts swirled dramatically around her as she paced the room.
“Instead, you had to flaunt those hideous scars for the whole world to see!” she shrieked, her voice echoing off the walls.
Rosaline, her heart pounding in her chest, attempted to explain herself.
“It was an accident!” she protested, her gloved hands twisting to stop their shaking. “How could you think I want to expose my scars to such vapid, vicious socialites?” But her words were lost in the whirlwind of her aunt’s wrath.
Lady Claridge’s face, usually painted with a garish mask of polite society, was now contorted with pure malice.
“You have ruinedeverything!” she bellowed, her voice rising to a crescendo. “How could you be so careless? So selfish? You are a blight on our family, and you have been since the day you managed to survive that accident! Of everyone who could have crawled out of that carriage, it just had to beyou, didn’t it?”
Rosaline’s spirit, though long-tortured by her aunt and uncle’s cruel words in the year since the accident, did not bend or break in the face of this most recent rant.
She had already been made to feel like an outsider, a ghost haunting the halls of her own family home once her relations had taken over the titles.
“You, to curse me with your very presence.You, to burden me with your every need.You, to create a dark shadow that follows me throughout the ton. All those whispered rumors and harsh looks! I am nearly a pariah!”
The countess stalked back and forth, pointing at Rosaline with each new accusation.
“They only tolerate me out of pity for having to harbor your curse,” Lady Claridge moaned, then draped herself dramatically onto a fainting couch. The estate had many, in preparation for the countess’s ‘moments’ such as these.
Rosaline lifted her chin, a defiant glint in her eyes.
Enough,she thought, her mind already calculating the best response.
“Aunt Evelyn,” she began, her voice calm, “I find your accusations both unfounded and tiresome. Perhaps you should consider the true source of your misery. Is it not your owncruelty and lack of empathy that has alienated you from the ton, rather than my mere existence?”
Lady Claridge’s eyes widened in shock. She had not expected such a bold retort. Rosaline rarely spoke back so plainly.
“You dare—!” she sputtered, her voice rising. “After all the kindness we have shown you—” Lady Claridge’s cheeks grew ruddy. “Wait until John gets home, he will deal with you. Maybe we will finally toss you onto the street where you belong—you ungrateful orphan!”
Rosaline smiled inwardly, a flicker of amusement in her eyes.
“You dare to defyme?” Lady Claridge demanded, her voice trembling with rage. “You, a mere shadow of your former self; a creature of pity and despair!”
Rosaline’s smile faded, replaced by a look of quiet dignity.
“I may be scarred, Aunt Evelyn, but my mind remains sharp and my spirit unbroken. Unlike you, I have learned to find strength in adversity. Perhaps it is time you do the same.”
A tense pause froze the room as Lady Claridge struggled to compose herself, her fingers pressed to her temples.
Just as she was about to launch into another tirade, the door swung open, and Lord Claridge entered.
His usually stoic expression softened as he regarded his wife.
“Now, now, my dear,” he soothed, his voice a stark contrast to his wife’s tempestuous nature, “I could hear your shrieking from the foyer; do not work yourself into a fit. What has upset you this time?”
“That devilish, cursed child.” Lady Claridge groaned and sighed. “Sheen vertesme so, John, so ungrateful.”
Rosaline struggled not to roll her eyes.
You make me‘green’too,she thought, knowing better than to correct her aunt, who had been trying to say Rosaline vexed her.
Green with illness from having to endure these displays.
“You won’t have to endure her much longer,” Lord Claridge consoled his wife, but his vicious smile was directed at Rosaline, whose stomach dropped as she felt as though ice had flooded her veins.
