My Arranged Husband Humiliated Me At A Ball — Then I Discovered Why He Really Bought Me
Part 2
Rain hammered against the roof of the carriage on our way home, sounding like handfuls of gravel thrown by an angry child.
Sitting engulfed in the shadows across from me, Brian did not move a single inch.
He had draped a heavy woolen cloak over my shoulders before shoving me out the servants’ door of the estate.
The name Craig tasted like pennies and sour milk in my dry mouth.
I distinctly remembered the man’s hands at my father’s card table, his thick, damp fingers adorned with heavy gold rings that dug into my skin.
He bred fighting dogs, a violent hobby everyone ignored because he owned half the shipping docks in Liverpool.
If Brian was telling the truth, my father had truly intended to sell me into an absolute slaughterhouse.
“You are bleeding,” Brian said, his voice cutting through the rhythmic clatter of the horse’s hooves.
I blinked, pulling my gaze from the floorboards to look down at my hands.
The thin, overwashed cotton gloves were stained a rusty brown at the palms where I had dug my nails in during the ballroom confrontation.
Before I could pull them away, Brian leaned forward, instantly filling the cramped space of the carriage.
He reached out and took my hands without bothering to ask for permission.
“I am fine,” I lied, trying to tug my hand back.
His grip tightened just enough to stop me, acting as an anchor rather than a trap.
Reaching into his overcoat, he retrieved a stark white linen handkerchief.
Without another word, he wrapped the fabric tightly around my palm, his thumbs pressing into the back of my hand to apply pressure.
“Better myself than someone else,” I replied, the defensive cynicism acidic on my tongue.
Brian finally looked up, the passing streetlamps turning the hollows of his cheeks into dark caverns.
“You think I am enjoying this?” he asked softly.
“I think you bought a convenient piece of revenge against my father or perhaps against Craig, making me merely the collateral,” I shot back.
He stared at me for a long, heavy moment as the muscle in his jaw resumed its rhythmic throbbing.
“If I wanted revenge against Craig, I would have put a bullet in his knee,” Brian said, the casual brutality of his tone making me shiver.
“And if I wanted compliant property, I would have bought a spaniel.”
He released my hand and leaned back into the shadows, looking profoundly exhausted.
“Why?”
I demanded, my voice cracking under the intense strain.
“Because,” he said, staring out the darkened window, “I was in the room when your father offered you to him, and I saw your face.”
He didn’t say another word for the remainder of the journey, letting the thick silence stretch between us.
As the carriage pulled up to the sprawling estate, I looked at the blood on his pristine handkerchief and wondered if I had just traded one monster for another?
Part 3
The carriage pulled up to the sprawling estate, the wheels crunching against the wet gravel.
Megan looked at the blood on the pristine handkerchief and realized she hadn’t traded one monster for another.
She had traded a monster for a man who was entirely terrified of his own humanity.
The estate was a moraleum, built of pale, cold stone and heavy mahogany.
It absorbed light rather than reflecting it.
The footman who opened the door looked startled, hastily averting his eyes from Megan’s disheveled state and the heavy cloak she clutched around her throat.
Brian didn’t pause in the foyer.
He unfastened his wet overcoat, threw it at the servant, and turned to her.
“Go to your rooms,” he commanded.
“It wasn’t a suggestion.
I will send someone up to light the fires.”
Megan didn’t argue.
She turned and walked toward the grand staircase, her boots squelching slightly on the marble.
The east wing was a 10-minute walk through winding, drafty corridors.
It was the oldest part of the house, isolated and prone to freezing drafts that crept under the heavy tapestries.
She had been assigned rooms there upon her arrival.
She had assumed it was an insult, a way to keep the disgraced purchased bride out of sight.
Tonight she realized it might simply be where the previous duchess, his mother, a woman notoriously mad, had lived out her final days.
Her bed chamber was pitch black and freezing.
The fire had burned down to gray ash hours ago.
She fumbled blindly for the matches on the vanity striking one and lighting a single gas lamp.
The yellow light flickered, casting long, distorted shadows across the damusk wallpaper.
She was completely alone.
