The King spoke up, using her short pause to interrupt her story. “Did anyone else know of this plot besides yourself?”
Tanya frowned, rubbing at a dirty spot on her hand as though she were trying to clean it without the aid of water. “A few, Your Majesty.”
“You must name them if you wish to keep your head, Lady.”
Tanya’s ice blue eyes began to well again as she shifted on the podium, dropping her head to her chest. “I do not think them capable of murder, Your Majesty.”
“That was not what I asked, Lady Tanya. I asked who knew of the conspiracy with this young man?”
Tanya sighed again before glancing up through their lashes. “Anyone who knew will be in trouble as well, won’t they?”
King Carlisle nodded solemnly. Tanya swallowed deeply before the continued. “Some were forced into silence with additional threats. Please take that into consideration when you mete out punishments.”
It was then that the silent Princess Isabella spoke up from her seat. “Lady Kate?”
Tanya turned toward Bella, hearing the softness in her voice and the concern in her question. It was then that she knew that the person she had seen for so long as her enemy might be the only chance to save her favorite, sweetest cousin from a fate not unlike her own.
Tanya nodded as tears of regret rolled down her face. In all her scheming, the only thing she felt badly about was Kate’s role and how her compliance was forced.
“I forced her to spy on you, Princess. I held the greatest of all threats one can make on a female in love. The love of her life is not someone of which her father approves, and thus I threatened to expose them and most certainly put her lover to death in the process if she did not assist me. She did not like it at all. When she discovered the plan with Mr. Newton, she grew even more upset. It was only after threats upon her little sister’s future as well as that of her lover that she reluctantly kept my confidence, but it was under great duress. The threat of personal ruination in addition to the guilt that if I did not succeed our entire estate was destined to fall apart and all of our livelihoods along with it ended up forcing her hand. It is a great stress for a female to have the weight of their entire family’s future resting upon their shoulders. We were not built for such pressure. Please find it in your heart to be gentle with her, she is not of the same mettle as the rest of us.”
Bella blinked back tears as she finally began to see the pressures put upon the Denali cousins. She knew what it meant to feel pressure to look and sound a certain way, what the weight of big decisions upon one’s shoulders felt, but to know your entire family was counting on you to save them was something Bella could not fathom. Her father had always pushed her away from any responsibilities. He didn’t feel that women could handle them, of which Bella had been quite resentful, but to see the antithesis of this attitude made Bella slightly grateful to have grown up as she did.
“I promise to keep that in my own mind, as well as the minds of the others when the time comes to deal with her infraction.”
Tanya closed her eyes with a sigh, her shoulders losing the slightest bit of tension. “Thank you, Princess. At this point, even that is more than I can ask.”
Bella nodded before King Carlisle asked her to continue with the list. Tanya stood, her body shaking visibly as the explained that all of the men of her family at court at the time had known, listing her younger brother and two elder cousins who had come to court, as well as another relative already working within the walls of Whitehall...
Breakaway Chapter 9 Teaser
Once they got home, Edward helped Bella into the house, guiding her to her bedroom door before going to clean up for bed in his own. He wasn’t sure if she would come back out to the couch that night as had become their tradition after the first night, but he checked anyway, ecstatic to see Bella curled up under her blanket on one end of the couch.
Edward smiled as he grabbed his blanket and crossed to the couch, settling in before pulling Bella to curl up beside him on the edge of the couch. Bella sighed, turning toward him to tuck her face into his neck as she had done the past several nights, and resting her arm heavily over his side.
Within moments, she was breathing steadily in her deep sleep as Edward sighed and enjoyed the closeness for yet another night. Edward knew that their peaceful time together was soon coming to an end, and he resented the fact that he was about to lose these nights together so soon after they had begun. In a couple of days they would be leaving for Arizona followed immediately by Talladega, then Richmond and Darlington before two weeks in a row racing at Lowe’s right there in their own town. By the time that they returned home from that month away, the movers would have already packed up and transferred all of Edward’s belongings to the new house before doing the same with Bella’s and bringing them to his old house, and just like that their short time living together would be at an end.
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