I helped her out of the soggy gray cloak and handed her a new shift, taking the stained one she’d worn and throwing it into the fire along with her undergarments. If the maids found them, there’d be gossip. And the only thing more damning than the truth was a vicious rumor.
Once she was dry, I settled her into the bed next to me and patted my chest. “Head here.”
She snuggled in close, her hair tickling my cheek.
“You are strong,” I reminded her. “You will get through this.”
“You don’t understand. I am ruined. If Father finds out—”
“He won’t find out. You can never tell anyone, do you hear? This is a secret you hold inside.”
“Are you angry with me?” She sounded so small and meek, nothing like the vivacious young woman who had teased me about my suitors in the parlor.
“I’m angry at Robert, not at you.” And I was angry at myself. “I don’t understand what you see in that miserable oaf.”
“He said he loved me.”
Robert didn’t know what love was, wielding the word like a weapon, using it to his advantage. “You are far too good for him.”
“Why can’t he see that?” she sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve, then tucking her cold hands beneath my back.
“He’s obviously thinking with something a lot smaller than his brain.”
Keelynn snorted. “It did seem rather unimpressive.”
“And do you really want to be stuck with something so unimpressive for the rest of your life?” A book on her bedside table caught my eye. The same one she’d been reading in the library. I gathered her hair back from her eyes. “Would he be willing to save you from a wicked witch like the knight in your story?”
“He’d probably use me as a human shield,” Keelynn grumbled, her hands beginning to warm.
“Exactly.” Robert Trench only cared about a woman when he wanted something from her. He and Rían probably had that in common. Would the prince have sought me out a second time if he didn’t believe I could break his curse?
Squeezing Keelynn tighter, I felt her relax into my embrace. “What’s done is done. Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll figure out how to get you a happily-ever-after.”
I had been so focused on my own misery that I had forgotten about my sister’s struggles. That ended tonight. Tomorrow, I would tell my father that he could choose my husband. It didn’t matter who he picked when all the prospects were awful. My fate was sealed, but that didn’t mean hers needed to be.
“Why did you come to my room?” she asked after a drawn-out yawn.
I couldn’t tell her the truth, not after all she’d been through. “I knew you needed me.”
“I’ll always need you.”
It wasn’t true.
She would have her own life. Make her own mistakes. Find her own happiness.
It didn’t take long for Keelynn’s breathing to even and slow into soft snores. When I was younger, the noise had annoyed me. Now I found it as comforting as the downy mattress beneath us. Craving a few hours of blissful nothingness, I slipped my arm from beneath her head and drew the covers to her chin.
She would be nineteen in a few days, but lying there, thick lashes dusting her cheeks and hair splayed across the white pillowcase like a dark wave, she looked impossibly young.
The reality of what had happened with Robert would hit her in the morning.
My mother had died before she had the chance to explain what happened between a husband and a wife, and my father had never broached the subject. I had learned the mechanics from books I wasn’t supposed to read and one unfortunate incident when I stumbled upon a maid and stable boy in the woods.
But selfish men had taught me firsthand that they took what they wanted without so much as a backward glance or second thought as to how it would affect us.
That was the real reason I hated them. Not only did they lord themselves over us, they made all the rules in their own favor. If we didn’t follow blindly, we wereruined.
Keelynn didn’t look ruined to me.