Page 29 of Snowed In with the Runaway Bride

He drew in a deep breath, let it out, and faced her, his expression set in grim lines.

“Your grandfather is the reason I can be a post-captain.”

What did that have to do with anything? “I don’t understand.”

“My father, he loved gaming. He would gamble on anything at all. Horses. Dice. A race between two snails on a wall. Anything. And he lost. Constantly.”

He met her gaze with his own, and the pain in his eyes made her want to weep for him.

“Your grandfather decided he wanted his descendants to be aristocrats. He was able to marry your father into the gentry, but when he saw the extent of my father’s debts, he knew he could go higher. So he bought them up, and he went to my father with an arrangement.”

He turned again to the window, staring unseeingly at the blank, white landscape. “I was already mad to be a sailor. The sea called to me. But my father could not afford to pay for the education I would need to be a midshipman, and was too proud to tell anyone else how dire our situation was. It was only a fantastical dream of mine until your grandfather offered him the bargain.”

“And the bargain was that my grandfather gave your father the money he needed to stay afloat, and I was to marry Kendal.”

“Yes. It is… it is the only truly honorable course. You must marry my brother. It is a debt of honor, and the debt must be repaid.”

Penny sat in silence for a long time while he continued to look out the window, seeming to brace himself for her agreement that the only choice she had was to marry his brother.

She considered it for a long time. She honestly did. She wanted to give due weight to his opinion as one of the people most closely affected.

Ultimately, however, it was her own decision. By running away, she had created a choice she had never had before, and had no intention of changing her mind.

She aimed her words at his stiff back like an arrow. “I do not care.”

He whirled and stared at her. “What?”

She stood up from her seat, her chin set in determined lines. “I. Do. Not. Care. I will not marry Kendal. No one can force me to do it.”

“But…” He seemed flummoxed by her words, and she nearly wanted to laugh. “But… your duty. To your family. To my family. What about family honor?”

Anger rose in her, and she snapped her fingers at him. “I care that for your ‘duty.’ And your ‘family honor.’ If those things require me to make my sister and your brother and myself miserable for the rest of our lives, I shall not do it.”

As he continued to gape at her, she stalked to the door and flung it open it. “I am hungry and require breakfast. Are you coming?”

Hugo’s mind reeled. He had never imagined for a moment that Penny would ignore his appeal to her sense of duty when she had clearly been following it all these years in keeping to her commitment to Oliver. He started towards her, reaching for her as she opened the door.

“But, Penny, be reasonable⁠—"

She marched out, nodding briskly to the innkeeper in the corridor, who bowed in return, unimpeded by the armload of laundry he carried. As Hugo brushed past him, Robson grinned and elbowed him in the ribs.

“Newlyweds, eh? Better resign yourself now. She won’t never be reasonable when she sounds like that.”

Hugo grunted and continued on to follow Penny down the stairs, the innkeeper still laughing behind him.

She certainly was feeling better today, because he could scarcely keep up with her as she descended the stairs in her pique. He finally caught up to her outside the door to the taproom, grabbing her arm to stop her. She whirled on him. The fury snapping from her eyes made him drop his hand and take a step back.

“I have been told what I must do and who I must marry and what kind of duchess I must be since I was ten years old, Lord Hugo, and I am sick to my teeth of it. From now, I make my own decisions, and you stay out of my way.”

She shoved the door open and stalked into the taproom, singing out, “No need to stand, gentlemen, though I thank you for your courtesy.”

Three men sitting at a small table near a window wordlessly moved to another, and Penny smiled at them as she plunked herself into an empty chair.

Hugo glanced around the room to see the other men glaring at him. At him! Not at the woman invading their masculine space. The realization that they were on her side unfroze him and he moved to sit in the chair across from Penny. She stared out the window as the wind blew drifts of snow in eddies across their view.

“When is this snow going to melt? I don’t recall it snowing this much at the other Christmases we spent with your family." Her tone made it clear she felt the snow was not only a personal affront, but one Hugo had caused to annoy her.

"There is usually some snow, but not nearly this much." Hugo wondered again what Oliver had been thinking by planning the wedding not only at Gaitskill Castle, but in the middle of winter. "I despise the snow."