C6 Hold on a while

“My room is in the basement”.

As she spoke, they had already reached the basement. Jane pushed the door open. The room was wide and spacious, cluttered with a variety of junk.

Tucked all the way at the back behind a curtain, was a small corner with a single bed, a worn desk and a flimsy clothes rack.

Toby’s eyes widened in disbelief. This was where the Harrisons kept such a beautiful girl? Not only was there not a trace of sunlight here but, it was uncomfortably humid and it was so stuffy that the air seemed to stick to one’s skin.

How could anyone be forced to sleep here? Jane must have been worth less than dirt to the Harrison family!

Jane had a few belongings so she was done packing in no time. Noticing that Toby was studying their surroundings in shock, she shrugged and said, “Okay, I’m done. Staring won’t make this place any prettier. Let’s get out of here”.

Ethan’s expression was more contained than his brother’s. The thin, flat line of his mouth was the only sign of the storm lurking beneath his reserved demeanor.

They returned to the living room. According to Jane, their business was done and they could go. She didn’t matter to the Harrisons and she didn’t care that the rules mandated that she must return home to them.

If it were possible, she would have been content never to see them again in this lifetime. But when she voiced her thoughts, she was met with an uncharacteristically insistent reply from Ethan.

“We will wait”.

If he had been ignorant to the type of life that Jane had endured in the Harrison household, he might have been willing to let things slide. But having witnessed it with his own two eyes, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.

Twenty minutes later, Peter Harrison arrived, flustered and in a hurry. Having Ethan Harrington in his house filled him with equal parts of excitement and nervousness.

When the Second Young Master of the Harrington family had first approached his family looking for prospective partners— and later settling on Stacy — Peter had assumed he was finding a bride for himself. Only afterwards had he discovered that it was the elder brother Stacy was due to marry.

It was said that the first son of the Harrington family was frail and sick, with a disfigured face and broken legs, ill-favored by his family. The Harrisons hadn’t expected them to visit after the marriage.

Toby’s patience had all but whittled away during those twenty minutes of being forced to wait.

“Peter Harrison, you’re truly a piece of work. We agreed that Stacy would marry my brother, but you deceived us and broke our bargain by swapping her out for Jane. Do you take the Harrington family as fools?

Peter removed his hat, willing his legs not to tremble in fear. They would have to be fools not to take the Harrington family seriously.

The Harringtons were the most powerful in their circle of elites; the Harrisons were as small and insignificant as ants compared to them. But Stacy had refused to marry a man sickly to the point of death and Peter had been reluctant to ship his pretty elder daughter off to meet such a fate, however, leaving him with his bastard child.

He thought that everything would be resolved after Jane had married that weak, listless man. He certainly hadn’t expected that the Second Young Master of the Harringtons would come back to settle scores after the wedding.

Peter was racking his brain, trying to figure out how to explain the situation to placate Toby when his second daughter Selene spoke from the doorway as she stepped into the house.

“Young Master Toby, it wasn’t that my elder sister refused to marry your brother. It was Jane, she cried, cajoled and pleaded with my sister, saying that she loved Young Master Ethan and she wanted to marry him”.

“My sister, naive fool that she was, actually bought into her nonsense and left the country so that Jane could take her place on the wedding day. My father was left with no choice on the matter”.

Toby swore colorfully. Were these people incapable of speaking up? If they had just said something, he could have simply picked some woman off the streets to replace Stacy — anything but letting a beauty like Jane fall into the feeble trembling hands of his elder brother.

Jane was on the verge of refuting the distorted picture of events that Selene had painted, when Ethan suddenly took hold of her hand, quieting her.

“Hold on a while, don’t worry”.

Ethan’s gentleness was oddly comforting; Jane felt her anger slowly fade away. Her eyes drifted to their intertwined hands. Her husband’s hand felt icy, perhaps due to his poor health.

Without thinking, she grasped him back, trying to provide him with her own warmth. In truth, it was no rarity for Selene to twist the facts and use them against her. She had been incensed at being wronged the first few times, of course, but eventually she had gotten used to it.

Latching onto Selene’s story, Peter said to Toby, “My deepest apologies, Young Master Toby. Jane was raised amongst our family and she is close to both her sisters. We must have spoiled her too much, the silly girl, for her to make such a foolish mistake”.

“Jane is still young and ignorant, if she has done something to enrage you both, allow me to beg for forgiveness on her behalf”.

Selene suddenly stood up from where she was seated and said indignantly, “Dad, Jane is twenty two, she’s not a child anymore. You keep letting her get away with little things just because you raised her, and what do you get in return for your softheartedness?”

“She tricked her sister into going overseas, all so she could don her wedding gown and make use of her identity to marry Young Master Ethan. Was she thinking about our family then? Did she even care that we would be the ones to suffer for her mistake if she was found out?”

Ursula wiped a single tear from her eye.

“That’s quite enough Selene, it’s all my fault. I took pity on Jane for being an orphan amongst our family and was too indulgent with her. How could I have known that she would grow to become so bold and land us all in such a fiasco?”

Jane listened to their fabricated sob story, complete with snot and tears, each sentence punctuated with choked weeping. If she didn’t know better, she could almost find herself being moved by their performance.

Toby, however, couldn’t care less what they had to say. He only had one request: “Since we got the wrong bride, I’m giving you twenty four hours to find Stacy and bring her back”.

Only then would the beautiful Jane Fitzergald belong to him.