Brenda, the half-blind maid, was undoubtedly asleep in the servants’s quarters, and Megan lacked the energy or the cruelty to ring for her at this hour.
She dropped the heavy cloak onto a chair.
The cold air of the room bit into the exposed skin of her shoulders.
She reached up to the velvet knot Brian had tied, her fingers still clumsy from the cold, and the bandage on her right hand tugged at the fabric.
It was useless.
He had tied it with the brute force of a sailor securing a line in a storm.
Frustration, hot and prickly, rose in her throat.
She stepped to the fulllength mirror.
The woman looking back at her was a disaster.
Her hair, pinned up hours ago, was falling in limp, damp strands around her face.
The plum silk bodice sagged, held up solely by the stubborn, ugly knot on her left shoulder, and beneath it all the corset.
The monstrous piece of engineering, made of stiffened canvas and yellowing whale bone, was laced up the back with thick cotton cording.
Megan reached behind herself, her fingers tracing the tight crisscrossing lines.
She tried to hook a finger under the knot at the base of her spine, but the laces were pulled so taut they felt like wire.
She pulled.
Nothing happened.
She twisted her arms higher, straining her shoulders, trying to find a loose loop.
A sharp pain shot up her ribs.
The corset wasn’t just tight.
It was cutting off her circulation entirely.
The panic from the ballroom, the adrenaline of the carriage ride, the freezing air, it all coalesed into a sudden, terrifying inability to breathe.
She gasped, a short, shallow intake of air that felt like inhaling broken glass.
She clawed at the back of the dress, desperate to reach the laces, but the silk was in the way.
She needed to get the dress off first.
She grabbed the velvet knot on her shoulder and yanked with all her strength.
The velvet ripped, the silk tore.
The entire left side of the bodice collapsed, peeling away from her chest and pulling at her waist.
She stood in the mirror half naked, gasping for air.
Her arms twisted awkwardly behind her back, fighting a losing battle against the canvas armor.
A pathetic, ragged sob tore out of her throat.
The heavy oak door creaked open.
Megan froze her eyes, snapping to the reflection in the glass.
Brian stood in the doorway.
Having shed his coat and waistcoat, he wore only his trousers and a white linen shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows revealing thick muscular forearms corded with veins.
He held a brass candlestick in one hand, the flame illuminating the stark exhaustion carved lines of his face.
He stopped dead.
His eyes tracked from the torn plum silk pulled at her hips up the rigid yellowing canvas of the corset to the pale shaking expanse of her chest and finally to her eyes in the mirror.
Megan couldn’t move.
She couldn’t cover herself.
The humiliation was absolute.
“I couldn’t unfasten it,” she whispered.
The words sounded like dry leaves scraping across stone.
Brian didn’t say a word.
Setting the candlestick down on a side table with a dull clatter, he crossed the room.
The floorboards didn’t dare creek beneath him.
He stepped behind her, entirely blocking out the reflection of her own misery in the glass.
“Drop your arms,” he instructed his voice, a low, rough rasp in the quiet room.
Megan slowly let her arms fall to her sides.
She stared straight ahead, focusing on the intricate floral pattern carved into the mahogany frame of the mirror.
His large, warm hands settled on her waist.
The heat of his palms bled through the stiff canvas.
He didn’t linger.
His fingers moved up the back of the corset, tracing the impossibly tight laces.
She heard the sharp intake of his breath.
“Who laced you into this?” he asked the coiled rage, returning to his voice, though it was quieter now, vibrating against her spine.
“Brenda, Brenda is fired.”
“She is half blind, Brian.
It wasn’t her fault.”
“The corset is just a torture device.”
He interrupted his fingers, finding the knot at the small of her back.
He picked at it his large hands, surprisingly dextrous, but the cord was completely jammed.
He swore softly a harsh guttural sound.
“Hold on to the vanity.”
Megan gripped the marble edge of the table.
She felt a sudden sharp pressure against her spine, followed by the metallic rasp of steel.
He had pulled a pocketk knife from his trousers.
“Don’t move,” he commanded.
She held her breath.
She felt the cold edge of the blade slip between the tight canvas and the delicate skin over her spine.
