I’m Done Letting My Sister Take It All Chapter 06
When Christopher bent down to pick up the cracked paste pendant, his fingers were stiff.
“Don’t throw a tantrum.” His voice carried traces of his usual coaxing tone, as if he were sure I was merely having a fit of temper.
I almost laughed out loud in sheer anger. So even now, he thought I was waiting for him to comfort me.
“And what makes you think I’m just throwing a tantrum?” I straightened up, only to tug at the bruises on my back, the jolt of pain stealing my breath. “You and your parents have agreed to swap brides, haven’t you?”
Christopher answered slowly, carefully choosing his words.
“Clare, marriage is an alliance between two families. It’s not just about love. You’ve been living on the mountain for five years; your temper has grown wild and free. Mom may not accept you. If you were to marry me, you’d only suffer grievances in the future.”
Ah, wasn’t he clever, twisting betrayal and selfishness into a favor for me?
“So I should thank you, then? Thank you for being so thoughtful on my behalf?”
The mockery in my eyes clearly struck a nerve. His expression darkened. “Clare, don’t make this uglier than it needs to be. Kate hasn’t wronged you — this is my doing…”
“It’s your doing because you’re fickle,” I interrupted, seething. “It’s your doing because you’re selfish and ungrateful, because you want your reputation intact along with your greed for more. Christopher, if you had any decency, you should’ve broken off our engagement the moment your heart changed. But no. You chose to talk sweetly to me, accepted my tokens, enjoyed the reputation of a grateful man repaying his debt, and kept drawing closer to Katherine. You dragged it on, she, too, took a liking to you. Then, you brought our families into it, hiding behind the excuse of ‘love cannot be forced’ to finalize the swap.
“Christopher, aren’t you disgusted with yourself?”
His face darkened.
Outside the tent, someone drew a sharp, audible breath. I turned my head and found Lauren standing there — behind her stood the king and several noblewomen.
Clearly, they had heard everything they should have — and everything they shouldn’t.
Christopher turned sharply, dropping to his knees to plead forgiveness. But Lauren didn’t even spare him a glance as she crossed the space to the edge of my bed. Her eyes shimmered with fury. “You’ve been through hell, my child,” she said.
My throat felt tight, almost clogged, but somehow I managed a fragile smile. “It’s not so bad. Knowing the truth now is far better than realizing it after marriage.”
The king listened to everything. When he spoke, his tone was as frigid as a winter’s breeze. “The Hinchcliffe family certainly knows how to educate their son.”
The remark was brief. But Christopher’s entire body stiffened.
Not long afterwards, the Guzman family was summoned into the tent as well. The moment Mom saw my injuries, her eyes reddened. She took a step forward, but Lauren interrupted her coldly. “You don’t need to pretend you’re heartbroken. If your family truly cared about her, you wouldn’t have treated her life as a game over a prize.”
Dad’s face turned deathly pale as he repeatedly begged for forgiveness.
Lauren raised a hand, cutting him off. “Today’s actions won’t be forgotten. The bride swap is suspended. Clare is still alive. You handled her so callously.”
As I watched them kneeling across the floor, the bitterness that had been lodged inside my chest for so long finally loosened a little.
So this was what it felt like to have someone protect me.
After that day, Lauren brought me directly to Royal Lodge to recover.
I hated bitter medicine. Back at St Crathie Kirk, I would wrinkle my nose and drag my feet for ages whenever it was time to drink it. Knowing this, Lauren had honeyed preserves prepared as accompaniments this time.
But this time, I didn’t complain. I drank the concoctions in one go. Lauren watched me closely, then sighed. “Clare, you’ve grown up.”
Lowering my eyes, I smiled faintly. I hadn’t grown up. I’d simply learned what it meant to be afraid of pain.
The following afternoon, Rena Flynn, the kirk session clerk from St Crathie Kirk, was brought to Royal Lodge.
The moment she saw the bandages wrapped around my forehead, her eyes filled with tears.
Holding my hand, she couldn’t stop talking.
“The sufferings you endure now, Clare — truly, we should have kept you on the mountain instead of letting you go home.”
My nose stung. “Rena, why are you here?”
Lauren answered calmly from the side. “I invited her. There are a few things I need to ask.”
Only then did I realize Lauren was investigating what had happened five years ago.
After thinking for a moment, Rena said, “The person originally meant to be sent to St Crathie Kirk was Miss Katherine Guzman. Then she fell ill. So the Guzman family sent Clare instead. When Clare arrived, she was only twelve. She cried beneath her blankets at night, but during the day, she acted cheerful and lively and kept assuring me she didn’t miss home at all.”
Lauren asked, “Did the Guzman family write to her often over the years?”
Rena hesitated. Her expression became slightly strange.
“Not really. Clare, however, wrote countless letters; every time there was a holiday, or whenever she came across something intriguing — a little trinket or something new she’d learned. She always sent her letters home. But the replies she received were few and far between. Eventually, she stopped writing so often.”
I remember it vividly. I’d written countless letters to detail the snowy peaks, the monastery gardens, how I’d learned to ride a horse, how much I missed home, and how much I missed cake.
The responses were always brief. They would only tell me to behave, not to trouble the Queen Dowager.
I’d always assumed they were simply too busy to write back. Now I finally understood. It wasn’t busyness that made them ignore me.
Lauren’s face darkened immediately. She turned to her lady-in-waiting. “Go to the Guzman’s mansion. Bring me every letter Clare ever sent them and every reply they sent her. I want all of them — nothing missing.”
Towards evening, Jenna quietly entered the room carrying an old wooden box.
“Miss Guzman, we found this among the belongings you brought back.”
Inside the box were the little treasures I’d collected during my years at St Crathie Kirk. There were a few stones, several poorly woven lace ribbons, and an old scented sachet.
One corner of the sachet was uneven and crooked. I had made it myself when I was fifteen. The stitching was embarrassingly clumsy.
But I remembered I’d given it to Christopher.
At the time, he was still recovering from an injury. The bandage I’d tied around his wrist was still there. I’d mocked the ugly bandage and shoved the sachet into his hands, teasing him that as a nobleman, he shouldn’t make himself look like a beggar on the run.
Later, he told me he’d lost it. And yet now, somehow, it had returned to me.
Jenna lowered her voice. “It wasn’t found in your things. It was mixed in with the gifts Lord Hinchcliffe sent yesterday as compensation.”
I stared silently at the old sachet, and suddenly, I understood something.
Christopher had already betrayed me long before I even came home.