Darroch's Promise

A nightmare! No! Not a nightmare, this was so real.
Carissa was horrified to learn at the reading of her father's Will that she and her younger sister and brothers could lose everything.
The weeks following the reading of the Will were the darkest of her life, because of the strictures laid upon her by her late, adoptive father. Carissa had two choices: marry a man she hardly knew, and didn't particularly like, or she and her also adoptive siblings would be ejected from the home they loved, leaving them homeless and near-destitute.
Carissa's despair was exacerbated by the fact that shortly before her father's death she had refused a proposal of marriage from the man she truly loved: Raulo Darroch. She'd refused him, believing that his proposal was founded in his aim of controlling her father's business. No words of love had passed his lips: his proposal of marriage had been utterly business like.
Raulo months on did learn of Carissa's plight. He accepted what fate offered and played his hand to his and Carissa's advantage. He could at last carry out the promise he'd made to Carissa's dying father. A promise he would discover to be placed in jeopardy.
Carissa, being an innocent victim.