Chapter 8

"I..I suppose you’re wondering where your engagement ring is," she blurted out, needing to say something to fill in the unbearably tense empty space, and the ring had come up in discussion when Adelina’s mother had said the same thing.

"No," he denied without any inflection whatsoever. I would imagine that running off with a poor man has already sealed the ring’s fate.

Charley winced, her cheeks heating at this cool reminder of the other issue in all of this she was having to deal with—the fact that the man Adelina had run off with also happened to be her very own brother.

"Charles isn’t poor." She felt compelled to defend Charles’s middle-class earnings. It was, after all, the only thing about him she felt she could defend right now.

"In your estimation or mine?"

Oh, that was so very arrogant of him. Charley felt anger begin to rise, even though she knew she didn’t have the right to let it. "Look," with a tense twist, she turned to the door, "I think I had better leave you to—"

"Runn