The Marker Read Online Free Page B

don’t expect you to forgive me, but I didn’t think I would lose.”
    “You said the same thing last time,” she snapped. “And who pulled us out of the fire then? Oh, right, I did. If you had just stopped then, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” She caught Nicholas regarding her out of the corner of her eye, his expression interested. She wasn’t proud of what she had done, and she didn’t want to discuss her situation in front of a man like Nicholas Wetherby. What was done was done.
    She deflated at the thought. What her father had done...was done. She could fight—and lose—or she could accept her fate with grace and retain some shred of pride.
    At this point, her pride was all she had left.
    Glaring at Nicholas long enough to ensure he understood her displeasure, she said stiffly, “I will get my things.”
    Too tired—and too hungry—to hold on to her anger, she wearily made her way upstairs. After all she had done for him, her father betrayed her once more. She had cleaned up his messes, taken care of him, kept his house in order—such as it was. And finally, when he had come to her with the proposition she marry one of his creditors—a very wealthy, older man—she had agreed.
    Her fiancé seemed nice enough. He had agreed to wait until her twenty-first birthday, giving her father time to pay off his debts. Only, like everything else he attempted, her father’s business venture had failed. Not long after, her fiancé had solicitously reappeared, offering an allowance to keep them afloat. Swallowing her pride, she had accepted, only to have her father squander the money on drinking and gambling.
    She wouldn’t ask for more.
    So, no matter what she did, she was stuck.
    Stuck marrying a man she didn’t love, stuck working for another without benefit of payment. Like her friends, she had once dreamed of marrying for love, had wished for the prince who would sweep her off her feet, but that had been nothing more than a child’s whimsy, and her life hardly qualified as some fairy tale. Her fiancé’s proposal had been a business transaction, with agreements and contracts. Each had something the other wanted.
    She was young and pretty and pliant. He had money.
    The kiss he had given her had been chaste and not entirely unpleasant, but there was no love when he touched her. She didn’t fault him for his lack of feeling—she didn’t love him either. He had bought her from her father, and she had not been an unwilling participant. Like a practical girl, she would marry for security and comfort.
    She would never feel the joy of real love, even if it did exist.
    And she, being the practical sort, doubted it did.
    She tried to push the memory away as her stomach began to turn. Being honest, she didn’t want to marry anyone—she would have been content working as a governess in some rich woman’s household, surrounded by other people’s children and books. That’s what she should have done instead of trying to fix her father’s problems and solve the mountain of debt hanging over their heads. The men in her life had been disappointments—her fiancé was not necessarily distasteful to her, but she didn’t think much of a man who had to buy himself a wife, and her father lost everything he touched and failed at everything he attempted. This would be the second time she had to come to his rescue, and, knowing her father the way she did, wouldn’t be the last. Things hadn’t always been this way, and she wished she could have her father back, have the man who had held her on his knee and told her fantastic stories of love and adventure, who made sure his daughter was educated, well-read, and had a mind of her own. The man her father had been died with her mother, more than five years before. Afterwards, the drinking and the gambling had taken over.
    Her father’s downward spiral began innocently enough, as these things always do, until it became a beast he could not—or would not—control, and she, ever