The Toll {Book 2}

25. A Bitter Break- Ferdinand

(A/N: I tried to update yesterday, but I think my account was glitching and wouldn't let me. It looks like it might be fixed now. I hope you all will enjoy this Saturday update instead!)

My smile faltered and I looked from my mother's tears to Katya's glare. "What's the matter?" I asked, chest tightening. "Why is everyone acting this way?"

"Ferdinand, we can talk about it in private, but I don't think now is the appropriate time," Father said. He was a man who mostly kept silent, but he with the authority of someone who knew the weight of each one of his sparse words.

"I think now is a perfectly appropriate time. There's no one here who shouldn't hear this. Nadia is invested in this as much as anyone else, and the LeClaires can't understand a single word we're saying, whether it's in front of them or through the walls."

"Dinny!" Mother sniffled.

Father's cheeks hollowed and he rubbed a hand over his beard.

"Very well, if you want her to hear our objections, then I'll state them. We barely know this girl, and we think a marriage at this time would be hasty."

I snorted. "You barely knew Mother's name when you married her. I survived hell with Nadia."

Mother's eyes went wide, and Father clenched his jaw.

"Yes. I barely knew your mother before our marriage. But our families had known each other for nearly a century. My parents had watched her grow up, and they knew it was a prudent match."

I wanted to ask about all the arguments they had over Mother's foolishness and Father's coldness. All the times they stormed out of the house to spend a week or two with friends, leaving Katya and myself to weather the storm with the one parent remaining. Had they been so glad of their loveless marriage then? Had their parents truly made a good match of personalities, when Mother and Father were so vastly different from each other? Perhaps it had been a good match for money and title, but I doubted my grandparents knew what they were actually doing when they paired these two together.

I wanted to ask all that, but I knew I couldn't. It was one of their biggest secrets. It was one they wouldn't even admit to themselves. If I brought it up, it would derail the conversation and take it to a broken place it couldn't return from. So I bit my tongue and glared at Father, wishing he could just confess how miserable his parents made him with their match.

Mother, bolstered by Mrs. LeClaire, held up a hand as if she wished to speak. "Dinny, there were so many girls you were interested in before you joined the National. Any one of them would be perfectly suited to fitting in seamlessly in the kind of life that a baron will be living. Nadia is a ballet dancer from the poorer end of the city. Is she really capable of matching your lifestyle? Does she even want to?"

I drew in a short breath. Was she really saying these things? Was she really saying Nadia wasn't worthy of me, when it was Nadia that I was not worthy of? My hands clenched into fists, and I barely controlled my voice.

"Mother. If anything, Nadia should be refusing my offer. She's a countess, remember? She outranks me by a large gap, and, should she want to, she'd be eligible to marry dukes or princes."

Mother shifted in her chair. "Yes. Well. But, she's a countess only a few days. She has no idea of the lifestyle. She's used to living her life a certain way, which is not at all how we live ours. Do you really want to uproot her and force her to attend parties she feels uncomfortable at?"

Though all these questions should have been asked of Nadia, Mother did her best to pretend that she wasn't there. She only looked at me, like I was the one deciding what Nadia wanted or did. I shook my head, my cheeks growing hot.