The blade slid upward.
With a series of sharp popping sounds, the thick cotton laces gave way.
The relief was instantaneous and violent.
The canvas split open like a husk.
Her rib cage, freed from the vice, expanded with a massive, shuddering gasp.
Air rushed into her lungs, deep and intoxicating, causing her to sway on her feet.
Brian caught her shoulders before she could collapse.
He pulled the severed halves of the corset away, letting the heavy, ruined garment drop to the floor with a dull thud.
The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the ragged, greedy sound of Megan’s breathing.
She gripped the marble vanity, her knuckles white feeling oxygen, flood her blood like a drug.
She was wearing only her thin cotton shemese and the pulled skirt of the ruined silk dress.
The shemese was soaked with sweat clinging to her skin.
Brian stood directly behind her.
He didn’t step back.
The heat radiating from his large body chased away the freezing chill of the room.
He was looking at the mirror.
Megan slowly lifted her gaze to meet his reflection.
He wasn’t looking at her face.
He was staring at her ribs.
Megan looked down.
The mirror offered a merciless clinical view.
The corset had been laced so tightly for so long that the stiff whale bone had pressed deep angry red grooves into her flesh.
The welts wrapped around her torso like the bars of a cage, the skin raw and bruised purple at the edges.
Near her diaphragm, the canvas had rubbed the skin completely raw, leaving a weeping abrasion the size of a silver coin.
She looked grotesque.
She looked like she had been flogged.
She reached up, trying to cross her arms over her chest to hide the marks, but his hands clamped down on her wrists.
He pulled her arms back down to her sides.
“Don’t,” he ordered softly.
He stepped closer, his chest brushed lightly against her back.
Slowly, carefully, he reached around her.
He didn’t touch the welts directly.
His long fingers hovered a fraction of an inch above her skin, tracing the angry red lines without making contact.
The heat from his fingertips felt like phantom touches against her bruised flesh.
“This is what you went through to impress a room full of people you despise?” he asked.
His voice completely hollowed out.
“I did it so you wouldn’t send me back,” Megan whispered.
“The truth slipped out before she could stop it.
It hung in the freezing air, heavy and pathetic.”
Brian’s hand stopped moving.
His eyes snapped up to meet hers in the mirror.
The devastation in his gaze was complete.
He looked like she had driven his own pocketk knife directly into his stomach. send you back,” he repeated the words, tasting like ash.
“To my father,” she clarified, her voice, shaking.
“To to Craig.
If I disgraced you, if I proved useless, you could enull the marriage.
You could demand the debt be repaid.”
Brian slowly let his hands drop.
He took a step back, putting distance between them, though he couldn’t break eye contact in the glass.
“You think I’m a merchant?” he said.
It wasn’t an accusation.
It was a horrifying realization.
“You think you are leased property, aren’t you?”
She turned around to face him.
The sudden movement made her wince, the welts on her ribs screaming in protest.
What else am I, Brian?
We spoke three times before the altar.
You paid £30,000 to clear my father’s ledger.
You moved me to the east wing.
You never visit.
You never speak to me unless it is to give a command.
You drag me to balls and demand I look the part of a duchess.
And when I fail, you look at me like I am a smudge on your boot.
I looked at you like a smudge on my boot tonight because another man was undressing you with his eyes, and I wanted to tear his throat out, he roared.
The shout bounced off the stone walls, violent and shocking.
Brian dragged his hands through his hair, pacing away from her. his large frame eating up the small space of the room.
He stopped at the unlit fireplace, gripping the mantle exactly as he had in the library, his knuckles turning stark white.
“I moved you to the east wing because it is the only wing in this god-forsaken tomb that has updated plumbing and a fireplace that doesn’t smoke,” he said, his voice dropping to a harsh, strained whisper.
I don’t visit you because every time I look at you, I remember the absolute terror in your eyes when we signed the registry.
You looked at me like I was the executioner.
He turned his head slightly, looking at her over his shoulder.
The exhaustion was gone, replaced by a desperate raw vulnerability that made Megan<unk>’s chest ache.
“I don’t know how to speak to a woman who believes I bought her,” he confessed.
