Stanilav Haytham was third-generation rich, and thus far, he had managed to avoid the pitfalls that fortune brings to a family. His grandfather had built the business, setting himself, sometimes, on the carts that carried produce and cloth and Derry Red and Razasan seaports on the Great Roads. His own father had helped, and, with a shrewd mind, continued to build on what the Grandfather had wrought. There was no idleness to be had. Even if his father could afford dozens of men and dozens of great carts on dozens of roads, Stanilav had been put to the lowest position, and had taken himself to the highest. Proven, rather. Stanilav's father would have not have accepted anything less of his son, and would have raised no one else as high.
As his father had done, so had Stanilav. His sons, at this moment, were running supplies to the Derry-front, and coaxing the wine from smugglers, and bringing back the furs that would be wanted, needed, in the winter-months. Heavier demands, as well, on things such as tea and spices, silks and lace, and fine embroidery plucked by more exotic hands than could be found in Myrkenwood. Three sons, he had, and a daughter. And if there was one pitfall, one failing of Stanilav Haytham, it was his daughter. He was blind to her faults. She, of course, could not be expected to sit shivering in a driver's seat, or scout dangerous paths for the carts ahead. No. She was a Lady, a fine, pretty Lady, of her mother's blonde hair and her father's pale eyes.
Janna Haytham was to be a Lady.
"Lady Rhaena Olwak herself will be there," she had begged. "The Governor's Lady, Papa, and it may be a masked Ball, but I could go, I could go and find a fine, rich lad, and be seen with the Lady."
"I'll not have every young hound sniffing after you," he had said, quite gruffly. He was a gruff, hard man, with hard and angular features, and eyes like ice. Jana did not see the hardness in him. She had quivered her lip in her pale, little pout, and had stamped her foot. And, as always, he had relented.
When they brought her back, the Constables smelled drunk. They smelled of cheap ale and rum. They had covered her with a heavy coat that stunk of dead leaves. Stanilav was certain that he would not forget the glaze of their eyes, the way they stared at Janna's slim, trembling form. Dogs. Dogs.
"We suspect someone's been at her, M'Lord," one said, the rum-smelling one, and at least he was humble. At least he acted as if the words were an atrocity. "There were - was a brawl, you understand. Lots of cover. Lots of distractions. She was seen with a man, but the masks -"
"Get out," Stanilav had said, and he had shut the door firmly in their faces.
Janna's mother is the one that took her to her room, that bathed her, that spoke into the great nothing of Janna's empty-eyed silence. She had put her to bed. Stanilav sat in his drawing room and pulled at his pipe. His cold eyes looked at nothing. When the inevitable questions came, his replies were terse. Nothing had happened. Frightened, she had been, by brawling-men. That was all.
Of course she was in good health.
When Janna's middle began to swell, Stanilav still sat in his drawing-room, and he smoked his pipe. And his eyes looked at nothing.