Impossible!” Isabelle snapped, before gathering her skirts and storming out.
“Impossible!” Isabelle snapped, before gathering her skirts and storming out.
My personal maid, Rose, huffed in disapproval. “My lady, you are always too good to Lady Isabelle. She forgets her station. To marry a man like Master Atreides as his first wife is already a great fortune for her.”
It was true. It was a good match, or my father would never have agreed. But Isabelle’s ambitions were too high. I suspected she
would cause a scene, just as she had in our last life.
I shook my head, trying not to think about it. I had honored my promise to the dying Josh and fulfilled his wish for a life with Isabel-
- le. The rest was up to them.
I thought Isabelle would resort to a hunger strike as she had before, but this time she chose a more drastic path.
She snuck out of the estate for a private rendezvous with the rakish son of a powerful courtier. She dreamed of marrying into a
great house as a first wife, but she soon discovered the man was only toying with her. Not only was her dream shattered, but she
nearly lost her virtue in the process.
In the family chapel, Isabelle knelt before the ancestral tablets, her eyes swollen from crying.
ра
“Father, Mother, I may have erred, but you drove me to it! If I could marry into a great house as a first wife, like Eleonora, I wouldn’t
have had to disgrace myself seeking my own fortune!”
The Duke’s riding crop struck Isabelle’s back with a sharp crack.
“You shameless wretch! You disgrace yourself and dare to blame us? Lady Sylvia,” he said, turning to Isabelle’s mother, “I never
should have been so soft as to let you raise the child. Look at what you’ve taught her!”
A loving parent plans for their child’s future. Years ago, my father had wanted to raise Isabelle under my mother’s name. As the
Duke’s second official daughter, she would have been guaranteed a fine match. But Lady Sylvia, afraid of losing her favor without a
child to bind her to the Duke, had wept and begged to keep Isabelle by her side.
Now, she regretted it. But it was too late.