“I know how to command soldiers.
I know how to manage estates.
I do not know how to convince my wife that I saved her because he stopped swallowing hard.
Because she deserved to be saved, not owned.
Megan stood frozen by the vanity.
The cold of the room was seeping back into her bones, but she barely felt it.
The brutal, cynical narrative she had built around her survival was fracturing.
“You didn’t ask,” she pointed out quietly.
You didn’t offer to save me.
You just arranged it.
If I had offered, your father would have realized your worth and doubled the price or sold you to Craig anyway just to spite me.
Brian shot back, turning fully to face her.
He is a rat.
He understands only transactions.
And what do you understand, Brian?
He walked back toward her.
He didn’t stop until he was standing a foot away.
He reached out his hand hovering near her cheek before he gently, almost hesitantly brushed a damp strand of hair behind her ear.
His thumb grazed her jawline.
I understand that you are standing in a freezing room, bleeding onto my handkerchief, wrapped in ruined silk.
And you are entirely magnificent, he murmured, Megan’s breath hitched.
The compliment wasn’t flowery.
It wasn’t poetic.
It was dragged out of him, a blunt, factual observation from a man who rarely spoke without a purpose.
He looked down at the angry red marks wrapping around her ribs, his jaw tightened.
“I will burn that corset,” he stated, the commanding man, returning to his voice, authoritative and absolute.
“It belonged to your grandmother, I think.”
Megan offered a faint, hysterical bubble of laughter, threatening to escape her lips.
Then I will scatter her ashes with it.
He stepped back.
Wash your face.
I will go down to the kitchens and find a salve for your back, and I will bring wood for the fire.
He turned and walked toward the door.
He paused with his hand on the brass knob, looking back at her.
The shadows of the room clung to him, but his pale eyes were bright, piercing through the gloom.
She looked up, clutching the shemese tight against her chest.
You are never returning to the east wing after tonight, he said.
Pack whatever you wish to keep in the morning.
My chambers are in the south wing.
They are warmer.
He closed the door behind him with a soft click, leaving Megan standing in the middle of the room.
The scent of bay rum and cedar lingering in the cold air, completely rewriting the rules of her captivity.
Ash plumemed into the freezing air as the heavy brass poker struck the iron grate.
Brian knelt on the hearth, his broad back flexing beneath the thin linen of his shirt, as he coaxed a struggling flame from the damp kindling.
He had returned 10 minutes later, carrying an armful of split oak logs and a small squat jar of amber glass.
He hadn’t knocked.
He had simply walked back in, claiming the space with a silent, overwhelming gravity.
Megan sat on the edge of the mattress, the thin wool blanket pulled up to her chin.
Her teeth had finally stopped chattering, but a deep internal tremor remained.
She watched him work.
He was utterly focused on the fire, arranging the logs with a structural precision that seemed entirely unnecessary. the flames caught casting a warm flickering orange glow over the sharp angles of his face.
He looked entirely out of place in the delicate rotting grandeur of the east wing.
He belonged in a saddle or behind a heavy oak desk or wading through a muddy trench.
He set the poker down with a dull clank.
He didn’t stand up.
Instead, he twisted around, sitting on his heels, and picked up the amber jar from the floorboards.
“Turn around,” he said.
The command was soft, but it lacked any room for negotiation.
Megan swallowed the dry lump in her throat.
She shifted on the mattress, her knees dragging against the worn quilt, and presented her back to him.
She let the blanket drop to her waist.
The cold air immediately bit into the raw weeping welts along her ribs.
She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the sting, bracing for the shame of being so thoroughly exposed.
The mattress dipped.
He sat behind her.
The proximity of him was a physical weight.
She could hear his breathing slow and measured a stark contrast to her own erratic gasps.
A sharp medicinal scent filled the air.
Pine pitch, eucalyptus, crushed campfor.
It smelled like illness and apothecary shops pungent enough to clear her sinuses instantly.
This will sting, he warned his voice, vibrating right next to her ear.
“My horsemaster uses it on the carriage horses when the harness galls them.”
You are comparing me to a draft horse Brian?
She asked a fragile, brittle attempt at humor, cracking her voice.
