A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 77: With All Due Ceremony

His fingers tapped once, lightly, against the linen tablecloth. "But really, I couldn't very well snub the Black family, could I? Considering their... relevance to my future wife."

The title landed heavy in the room. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just definitive.

Anastasia didn't speak.

Tom tilted his head, watching her with that maddening calm. "You disapprove?"

She held his gaze. "I don't like surprises."

"And yet," he murmured, "you're so very good at delivering them."

There was no warmth in the compliment. No edge either. Just a quiet acknowledgment of the truth.

She studied him in silence. The light had shifted—warmer now, diffused by the clouds that trailed across the windows. It cast pale amber over his collarbones, over the gold stitching at his cuffs. Everything about him looked polished. Intentional. Like he belonged in a painting that dared you to look away.

She studied him. "And what do you want from me exactly? My face at your side? A smile for the press?"

Tom gave the faintest smirk. "Only smile if you want to."

He rose, slow and fluid. Every movement carried that quiet certainty he wore like cologne—an invisible film of control that wrapped the room around him. He crossed behind her chair and paused, resting one hand briefly against the carved backrest. His voice was lower now, intimate but never soft.

"It's time, Anastasia. No more corridors. No more corners. No more vanishing between lessons like a schoolgirl with secrets."

She didn't turn to look at him. "What if I liked the corners?"

"I'm sure you did," he said. "But the corners are no longer yours."

Her breath caught, barely. But she didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

Tom continued. "You've been allowed to play small. To shrink where no one could see you. That's over. You belong at the centre now."

She finally turned her head—just slightly. "Do I?"

He didn't blink. "You do. And they need to see it."

Anastasia's expression didn't flinch, but she felt it. The slow, creeping slide of inevitability along her spine.

"I know how you prefer to act in private," he said, and she didn't miss the edge there. "But this—this is theatre. Perception. And that is something you understand."

"Three o'clock," he said again, as though sealing it.

Anastasia stood too, slow and deliberate. The skirts of her pale dressing robe whispered against the floor as she stepped away from the table.

"Take your time," he added. "I want them waiting."

He moved toward the archway that led back into the house's east wing, stopping just short of the door.

"And Anastasia?"

She didn't turn.

He didn't raise his voice.

"Make sure they see you. Not just what you can do. The girl. The heir. The storm."

He left without waiting for a reply.

She stood alone in the breakfast room, the sunlight still washing the table in slanted white-gold. Her tea was cold. Her appetite long gone. The candied oranges caught the light and gleamed, untouched.

A show of force.

She could already hear the clock ticking.

***