Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90778 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90778 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Earl’s words echo like a bell in my ears: Charles is broke. A fraud. I force myself to breathe deeply and to find something solid in the swirl of madness around me. Earl’s offer to marry me still hangs in the air, bold and unrelenting, as if he didn’t just flip my entire world upside down in front of the entire town.
“Raven,” Charles’s voice pulls me back. I turn to him slowly, my mind racing.
He’s smiling, but it’s forced, tight and mean. His hand touches my arm lightly, a gesture meant to comfort me, but it only adds to my disbelief and confusion.
“He’s lying,” Charles says, his face is white and his voice crawls with desperation. “It’s not true. None of it.”
Earl is not lying. My gut tells me Charles is lying.
Charles glances wildly at the crowd, his face suddenly flushing under their scrutiny. “I can explain everything. I promise to tell you everything. We’ll talk about it all later,” he adds, his voice dropping to an urgent whisper. “Let’s finish the ceremony, get married, and then we can deal with … whatever nonsense this is.”
“Nonsense?” Earl’s unapologetic voice cuts through the air like a blade.
I turn back to him and my breath catches at the sheer force of his presence. He seems immovable, his dark eyes blazing with a fierce and unyielding hatred.
“You’ll be making a big mistake if you marry him,” he says, his gaze locking on me. “But I guess that’s what you do, isn’t it, Raven? Make massive, catastrophic mistakes and hurt all the people around you.”
My heart feels like it is full of shards of glass, the way it felt that day when I woke up and realized my love had left forever. The pain, sharp and unrelenting, threatens to unravel me. Not here. Not in front of the whole town.
Charles steps in then, his strides hurried as he grabs my arm. His grip is too tight, bordering on painful.
“Ignore him, Raven,” he mutters under his breath, his voice quivering with barely concealed panic. I’ve known him long enough to notice the subtle cracks in his mask, to hear the things that betray his fear.
Earl’s smile becomes nasty, his dark eyes flick down to Charles’s hand on my arm. That look makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand. When he speaks his voice is scathing.
“Still clinging to things that don’t belong to you, Charles?”
Charles stiffens but doesn’t release me. His jaw is clenched tight and his carefully constructed facade that I’ve only seen slip once looks in mortal danger of being completely destroyed. “You’re delusional, Earl,” he shouts frantically. It is almost as though he is addressing the entire congregation. “This is a desperate stunt, and everyone here knows it.”
In contrast, Earl entirely ignores the congregation. They might as well not have existed for all the attention he pays them. He tilts his head slightly, the move deliberate as a slow, mocking smile stretches across his face. “Do they really?” he asks, his tone dripping with contempt.
Charles stiffens with a barely controlled temper. Earl pulls out his phone, his fingers moving purposefully over the screen.
“There it is,” Earl says, turning the screen toward me. His voice is cool, steady, and somehow even more infuriating.
I stare at the glowing screen and the title deed of Thornfield Hall is right there, undeniable, glaring at me.
“This is the deed to your bridegroom’s family estate,” Earl says, his words cutting through the thick silence. “You might want to read it carefully.”
I can’t move.
“Don’t take it, Raven. Please. Trust me, just this once. I promise I can explain everything,” Charles implores.
My heart pounds in my chest, and my hands tremble as I take the phone from Earl. My eyes dart over the document, desperate to find something, anything that proves him wrong.
But I don’t.
Charles’s name isn’t on it.
Earl’s is.
He takes a deliberate step closer, his voice calm and cutting as he explains, “He has no money left, Raven. Isn’t that what you need? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Is that not why you are marrying him? If it is, then marry me right now. And if it’s not, well then, I will take my leave and you will never see me again.”
My gaze stares unseeingly at the screen as my world spins, tilting wildly.
The church waits. Earl waits.
And yet I can’t find the words to speak. The air feels like it’s pressing in on me, a suffocating weight of silence and judgment. Every gaze in the room is glued onto me, waiting for my response. The scandalized whispers have died down, leaving an oppressive quiet that makes the pounding of my heart almost deafening.
I lift my head and force myself to look at Earl.
His eyes are fixed on mine, sharp and unyielding, daring me to speak, to humiliate myself. Is that what he wants? For me to fall into his carefully laid trap and show everyone here, including him, that I care more about the money than anything else? That I’m the gold-digging liar that he for some reason believes me to be.