1 Prologue
Layla wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand and quickly returned to the cake she was working on. She didn't have long before the icing set so she had to work fast to attach the fondant butterflies.
Baking was useful. It kept her mind off everything that was bothering her.
Her 18th birthday had recently passed and she had just finished college so she knew what was coming. It was only a matter of time before her parents announced her marriage.
It was going to be an arranged marriage of course.
Her family were filthy rich and part of high society so naturally she had to be matched with someone from a similar family to keep in that same niche. No one from her family had ever married someone without a title to inherit.
Her own parents had married under the same conditions and it had blatantly never been a happy marriage for either of them. They didn't even try to pretend anymore.
Layla sighed and refocused her attention on the cake she had spent two hours on already. The fondant was sticking to her fingers and her patience was nearly gone. She shook her hand in annoyance and the fondant butterfly broke in half. To add to the insult, it fell on top of the cake and she couldn't get it off without ruining the icing.
"Why is nothing going right for me?" she complained aloud.
It was fortunate the kitchen was empty at this time of day. There no one to witness her mess of a cake. She was sure most of the staff hated her or had been told to make her feel uncomfortable. Her parents hated her baking in the kitchen which was one of the reasons why she did it.
One of the maids appeared in the doorway and cleared her throat primly.
"Miss Layla, the Lady is waiting for you in the drawing room," she said formally. "She said it didn't matter what you're doing, just go."
That certainly sounded like her mother. Lady Huntington was in the possession of terrible manners despite the fact her title suggested the opposite. Lord Huntington wasn't much better either. He just didn't speak.
The drawing room was a dark and gloomy room that smelled a little of mould and had a wall of grim looking family portraits. Layla hated the depressing room and avoided it where possible. It didn't help that it was the room she always got told off in. This visit probably wasn't going to be anything different.
Her mother was sitting primly in one of the armchairs in her Chanel suit, looking she owned the world rather than a mansion filled with dark corners and rising damp. Her father was in another armchair looking like he was about to fall asleep.
The ominous feeling she was experiencing in her stomach was likely to be coming from the sight of an envelope on the low table opposite her mother.
Lady Huntington looked her up and down with a disdainful eye. Clearly the flour streaked apron, scruffy skirt and shirt combination weren't doing it for her.
"Layla, can't you dress yourself properly at this age?" her mother sighed. "I didn't buy you a wardrobe of designer dresses for you to wear that kind of thing every day and why are you always in the kitchen? You're going to get fat making so many cakes."
Layla shrugged, knowing full well it would annoy her mother which it did.
"Don't shrug like that, it's uncouth," her mother cried out. "No one is going to marry you when they find out what you're really like."
There it was. The mention of marriage.
Should she risk saying something?
"Mum, I don't want to get married this young. I've only just finished my International Baccalaureate," she protested.
Her mother waved higher education away with a flick of her hand.
"Please, who is going to care what grades you've got when you're the lady of the house."
It was a very convenient thing for her to say considering she knew her mother had poor school grades and had never gone to university.
"I do," Layla retorted.
Her father chose that moment to stir from his stupor and found the energy to speak.
"I don't like your attitude, young lady. Sit down," he ordered.
He was actually scary whenever she crossed him so she followed the order. Whatever they were going to say had to be important as both parents were both present in the same room for once.
It was probably something to do with her arranged marriage.
She wasn't dumb; she was now an adult, finished school and there was a suspicious envelope in front of mother. They were hardly going to discuss her going to university.
"It's been hard to get you a match. There's not very many families left that your relations haven't already married into…" her mother trailed off.
It wouldn't be a lie to say that there weren't many noble families in the UK that they weren't related to. Whilst it was legal to marry cousins, Layla knew she really didn't want marry any of her cousins, distant or otherwise.
"There was an Earl, but you're too related and even I'm not happy with your marrying distant family," Lady Huntington continued. "It was a hard search…"
Her mother certainly knew how to build tension. Layla's breathing was becoming shorter and harder to control. She couldn't let them see how scared she was.
She didn't want to get married yet and if she did, she wanted the person to be her choice.
"So,after much networking, I managed to find someone that's actually decent looking," her mother said triumphantly. "You'll thank me later. So many Lords are butt ugly in reality."
"Edith, that's not polite," her father warned.
If the situation wasn't so serious, she would have loved seeing her mother get told off. Instead she was sat there with her hands underneath her legs so they couldn't see them shaking.
"Anyway," her mother said like nothing had happened. "His family have agreed to pair you two off and they've been looking at properties you two can live in."
"...I see," Layla said. "It's all been planned without asking me…"
"Why would we ask your opinion?" her mother snorted with a large amount of scorn. "You have terrible taste. Did you even brush your hair this morning?"
Layla touched her messy brown hair self consciously. Her mother always said things like this and chipped away at her self confidence.
"You will meet him at a ball next week, have a few meetings and then marry," her father said. "All meetings will be chaperoned so you'd better behave yourself."
That sounded like hell. It was lucky she had no intention of going otherwise she would be feeling a lot of hopelessness right now.
Her parents had conveniently forgotten that they didn't have any legal rights over her anymore and she didn't have to live with them.
She had been waiting for the sign to leave and now it had come.
Her mother finally picked up the ubiquitous envelope.
"There's a photo of him inside and some basic information for you to look at before you meet him. You have a fitting for your ballgown tomorrow. You have to look half decent when you go. There's going to be other noble families there."
That translated as 'you must look good so I have bragging power over the other mothers there'. She knew her mother well enough now to guess the meaning behind statements like that.
"His name is-"
"I'll look it later," Layla said forcefully to stop her mother. "It's a lot to take in at once."
Naturally she had no such intentions, she just needed to avoid ever knowing about the person she was supposed to marry.
"If you say so," her mother said doubtfully and rearranged her pretentious string of pearls. "You can't avoid it forever. Just accept it. I had to and so did your father."
***
That night Layla took out her suitcase from under her bed. She had been planning for this for a while so there wasn't much left to pack.
All she added were her daily toiletries, her laptop and her bank book. When she had turned 18 last month, she had inherited a sizeable amount of money held in trust for her from her grandparents and now she was going to put it to use.
She consulted her list again before zipping up her suitcase and hauled it off her bed. She picked up the envelope containing the details of her match and hurled it out the window.
It was time to leave this mansion.
There was a whole world waiting out there for her and maybe she would find someone she truly loved by herself.
