The Dangerous Bargain

The darkness crept away gradually, like mist digesting beneath an unwilling sun. Adeline Monroe's awareness clawed its way back from whatever void had taken it, every beat striking through her cranium like an exiled war drum.

Voices. Whispering. Crying.

"She's coming to," someone said - her sister, maybe. "Mother, look."

The mattress dipped as someone else sat down next to her. A cool hand stroked her forehead, ever so slightly shaking. The smell of lavender and dread.

"Adeline?" Her mother's voice cracked like thin ice. "Can you hear me, darling?"

Adeline's eyelids felt heavy with lead, but she forced them open. The world swam into focus - the familiar canopy of her bed, the anxious faces of her family hovering above her like pale moons.

"What-" Her throat was parched. She swallowed painfully. "What happened?"

My mother and sister shared a glance with something in it more complicated than concern.

"You collapsed," her mother finally said, each word weighed. "During the announcement. You've been out cold for the last forty-eight hours."

Two days. The words dully resonated in Adeline's mind before memory slammed into her consciousness like a tsunami.

The study. Her father's ashen face. The name that had made her blood turn to ice in her veins.

Julian Blackwood.

Adeline's hand darted to her throat, her breath fast and shallow. "Please tell me it was a nightmare," she whispered, glancing between her mother and sister. "Tell me Father didn't-"

The door to her bedroom opened as if it had slammed shut behind a cell door. Reginald Monroe lingered in the doorway, the lines of his face etched deeper than Adeline recalled, as if he'd aged a decade in the two lost days.

"Leave us," he said, his voice like crumbling autumn leaves.

Her mother stood up, faltered and leaned down and kissed Adeline's forehead. "Be strong," she whispered, so that her lips barely moved against Adeline's skin. She and Adeline's sister disappeared with a rustle of skirts, shutting the door behind them.

Adeline willed herself to sit up despite the vertigo threatening to drag her into blackness. "Father-"

"It's done, Adeline." He wouldn't look at her, gazing instead at the portrait of her grandmother that hung on the wall opposite. "The contract was signed yesterday. The announcement has been made public. You are to marry Julian Blackwood tomorrow at noon."

"Tomorrow?" It slipped out like a wounded animal. "That's... that's impossible. You can't possibly expect-"

"I want you to save this family from ruin." His eyes met hers at last, and the wild desperation she read in them stilled her. "You think I wanted this? To negotiate with the future of my own daughter? But he left me no choice."

"There is always a choice," Adeline replied, her voice now sounding stronger, emboldened with a slight flare of rage. "You just chose the wrong one.'

Her father's shoulders slumped. For an instant, he appeared to be the old man he was quickly becoming. "You don't know exactly what he is, Adeline. What the Blackwoods are capable of. If I had refused-"

"Then refuse! Fight him! Surely there must be-"

"There is nothing!" he shouted, the force of his outburst causing her to recoil. He passed a hand over his face, visibly fighting his way back.| "Nothing," he repeated softly. "We are beggars pretending at wealth, Adeline. One word from Julian Blackwood and we lose everything - our home, our status, maybe even our freedom.'

The silence after was deafening.

"Hungry?" Adeline asked finally, the words feeling far away from her mouth, as if they were someone else's.

Her father turned to the window, back toward her. "The automobile will arrive at ten o'clock tomorrow. Be ready." He paused at the door. "And Adeline? Put on the pearl necklace your grandmother handed down to you. It's ... it's all that's left of her inheritance."

Once he left, Adeline sat frozen, staring into space. Birds chirped outside her window. Someone, somewhere in the house, was playing piano - her sister most likely, finding refuge in Chopin.

Adeline's hands slid over the silk coverlet, the one her mother had made her for her sixteenth birthday, skimming her fingers over the delicate designs of flowers and vines. What an odd thing that such ordinary, small details can suddenly feel precious.

I'm to be the wife of Julian Blackwood. The idea was too monstrous, too ridiculous, and a bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat.

She had heard the whispers, of course. Everyone had. Julian Blackwood, the golden child, the shark, the boy who had doubled his grandfather's fortune before he turned thirty. Julian Blackwood, whose enemies had a strange way of losing it all.

Julian Blackwood, whose eyes were described as cold and merciless as a winter sea.

So a sob came out of her, then another, until she was weeping openly, her body coiled around itself like an injured animal. She cried until she had no more tears left, until her throat was sore and her eyes puffy.

Then, in painstaking degrees, she got out of bed, bracing her arms against the vertigo. She walked to her dressing table and looked at her reflection - pale skin, red-rimmed eyes, dark hair cascading messily around a face that belonged to someone else.

"Well, Adeline," she said to her reflection, "it appears your life is no longer your own."

She lifted the jewelry box off her dressing table. Inside, resting on blue velvet, was her grandmother's string of pearls - luminous, perfect and chilled.

Like tears frozen in time.