Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

“It is not wretched,” she said quietly.

He snorted. “It is indeed! My own daughter, laboring in a shop like some baseborn chit. It is intolerable, I tell you, intolerable. The very least you could do is remember your place here and kindly keep your idle thoughts and opinions to yourself.”

“What is my place?” she asked before she could stop herself. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to tell her. Perhaps he had some trace of affection left for her.

“A tradesman’s widow,” he said with a snort. “Utterly beneath your ancestors! Your sister will be a duchess, and you stand in her drawing room and loudly proclaim yourself little better than a common servant!” Cleo’s mouth opened in shock, and he went on. “Sometimes I wonder precisely who you think you are, miss!”

“You named me for a queen,” she said. “Who do you think I am?”

He harrumphed. “What a laughable mistake. Cleopatra was born to royalty and she knew her place. Don’t think so highly of yourself, miss.”

“But she led her country,” Cleo reminded him. “I daresay someone thought that wasn’t her place.”

Her father glowered at her. “She did not go against her parents’ wishes and lower herself to go into trade.”

“She lowered herself to marrying her brother,” Cleo murmured. “Although I suppose that was at her parents’ wish.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled, then shot her another sharp glance. “You’ve done as you wished, and I have not disowned you. But don’t think I’m proud of your actions. You’re only welcome here because your sister wished it. It is her wedding—she, at least, will take her proper place in society, while you have done precious little for our family.”

Cleo shifted her weight back and forth, setting her skirt to swirling about her ankles. The tiny coins clinked softly. “I paid for Helen’s wardrobe.”

“Shh!” hissed her father, glancing around anxiously, as though the duke might hear her words all the way in the dining room. “Don’t tell everyone!” He gave a snort. “Bad enough that my daughter has to operate a shop like a common merchant. You’d tell the world I must accept your charity, too.”

“It’s not charity,” she protested. “I wanted to help! Helen is my sister.”

“Then mind your tongue,” he snapped. “Do you want to embarrass her in front of her future husband? Do you want him to think us a pack of penniless, hysterical fools?”

Cleo watched the coins settle into silence again. “No, Papa. I’m sorry.”

“You should be.” With that, he brushed past her, only waiting at the door to offer his arm. As angry as he was with everything she did, he would never break protocol and leave her to walk into the dining room alone. We must keep up appearances, after all, Cleo thought, pasting a wooden smile on her face, feeling oddly detached from her father even as her hand rested on his arm.

She knew her parents hadn’t understood when she and Matthew eloped; she hadn’t expected them to. The years of her marriage had been rather cool ones between her and her parents, but still civil. Cleo knew why; her mother had once outright admitted that if she had to be the wife of a shopkeeper, at least she was the wife of a very prosperous shopkeeper. At the time, she’d wondered who her parents thought she would marry. The Greys had had no money for as long as she could remember, and no connections of consequence. Suitors had been rare in their house.