Read Online Avelynn by Marissa Campbell - Free Book Online Page A

I agreed to marry them. Why should I settle for less?”
    â€œThose men you speak of, lady, tried to woo you, and look where it got them.” He patted my head absently. “I’m not here to fill your mind with fanciful illusions. I’m here to make a profitable transaction. You can either accept my suit graciously, and with it a place of extravagance and enviable nobility, or content yourself with taking slop out to my pigs.”
    â€œI will do no such thing.”
    â€œYou won’t have a choice.”
    He turned to walk away, but hesitated and looked back. “After hearing tales of your capriciousness, I thought it was you who I needed to woo, but I quickly realized I was pursuing the wrong person.” He smiled. “I pledged my allegiance to the master who truly controls your strings, little puppet, and whether you like it or not, your father will see us married.”

 
    SIX
    Riding with a handful of my father’s thegns and several pages, we made our way home, the Christmas festivities and Winchester a half day’s ride behind us. I had asked Wulfric to maintain a pace several lengths behind so I could speak to my father alone.
    â€œHe’s using me,” I cried. “He’ll toss me aside and steal your title and wealth.”
    â€œHe will have a hard time at it, since I am still very much alive and breathing.” My father looked sourly at me. His breath, plentiful and vigorous, puffed into great clouds of white in the frigid air.
    â€œI beg you, release me from this betrothal.”
    â€œMy decision is final.”
    â€œYou’re casting me into the lion’s den, to be ravaged and ripped apart. Nothing will be left of me when he’s finished taking what he wants.”
    â€œYou are overreacting.”
    â€œNo, I’m not. He’s rude and arrogant. He threatened me.”
    â€œI saw the two of you speaking at the feast. He was nothing if not courteous and charming.”
    â€œAround you he is the shining, dutiful hero, but with me, he is the Devil incarnate. You’ve wronged me, Father, insisting on this farce of a marriage.”
    â€œEnough. You will marry Demas during the harvest festival and not revisit this conversation again. If you so much as mention it in my hearing, I will send you to Glastonbury to spend the next eight months of your betrothal in pious contemplation with the nuns. Am I understood?”
    I gritted my teeth and nodded. I wanted to scream. He had raised me as equal to Edward, led me to believe there was nothing I could not accomplish, nothing I could not do. He molded me, instructed me, allowed me to entertain the fanciful idea that one day I, his daughter and eldest child, would take over the running of the estate. My mother had encouraged it, fostered it, and my father had agreed. He seemed to take great pride in my ability to read and write, in my sense of fairness and reason. But it was all a lie. He never had any intention of giving me the responsibility, the chance. That more than anything else hurt beyond all measure.
    *   *   *
    I spent the next few months dallying on long rides through the frozen countryside, visiting various cottages, doing whatever I could to help some of the poorer peasants make it through the harshest part of winter, anything to avoid the silence. My father and I were no longer on speaking terms. When I did see him, I turned and walked the other way. He never visited my cottage, nor did he send word to join him in the hall. It was a very lonely, dark, cold winter. And even with the arrival of warm March breezes and the new planting season, my bitterness did not melt.
    Of course, the exasperating fire might have had something to do with that. I looked cantankerously at the hearth. Nelda had gone home to help her sister with the birth of her child, leaving me to my own devices, which suited my melancholy just fine but was rather inconvenient when I needed domestic