Arranged to the Don, Freed from the Lie novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Not for Sale

Santino refuses her in front of the Council, and Helena answers by proposing a ninety-day marriage herself.

Santino walked the length of the hall without hurrying.

His men stayed against the wall, and nobody at the table said a word until he stopped at the head of it.

"Mr. Carraro," Edmund said. "Thank you for coming."

"Edmund."

"You know why you were asked here."

"I know why a letter was sent," Santino said. "I'd like to hear the Council say it out loud."

Edmund smiled his soft smile.

"Helena Crowninshield turns thirty on Friday. Under the pact, the Council has chosen you for her husband, and you have accepted."

"I haven't accepted anything."

The woman in the pearls leaned forward.

"We have your signature."

"You have somebody's."

He put both hands on the back of an empty chair.

"I'll say this once, so every one of you hears it. I signed nothing, and I don't buy women."

My face went hot, and then it went cold.

Harrison took a step forward with the letter in his hand.

"Mr. Carraro, this came on your letterhead."

"Then it came from someone who has my letterhead."

"Is that a refusal?"

Santino did not answer.

He looked down the table, and then at me, and his face gave me nothing at all.

"Yes," he said. "It's a refusal."

Phoebe's hand closed around my wrist.

I did not move.

In two years he had never refused me anything, because I had never asked him for anything.

I had asked for exactly one thing tonight, and I had asked it by driving two hours.

Edmund sighed.

"Then I'm afraid the matter is closed, Helena. The Council will arrange another match before Friday midnight, and your shares will be held in trust until it is made."

"Held by who?" I asked.

"By the Council, dear."

"By you," I said. "And by Harrison."

Harrison kept smiling and said nothing.

I stood.

The chair scraped on the old stone floor, and every head at the table turned.

"The Council asked the groom for his consent," I said. "It never asked me for mine."

"You gave it a minute ago," the old woman said.

"I gave it to Santino Carraro, on the condition that he said yes to my face. He's here. I can see his face."

I turned to Santino.

"Do you want to know what I think?"

"Not particularly," he said.

"I think you can say no to the Council. You can't say no to me."

Something moved at the edge of his mouth.

"Is that so."

"I'm not asking for your signature, Mr. Carraro. I'm proposing."

It went so quiet that I heard the rain on the long windows.

Phoebe made a small strangled sound behind me.

"Ninety days," I said. "A real marriage in public and a paper one in private. At the end of it, we divorce, I keep my shares and you keep your name."

"Helena," Harrison began.

"Sit down, Harrison."

He sat.

I could not remember ever saying that to anyone in my family.

Santino had not looked away from me.

"Terms," he said.

"Separate rooms. No touching when nobody's watching. Nothing of yours in the Crowninshield trust and nothing of mine in your books."

"You already work in my books."

"Then you can fire me on day ninety-one."

One of the old men coughed into his fist.

"And Phoebe's tuition," I said, "and my mother's cottage, paid in full out of my shares, with no review, from the first day."

"Done."

"You haven't heard the rest."

"I heard enough."

"Santino."

"Yes."

He said it flatly, before I finished the breath I had taken to keep going.

"Yes to what?" I asked.

"To all of it. Separate rooms. No touching. Ninety days."

I had expected a fight.

I had expected him to make me beg in front of six old people, or to walk out the way he had walked out of a hundred other rooms.

Instead he straightened his cuffs and nodded once.

"The Council needs a date," Edmund said weakly.

"Thursday," Santino said. "Here, in your chapel, at four. That gives her a day before the deadline in case one of you tries something."

"Thursday is very soon."

"Then start now."

He walked around the table and stopped in front of me.

He was close enough that I could smell the rain on his coat.

I did not step back.

"Wear what you like," he said quietly. "I'll be the one in black."

He turned and walked out through the double doors, and his men went with him.

I stood in the Great Hall with every Crowninshield in the room staring at me.

My hands were shaking, and I put them in my pockets.

He had said yes before I finished.

And that was the part I could not stop turning over, because no man who despised the idea says yes that fast.

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