Draft horses are useful, Megan, and they rarely throw themselves into a brier patch just to prove a point.
His fingertips touched her spine.
Megan flinched violently, a sharp hiss escaping her teeth.
The salve was freezing cold, but more than that, the touch of his bare skin against hers was an electric shock.
His hands were massive, heavily calloused from years of riding and gripping cold steel.
Yet the pressure he applied was devastatingly light.
He began at the base of her ribs, right where the canvas had dug in the deepest.
He worked the greasy ointment into the bruised flesh with slow, agonizingly deliberate circles.
He didn’t rush.
He didn’t treat her like a chore.
He treated the task with the same rigid, terrifying focus he applied to everything else.
The sting faded, replaced by a deep, penetrating heat from the camper.
I did not throw myself into a brier patch, she whispered, her eyes still squeezed shut.
Her hands gripped the edge of the mattress until her knuckles achd.
You wore a rag to a wolf’s den.
He counted his thumbs pressing into the tight knotted muscles between her shoulder blades.
You wanted them to whisper.
You wanted me to feel the sting of your humiliation.
I wanted you to see me.
She snapped, twisting her head slightly to look over her shoulder.
The movement pulled at her raw skin, but she ignored it.
I wanted you to look at me for longer than the 3 seconds it takes to dismiss me from a room.
Brian stopped.
His hands rested flat against her back, the heat of his palms radiating through the thick ointment.
I see you, Megan, he said.
The words were heavy dropping into the quiet room like stones.
I saw you the day your father brought you to my study to finalize the papers.
You wore a terrible blue hat that was entirely out of fashion, and you looked at the floor the entire time.
But your hands, your hands were curled into fists, so tight your gloves were tearing at the seams.
He resumed rubbing the salve into her upper shoulders.
His touch slightly firmer now, working out the tension that had lived in her neck for a month.
“I see you,” he continued, his voice, dropping into a rough, exhausted register.
The problem is not that I look away.
The problem is that if I look at you for too long, I will forget that I am supposed to be a gentleman, and I am dangerously close to forgetting it tonight.
The air in the room suddenly felt too thick to breathe.
Megan’s heart slammed against her ribs, a frantic trapped bird.
The implication hung between them, thick with the smell of campher and woodsmoke.
He wasn’t indifferent.
He was terrified of his own lack of control.
He unscrewed the lid capped the amber jar, and set it on the nightstand.
He grabbed his discarded white handkerchief, the one stained with her blood, and wiped the excess grease from his hands.
“Go to sleep, Megan,” he said, standing up.
The mattress groaned as his weight left it.
“The fire will keep for the night.
Brenda will come for your trunks at 8.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer.
He walked to the door, his boots completely silent on the rugs, and let himself out.
The click of the latch sounded incredibly loud in the empty room.
Megan sat in the middle of the bed, the campfor burning hot against her bruised skin, the smell of his bay rum mingling with the woods smoke.
She pulled the blanket back up over her shoulders, curling her knees to her chest.
She was alone again, but for the first time since arriving at the estate, she didn’t feel entirely abandoned.
Morning broke with the brutal efficiency of a military camp.
At exactly 8:00, Brenda shoved the door open.
The maid looked terrified, her cloudy eyes darting around the room as if expecting the walls to collapse.
She held a stack of folded brown paper and a length of twine.
His grace sent me, ma’am.
Brenda mumbled, dropping a stiff curtsy that nearly threw her off balance.
“Said to pack your things,” said you’re moving to the master’s corridor.
Megan was already dressed.
She wore the plain, modest gray silk that she should have worn the night before.
The ripped zipper hastily pinned together from the inside.
She felt stiff, her ribs aching with every breath, but the raw weeping pain had settled into a dull throb.
Thank you, Brenda,” Megan said gently.
She walked to the small wardrobe.
“There isn’t much.”
There truly wasn’t.
Her father had sent her with three day dresses, two evening gowns that were a decade out of style, and a handful of undergarments that had seen better days.
The packing took less than 15 minutes.
The walk to the south wing felt like crossing into a different country.
