My Husband Ignored Me For Months After Our Arranged Marriage — Until His Mistress Tried To Frame Me

Part 1

The teapot on the dining room sideboard had been pure silver once.

In a certain slant of morning light, it still gleamed as if it had not been sold to settle my father’s massive debts.

It was the first thing a visitor noticed upon entering the grand breakfast room of the Thornton estate.

I knew this fact intimately because I polished the heavy metal every single dawn.

Whoever polished the silver in this sprawling house did not own it, and whoever owned it did not bother to touch it.

My father had been a small, eternally tired man who spent thirty years apologizing for the ambitions of others.

He loved his daughter and his accounting ledgers, in that exact order.

When a relentless creditor’s patience finally wore thin, my father signed away the only thing he had left to offer.

He died within twelve months of nothing any doctor could name.

The paper he signed ended up in the hands of the late CEO of Thornton Enterprises.

The old man, thinking it a profound kindness on his deathbed, decreed that the debt would be discharged by marriage.

I was given the prestigious Thornton name and the roof of the grand estate so I would not be sold to someone who might treat me worse.

His son, Greg, firmly believed the arrangement was nothing short of a life sentence.

Greg carried out his father’s final instruction with the chilling correctness of a man executing a brutal punishment.

He was twenty-six years old, and the entire city considered him the coldest man alive.

He had loved once, seven years ago, a girl whose name was never spoken aloud within the estate walls.

She had died of a sudden fever while he was kept away, and he had returned from her funeral with a cough that lasted all winter.

Since then, Greg permitted himself the luxury of no emotional doors he could not immediately lock behind him.

He chose Heather, a wealthy socialite from the neighboring estate, because she was a door that remained firmly closed.

He chose the debt marriage with me because it was a door that had been forced shut on his behalf.

I was only seventeen when I arrived at the grand estate with a single trunk of mended clothes.

We were married in the small private chapel on a gray, unforgiving October morning.

Greg stood beside me in a sharp black suit, speaking his vows in a voice audible only to the priest.

I wore my mother’s altered dress, speaking my portion in the clear tone of a girl who had resolved never to cry.

No joyous bells rang out to celebrate the union.

No lavish wedding breakfast was served to celebrating guests.

Greg handed me into the expensive car that would take me to the main house, but he did not get in beside me.

He rode behind on a dark horse, keeping his emotional and physical distance.

I was summarily shown to a cramped, drafty room in the east wing that had once belonged to a maid.

My first supper as a billionaire’s wife was a simple tray of cold bread and cheese.

The strict housekeeper, Megan, informed me that breakfast was served at eight and I would be expected.

I entered the great dining room the next morning wearing the exact same dress I had been married in.

Greg’s mother glanced at me from the head of the opulent table.

She adjusted her linen napkin without ever offering me a chair.

I walked straight to the sideboard and picked up the heavy silver teapot.

I held it in both hands, learning quickly that if I gripped the warm handle tight enough, I would not drop it.

I did not drop a single thing for the next seven months.

Greg did not speak a single word to me in all that time.

Heather came to breakfast three mornings a week like clockwork.

She wore expensive pale rose silk and let the staff treat her as the true mistress of the house.

I carried the tea to the sideboard, poured a steaming cup, and set it beside Greg’s hand.

I poured a second cup and set it carefully beside Heather’s plate.

I did not look into either of their faces.

Heather discussed a scandalous rumor about a local farmer, laughing a thin, highly trained laugh.

The grating sound forced Greg to smile a hollow, obligatory smile.

Heather reached for her delicate cup, looking at me directly for the very first time.

She complained in her musical voice that the tea at the estate had grown peculiarly weak lately.

Greg kept his dark eyes fixed firmly on the polished mahogany table.

His mother answered for him, assuring Heather the staff would correct the oversight immediately.

I stood by the sideboard with my hands folded, counting the seconds until I could retreat to the kitchen.

Heather sighed deliberately, remarking that one could not expect much from a house left to run itself.

A tiny, completely unpermitted tightening grabbed the corner of my mouth.

It was the barest beginning of a smile that I immediately swallowed.

Greg looked up from his cup and caught that phantom smile.

He did not say a word, but the stifling air in the room inexplicably shifted.

I retreated to the kitchen, unaware that my quiet defiance had set a much larger wheel in motion.

That same week, Megan sent me to the library to fetch the household expense ledger.

I lifted the heavy leather bound book from the massive oak desk.

Beneath it lay a second book, left open to a column of figures with faint pencil marks in the margins.

I had spent my winters sitting opposite my father while he struggled with his complicated accounts.

I knew instantly what a deliberately manipulated figure looked like.

The estate’s tired steward, Dan, walked into the library just as I closed the heavy book.

His panicked eyes darted immediately from the ledger to my face.

I kept my voice perfectly steady, claiming I had opened the wrong book by mistake.

Dan nodded stiffly, but I saw the raw, unmistakable fear flashing behind his eyes.

Days later, a vicious rumor began circulating through the estate staff.

A priceless silver locket belonging to Greg’s late father had vanished from the drawing room mantel.

The whispers suggested the young, impoverished bride had finally resorted to petty thievery.

Greg returned from a morning meeting, his jaw set like unyielding stone.

He marched past his mother without answering her frantic questions.

He walked straight to the back passage where my worn winter coat hung on a wooden peg.

He reached into the pocket of my coat, pulled out the missing locket, and turned to look me dead in the eye.