Scarlet Wentworth slammed the door loud enough to rattle the frame. She didn’t move far—just to the bed, where she sat, elbows on her knees, hands over her face. Breathing in, out, once, twice. A calming technique Benedict had taught her—one of several things he wasn’t supposed to be teaching, purchased with mincemeat pies.
Five minutes.
That was all it had taken.
Five minutes ago she’d been standing in a sunlit hall, answering to her name with something like pride. Now, she had gone from being the woman who rebuilt her family name to a pawn in someone else’s game.
She dropped her hands and stared at the floor.
An arranged marriage? How breathtakingly archaic. She was to be traded like a prize milk cow at market.
“I will not go quietly,” she whispered through gritted teeth.
If the Queen wanted a pawn, she should have picked a different piece.
Logically, Scarlet knew why the Queen was insisting on it. If she thought about it abstractly — an admittedly hard thing to do when it involved your own life — it elegantly solved a long-running dispute going back generations.
Her family held ancient rights to land they no longer controlled. The Wentworths possessed it in name only. Their noble status had been restored a decade ago, but without the land, the title brought no income.
But knowing that didn’t help. It still meant the sacrifice of self for the benefit of the family. The Wentworths were being asked to sacrifice their daughter to settle a dispute they hadn’t created.
She punched her bed. “It’s never going to happen!”
There had to be other solutions.
She got up from her bed, crossed to the window and looked out into the courtyard. It was a full circle moment, she realized. She was now looking out from the mansion that, in her youth, had only been a drawing on the mantle — a place her mother had insisted was theirs by right. She could see the towers and the gate and the trees along the wall, as if living within an artist’s drawing.
When she was little, and destined to become a scullery maid, she could have hardly imagined living in something so magnificent. There was more value in one paving stone in the corridor outside her room than in the entire flat her family had rented in those early years, when they had a landlord rather than being lords of the land.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The lordship was only in legalese, not in practice. There was no denying the legitimacy of the problem. What Scarlet denied was the legitimacy of the proposed solution.
A soft knock on the door brought her focus to the present.
“Go away!” she shouted.
“Let me in.” It was her brother Charles.
“Can you just leave me alone?”
“Why? So you can stew in your self-pity? I’m coming in. If you’re not decent, that’s your own fault.”
Charles opened the door and stood there, silhouetted within the frame.
Scarlet looked at him forlornly.
He frowned with her, no longer teasing.
That caused tears to spill down her cheeks.
And he came to her and hugged her — held her — as she sobbed.
When she pulled back, shudders still shaking her body, Charles dabbed her tears away with a handkerchief he had miraculously produced from somewhere, as if he’d anticipated this.
Dear Charles. He was a good brother.
“What if he’s handsome?” he asked.
He was trying to lighten the mood.
She was almost furious with him, but what came out a moment later was laughter, which they both shared.
“Political injustices are problems that sculpted cheekbones can’t solve,” she replied.
He grinned at her, but only slightly. There was a frown hidden behind it. Charles understood.
“He’ll probably be fat and shabby and controlling and stink of horse and blood,” she said.
“But,” Charles said, “he might be rich, so you’ll have fine things. And then you can take a consort on the side.”
“Oh, yes,” Scarlet said bitterly. “It’s every girl’s dream to be married to a monster so vile that happiness is only possible through infidelity.”
“Well, it shan’t be the first time among the nobility,” Charles said.
“It shan’t be at all,” she insisted. “Because I’m not doing it.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I will think of something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe negotiate with him to give us some of our land.”
“Land that he won himself?”
“He’s got to see reason.”
“He might demand that of you,” Charles said.
Scarlet gazed at him, then out the window.
“I just don’t know,” she said.
She reached for his hand.
“Thank you for understanding,” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s just what brothers do.”
“Not all of them, Charles,” she said, smiling slightly.
He stood, smiled, and bowed slightly to her. “It’ll be alright,” he said. He departed, leaving her alone in her room.
She stood at the window a moment longer, and then she changed her clothes.
Sir Benedict, master at arms, was oiling a buckle when Scarlet appeared in the doorway of the practice yard, already gloved, practice saber on her hip.
He looked up and took her in — the set of her jaw, the blonde hair still loose, the deliberate way she was holding herself together.
He had known her since she was fourteen. She had arrived at this house with nothing but her mother’s insistence and her own ferocious will. He had taught her how to hold a blade, and he recognized the angry look on her face.
“Your session isn’t until Thursday,” he said. “That was the deal.”
“I know,” she said. “I need one now.”
He set down the buckle without another word and rose from his stool with the unhurried movement of a man who had been doing this for thirty years. He crossed to the rack to select a practice blade.
“Full form, or do you just want to hit something?” he asked.
“Both.”
He almost smiled. “Warm up. Three passes on the post.”
But she was already moving.
She hit the post harder than she needed to, but the strike was precise, the edge aligned with the angle of attack, ensuring that the blade bit, rather than bent. That was the trick. Let the spine take the impact, not the wide cross-grain of the steel.
Benedict said nothing, only watched her form with the patient, critical eye she had come to rely on. After the third pass he called her to the center of the yard and raised his blade.
“Come on, then,” he said.
They had a language, the two of them, built over years of practice. He knew when to press and when to give ground. He knew when she needed correction and when she needed only to be met. Today he met her — absorbing her first flurry of strikes without retreating, letting her spend herself against him, and then gradually, subtly, making her work for every inch.