The drafty, damp stone of the east corridor gave way to thick woven carpets that muffled their footsteps.
The air here was warmer, smelling faintly of lemon oil and beeswax.
Portraits of grim-faced his ancestors stared down at her, their painted eyes following her progress.
Brenda stopped in front of a pair of massive double doors carved with the hawksley crest.
She didn’t knock.
She simply pushed them open, gestured for Megan to enter, and practically fled back down the hall.
Megan stepped inside.
His chambers were enormous, bathed in harsh, unfiltered morning light pouring through towering windows.
The room was aggressively masculine.
There were no delicate tapestries, no gilded mirrors.
The walls were lined with towering bookshelves packed with leather-bound volumes and thick ledges.
A massive mahogany desk dominated the center of the room, littered with architectural drawings, open letters, and a half empty glass of amber liquid.
The bed was a sprawling four-poster monstrosity of dark wood, the heavy velvet curtains tied back to reveal a tangle of white linen sheets that looked entirely unmade.
It didn’t look like the room of a cold, calculating aristocrat.
It looked like the room of a man who worked himself into the ground and collapsed wherever he stood.
Megan walked slowly toward the desk.
She trailed a finger across the polished wood.
A pair of worn leather riding gloves sat next to a stack of correspondents, a silver cigar cutter, a brass paper weight shaped like a hound’s head.
She noticed a door slightly a jar to her left.
She pushed it open and found herself in a massive dressing room.
Her small, pathetic trunk sat in the middle of the floor, looking entirely out of place amidst rows of perfectly tailored woolen coats, polished riding boots, and starched white crevat.
The sound of heavy boots entering the main chamber made her jump.
Megan walked back out.
Brian stood by the door, pulling off a pair of mud spattered riding boots.
He wore a heavy tweed jacket that smelled of wet earth and horse sweat.
His hair was windb blown, falling over his forehead in a chaotic tangle.
He looked up, catching her standing by his desk.
He didn’t look angry.
He just looked incredibly tired.
“The water in the copper tub is still hot if you wish to bathe,” he said, tossing his boots to the corner.
“I had the servants fill it before I left for the stables.”
“You went riding?”
She asked the question mundane and entirely inadequate for the tension thick in the air.
I ride every morning at dawn.
It clears my head.
He walked to a side table and poured a measure of water into a glass, drinking it in one long swallow.
He set the glass down and turned to face her.
Did Brenda move all your things?
Yes.
He nodded, running a hand through his damp hair.
Good.
The adjoining room is yours.
It connects through the dressing area.
I told the housekeeper to light a fire in there every morning at 6.
Megan stood frozen.
The adjoining room.
Brian’s jaw tightened.
Did you think I was going to force you into my bed?
Megan.
The bluntness of the question hit her like a physical strike.
Her cheeks flushed hot.
I didn’t know what to think, Brian.
You dragged me out of a ballroom. cut me out of my clothes and told me I was moving into your chambers.
Forgive me if the boundaries of this arrangement are somewhat blurred.
He crossed the room, stopping on the opposite side of the desk.
He leaned his hands on the scattered architectural drawings, his broad shoulders hunched.
The boundaries are simple, he said, his voice quiet, but carrying a hard, unyielding edge.
You are my wife.
You will live in the main house, not hidden away like a disgraced relative.
You will have access to the household accounts.
You will buy dresses that fit you, and you will burn that gray monstrosity you are currently wearing.”
Megan crossed her arms, her fingers digging into the cheap silk.
I don’t want your money.
It is not my money.
It is yours, he snapped, his patience fraying.
You are my wife.
Start acting like it instead of a martyr dragging herself to the scaffold.
I would act like a duchess if you treated me like a partner instead of a problem to be solved.
She fired back, stepping closer to the desk.
You issue commands.
You do not speak to me.
You orchestrate my life from behind this desk and expect me to simply fall into line.
I am not one of your estate managers, Brian.
He stared at her, his pale eyes tracking the angry flush. rising up her neck.
He pushed himself off the desk.
He walked around the heavy furniture, closing the distance between them, until he was standing close enough that she could smell the cold morning air clinging to his tweed coat.
THE END
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
