Chapter 184: Her Dilemma.
Evening.
Bedroom Chambers, Statham Estate.
Critic Arley, Critic-Ishire.
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The grand, yet somber Statham estate stood amidst the rolling kingdomside, its once vibrant halls now filled with an oppressive silence. Shi’Enz, the youngest of four sisters, found herself trapped in this once lively home, but now it was a prison of her father’s making.
Her sisters had all married and moved away, leaving her as the sole focus of their father’s overbearing attention, well Liza wasn’t exactly married but she was no longer in the estate and Shi’Enz felt frustrated being here alone. Georgina was always knitting or waiting for her husband.
Shi’Enz sat in the drawing room, the weight of her isolation pressing down on her.
Her father had become increasingly protective, forbidding her from leaving the estate without his company and the places she wanted to go to were places he would never willingly go to, even when the lord had invited the nobles and men of the city, he had refused to attend and instead sent a reply of him claiming he wasn’t in the city, she assumed Theodore didn’t want him there too because they weren’t any punishment or a call afterwards.
Today, the gilded cage felt particularly suffocating, and Shi’Enz found herself seeking her mother’s counsel, hoping for an ally so she left her room and went to the drawing-room where she merely sat keeping her mother company as she didn’t know how to start.
"Mother," Shi’Enz began, her voice tinged with desperation, "Why must Father keep me so confined? I am of age, and yet he treats me like a child." she waited then.
Georgina, a stern yet so soft woman who had long since accepted her husband’s authoritarian ways, looked up from her embroidery with a weary expression. "Shi’Enz, your father only wants what is best for you. He is wholly protecting you from the dangers of the world." These dangers Georgina knew about but would prefer to pretend everything was fine and the marquis could do it all.