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the cold certainty spread to her stomach. She unconsciously clutched the silk of her skirt. Of her investment. One of many that cluttered her wardrobe, robbing the rest of the house of its once-glorious grandeur.
    Unreal. Like a dream. She’d wake and find herself in the country, three years younger and eagerly awaiting her debut, everything in the past two years a fading nightmare. “I am also expected at the Mandells’ and the—”
    “Yes, yes,” he said sharply, interrupting her wooden recital. “I’ll have your mother cancel everything. Only thing she is useful for these days.”
    This existence she now found herself in was real, of course. She had painfully pinched herself far too many times in the past only to have the throb remain. She schooled her expression, closing the cold pane over her features, not allowing anything to show on her face. “Very well, Father. And where might this heathen’s den reside?”
    “It doesn’t matter. No one will know of it, not even your mother, and the less you know the better.”
    Bitter laughter bubbled, and she fought to keep it down. What was he planning to tell Viola? That Charlotte was spending some choice time with his mistress in order to learn the trade? “Afraid I’ll do something to ruin our marriage chances?”
    “Don’t get smart with me.” He shook a finger in her direction, darkness in his expression. “Trant will fix things should they go awry.”
    So he had lost to Mr. Trant. And somehow a bet had been undertaken before that loss. Given his attention in the past few weeks, Trant was hardly a surprise aspirant for her hand. But she hadn’t anticipated that other aspects might be negotiated first.
    She should only be surprised that it had taken her father this long to venture down this avenue. Selling her to the highest bidder in marriage was little more than stringing together a lifetime of sold nights.
    “I see. You chose to skip the direct route to marriage. I thought you were aiming for an earldom. Trant won’t even make your grandson a peer.”
    “If only that were it.”
    She narrowed her eyes on his face, watching the expressions that he had once kept close to his chest—it seemed so long ago now—expressions that every day grew more obvious, furtive, and desperate. “Who exactly did you lose to, Father?”
    “It is of no consequence. He did it on a lark, as he seems to do everything.” Bennett Chatsworth fisted his watch. “Makes money hand over fist, despite it. How? Blasted nobodies. His reputation though . . .” Her father shuddered. “He will destroy us if the bet is not satisfied.”
    The ice turned to dead stone as the circumstance grew tangible. “What did you do? Who did you sell me to, Father?”
    Overheard conversations overlapped her lifeless thoughts. Charlotte Chatsworth doesn’t know how lucky she is. Did you see her standing there, nose in the air? She thinks she is better than all of us.
    Those girls in the retiring room had no concept of the definition of “lucky.”
    Her father turned without answering. “I will tell your mother you have taken sick.”
    Nothing felt closer to the truth.
    “I—you can’t mean for me to spend the night alone with some gentleman?” Or with someone who couldn’t . . . even be deemed such.
    His silence was answer enough.
    “What-what if it gets out?”
    These things always did.
    Years of scraping and posing, holding together her pride under constant barrage, showing calm in the face of gathering anxiety and increasingly pressing desperation. All lost to her father’s gambling and greed. And Emily . . .
    “It won’t.”
    “But—”
    “Then you’ll do what needs to be done to fix it,” he said harshly. “That is all, Charlotte.” He moved toward the door, conversation finished.
    She reached out and gripped his sleeve. “Father.” Please, echoed, unsaid. Don’t do this to me.
    Everything she had endured. For him. For the family. For her own small, desperate