Sylvaina // 8. Regency AU - Person A inheriting Person B’s father’s estate and the only way to keep Person B’s family out of the poor house is for Person B to marry Person A.
I’M SORRY THIS IS SO TERRIBLE IT’S TERRIBLE I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO REGENCY
I’M SORRY IT’S SO SHORT BUT IF I START IT, IT’LL NEVER FINISH
@saudadedreams
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It was as bleak a day as one would expect for a funeral. Upon the shores, they gathered; the hanging clouds overhead wept as much as her mother, who clung to her arm with pallid fingers and eyes rimmed red. Her own eyes ached viciously with what precious little tears she had shed during the service, for she was a Proudmoore, and Proudmoores carried themselves with the dignity expected of their station.
She was a Proudmoore. One of the last few now.
The priest finished the rites; her mother detached from her side and reached for the torch held in his hand.
The torch flickered and flared as a wild gust of wind came with the tides, but the straw bedding lit. The fire rose into a roaring blanket heat in moments, and her father’s men heaved the boat from the shore. By the time the boat had sailed towards the horizon, it was nothing more than flames.
In the distance somewhere, the church bell tolled.
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That evening, a storm swept onto the shore with the tides. The darkened sky split open with a violence that shook the windows on their panes and rattled all that moved. The servants and maids scurried through the halls like the frenzied nest of rats from the larder, armed with candlesticks and oil lamps as they clamoured among themselves to nail down windows and shutters.
She sat with her mother by the hearth of the study, the fire blazing amidst great splits of wood. The smell of the sea crept in through the seams of the windows and the cracks of the doors; earth and brine and embers together. She sat and sipped on a toddy, warm between her cradled hands as she stared into the dancing flames.
She should have known, truly; what the storm would have wrought. As the servants bustled and shouted, and more feet thundered down the hallways to the main doors. She looked up at the doorway, apprehension curled tight like a boulder in her belly as the doors to the study creaked open.
“Deepest apologies, my lady,” their butler said, bowing low. “I do not mean to intrude. But the Lord Greymane, Esquire, has come.”
“Send him in,” her mother said wearily. “Bring him a towel, and perhaps a hot toddy the same. Quickly now; before the storm takes him as well.”
She frowned, and the warmth of liquor loosened her tongue to speak. “Can’t he leave us to grief but for a day? Surely the will can wait.”
“Jaina,” her mother chided. “Such things cannot wait for even the earth to settle on most graves. It cannot wait for your father’s body to turn to ash.” She watched her mother lean back into the chair and drink, watched the grief manifest in shadows. “Your brothers are dead, and now your father. We are all we have left in this world, my darling girl. You and I alone.”
Jaina reached out and clung to her mother’s hand with the same desperation of a child frightened from its bed. “Mother —”
Lord Greymane appeared then, with the chill of the outdoors nipping at his heels. He shook the damp from his hair and brushed it from his coats as a servant girl came to him with a towel. “You must pardon me for such rudeness, Lady Katherine,” he said, with a look of deep contrition. “For my appearance and appearance. I would not have pressed the matter had I been given the choice.”
“Sit, Lord Greymane,” Katherine Proudmoore replied. “Warm yourself. We must speak.”
Lord Greymane warmed himself briskly by the fire, hands outstretched against the flames. “I shan’t dither on the matter; you must already have a notion of why I am here.”
“Yes,” replied her mother quietly. “The will.”
There was a grimness in his face that unsettled Jaina; she set her glass aside lest she tumble it from her hands. “Which brother did he leave it to, then?” she asked, though her mother’s reproach was clear in the look she received. “Let us be frank, Lord Greymane. You have been my father’s lawyer for many years. You are but family now. We are in the privacy of our home. Let’s not stand of propriety where it isn’t needed.”
Sighing, the Lord Greymane turned to her with a saddened look of fondness she often saw in her own father’s eyes. “‘Tis true; I cannot bring myself to keep this from you for longer. My dearest Katherine, my heart aches for you, and my mind rages. But it is as it has been signed — Proudmoore Estate has been sold.”
Katherine gasped, though the sound itself was swallowed by a ravenous thunder from beyond the walls. “S-sold —”
“If it would ease your mind to know that your lord husband has bequeathed a generous sum to support you and your daughter —”
She could not comprehend it. There were words still coming from her father's lawyer's mouth — for she could certainly see it moving still — but there was nought that she took to comprehension.
Jaina shook her head incredulously. “I don't understand. This land has been in our family for years!”
“The laws of perpetuity are as such, my lady. As it is, the new landlord has proof of purchase and surrender of the estate and all its worldly possessions therein —”
“Oh, Daelin,” her mother moaned. “How could you?”
“That can't be right. M-my brothers —”
“God rest their souls —”
“They wouldn't have allowed it!” She rose from her seat and stared at Lord Greymane with a wild, frenzied desire to throttle the man. Were she of perhaps a daughter of lower birth; were she perhaps a daughter of the village grocer, perhaps she might not have a need at all to throttle him.
But she was not. She was a Proudmoore.
Lord Greymane gave her a chastened shrug, peering at her mother. “Unfortunately, Lady Proudmoore, the decision was beyond their control. Proudmoore Estate was signed by perpetuity only to your father's line...from your great-grandfather. In light of which, the Proudmoore line can no longer hold these lands to their family name. Proudmoore Estate has exchanged hands.”
She swayed on her feet and sank down onto the chaise, clinging desperately to anything that would keep her afloat. “Who,” she whispered. “Who is the new master of our home?”
“...The Windrunners.”
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Amidst the weight of silence and storms, she spoke, no louder than a whisper. “What do we do?”
Katherine Proudmoore turned to look at her daughter, the seafoam of her eyes dim with grief. “What can we do?”
Lord Greymane reached for a stack of parchments tucked within a pocket of his coat. “I’m sure if we discuss this with Lord Windrunner, he would be amenable to having you as tenants —”
“Tenants?” Jaina cried. “In our own home? Preposterous!”
Sharply, Katherine said, “What would you have us do? Beg for our living in the slums? Die penniless with our family name buried at sea with your father?”
“How do I stop this?” she beseeched Greymane. “Surely there must be a way.”
Lord Greymane peered at her, shifting the weight on the balls of his feet with discomfort. “Well, there is, of course, marriage —”
She thrust out her chin defiantly. “Then I shall wed a Windrunner. If he be willing.”
“My lady —”
“I care not to whom I give my hand. Whether he be as old as the very earth this home stands, or whether he be crass and unkind and uncouth —”
“Jaina!” her mother cried.
She continued, no matter the tremble in her hands or the terror building in her spine. “I shall be a second wife — a third. A mistress. I care not. I shall bear him a hundred sons —”
“N-now —” Lord Greymane reached out a hand in the air between them. “That would be unnecessary —”
She met his gaze with a steely one, daring him to speak more. “So long as my family shall always have a place here.”
“It is a woman,” he blurted, and the room went still. “A daughter. Lord Windrunner bequeathed this land to his second daughter. His only heir worth the title now, with two daughters married.”
Her belligerence would not settle, no matter the shock. A woman would be easier to speak reason to, surely; and no doubt a woman of sound mind and logic, if this Windrunner is heir — “I would wed her regardless,” she said boldly. “I am my father’s last living child. I am, in God’s eyes if not the law’s, his only living heir. If she can inherit, then I shall do so the same. Whether it be by blood or by marriage.”
“You must surely understand the weight of your declarations,” Greymane murmured. “If I propose this, and she refuses —”
“She will not,” Jaina proclaimed. “I shall make it so.”