She fought hard. Harder than a Thursday session, harder than a bout with something to prove. She fought the way you fight when the thing you’re angry at can’t be struck.
He disarmed her on the sixth exchange.
She stood, breathing hard, looking at her empty hand.
“Again,” she said.
“Pick up your blade.”
She did. They went again. He disarmed her in four.
Scarlet removed her helmet and looked at him, frowning.
“You’re telegraphing your cross,” he said. “You always do when you’re angry. Your shoulder drops before your arm moves. You’re trying to muscle the strike, so you have to turn the blade to align the edge. That slows you down and burns your arms. Smooth is fast. Anger is your enemy.”
“I know,” she said.
“Then don’t do it.”
She picked up the blade again. This time she breathed first. She settled her feet, found her center, and looked at him — not through him, not past him at whatever was eating her alive, but at him, at the blade, at the problem directly in front of her.
They went three more passes. He didn’t disarm her.
When she finally lowered her sword, the light had shifted in the yard and her arms were burning pleasantly and something in her chest had loosened, not resolved, but loosened. The anger was still there. It would be there tomorrow. But it was no longer in charge.
Benedict took the practice blade from her and returned it to the rack.
“Better,” he said. It was high praise, from him.
“Thank you,” she said.
He waved a hand, already reaching for his oiling cloth. “Thursday,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
She walked back toward the house slowly, cooling down, turning the problem over in her mind with something closer to calculation than fury. She still didn’t know what she was going to do.
But she knew her shoulder hadn’t dropped on that last pass.
That was something.
After a bath and a change into simple linens, she felt much better, physically, even if her mind hadn’t stopped burning.
The dining hall was never quite warm enough in the evenings, even in summer, and tonight her mother had lit the candles early. The four of them sat at one end of a table built for twenty — a fact Scarlet had never quite gotten used to, the way their small family occupied the near corner of a room that seemed to be waiting for a grander occasion.
Charles ate quietly, eyes fixed on his plate, as if the coming discussion were someone else’s concern.
Her father poured the wine himself. He did that when he was thinking.
“I assume,” her mother said, unfolding her napkin with the crisp precision she applied to everything, “that you’ve had time to consider the Queen’s proposal with a clearer head.”
“I’ve had time,” Scarlet said, “and my head is perfectly clear. The answer is no.”
Her mother set down her napkin carefully. “Scarlet. A member of the Knights Celestial is no ordinary man. They are sworn, vetted, and held to a standard most men never approach. Sir Philip is not a villain. You need not fear him.”
“He may be a perfectly fine man,” Scarlet said. “That is not the point.”
Her mother’s gaze held her. “Then what is the point?”
“The point,” Scarlet said, “is that I did not fight to restore this family’s name to be handed to a stranger like a parcel.”
Her mother’s expression tightened. “You speak as if you are being sold.”
“Aren’t I?” Scarlet shot back.
“No,” her mother said calmly. “You are being asked to fulfill what daughters of noble houses have done for centuries.”
Scarlet leaned back, the weight of her words pressing. “If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t even be a noble house.”
The table went quiet. No one contradicted her.
Her father set down his wine. “No one is handing you to anyone,” he said quietly.
“The Queen is,” Scarlet replied.
“The Queen is suggesting,” he countered, “and there is a difference.”
“Is there?” Scarlet asked, voice sharp. “A queen’s suggestion is nearly a command.”
Her father paused, stillness marking each measured thought. “I want you to marry for love,” he said at last. “I have always wanted that for you. But I will not pretend that the Queen’s solution isn’t — in its way — elegant.”
“It’s easy to call it elegant when it costs you nothing. It’s a solution at my expense,” Scarlet said.
Her mother made a soft sound. “We are not talking about expense. We are talking about a life that could be very good. Land. Security. A husband who, by all accounts, is honorable.”
“By all accounts,” Scarlet said, “we’ve never met him.”
“Then meet him,” her mother said. “Before you refuse.”
“Meeting him is not the issue,” Scarlet said. “I have been thinking, and there is another way.”
The table quieted. Even Charles looked up.
“The land is held by Philip because he took it in a campaign,” Scarlet said. “But if the Wentworths fought alongside the Knights Celestial to push the Urukesh back, we would have a legitimate claim. Not to all the land, but enough of it. We negotiate a division — take back what is ours, and he keeps what he earned.”
Her father studied her for a long moment. “You’re suggesting we raise arms?”
“I’m suggesting we stop waiting for someone else to solve this,” she said.
“With what men?” her mother asked.
“That’s a detail to be worked out,” Scarlet replied.
“It is a significant detail,” her father said, engaged now, though measured, “but not impossible.”
“We have allies. We have our name restored. We have—”
“A daughter,” her mother interrupted, voice lighter but edged, “who has been fencing all afternoon and is still looking for something to fight.”
The room went quiet again. The truth landed, unspoken.
“Perhaps,” Scarlet said finally, “but that doesn’t make the idea wrong.”
Her father refilled his wine. Her mother smoothed her napkin. Charles returned to his plate, neutrality firmly in place.
They finished the meal without resolution. When they rose, her father touched her shoulder briefly. Her mother said goodnight without meeting her eyes, leaving its meaning lingering in the air. Charles glanced at her with a sad smile.
Scarlet sat alone, toying with her mashed cauliflower, moving it about with her fork as if building a fortress.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.