Carla Kelly (2 page)

And that was as far as her fancy ever took her anymore. “I suppose I am stodgy, for a Hampton,” she told the ceiling as she hugged her pillow to her. “Oh, Papa, even a little dowry would make such a difference!”

She was just about asleep when she heard Wilde open the front door. She lay there smiling into the dark, then got up and padded on stockinged feet to the stairway landing that looked down on the front hall.

Papa stood there in his coat. He held out his arms automatically for Wilde to remove it, then shook his head and said good night to his butler.

Susan got no farther than the first step down. She was about to call a greeting to her father, but something in his stillness stopped the words in her throat. Scarcely breathing, she lowered herself to the top step and sat crouched in the shadows of the chilly upper landing.

She held her breath and watched him standing so motionless, his eyes riveted to the floor as though he searched for something he had dropped. She let her breath out slowly and put her hands to her mouth as he sank to his knees, pitched forward onto his elbows, then rested his forehead against the cold parquet flooring.

He didn’t cry so much as moan. It was a ghastly sound, worse than Mama’s last, long breath that had gone on and on until it seemed to blend with the breeze of a long-ago summer. That was death, and it comes to all. This was worse: it was the sound of hope gone.

Susan closed her eyes against the sight of her father groveling on the floor below. There was a pain in her as though someone had slit open her chest, ripped out her heart, wrung every drop from it, then crammed it back into her body. She opened her eyes and calmly observed her father. She rose to her feet, more steady of motion than she felt, and climbed the one step to the landing. She would not stomp on his dignity by rushing below to join her tears to his, but would wait until morning.

Bad news always keeps, she thought as she dragged herself into bed and closed her eyes again. Papa will have to tell me tomorrow, but we will deal with it. She pulled the covers up to her chin. But as for me, I will not trust another’s promises every again. And when I get up in the morning, I will have turned a page in my book of life.

Chapter Two

As it turned out, there wasn’t time to mourn the evaporation of social repute, town manor, household effects, and servants on the turn of a card; the matter came to a head too quickly. Papa’s disgrace crashed down around him on a Tuesday night; by Friday evening, that most enterprising young Lancastershire weaver was sitting, with a sigh of satisfaction, in Papa’s favorite chair, snapping out Papa’s newspaper, and waiting for Wilde’s summons to dinner.

Susan and her father followed the carter in a hackney to Aunt Louisa’s house six blocks over on the corner of Timothy and Quayle streets. Susan would have walked to save the pence, but Sir Rodney wouldn’t hear of it.

“Tush, my dear,” he said with a wave of his hand, “how would it look?”

She could only close her eyes and turn toward the window, biting back angry words that she would only have regretted later. In the three days since his ruin and their expulsion, she saw her father quite clearly for the child he was and would always be. As long as Sir Rodney possessed two groats to rub together in his pocket, he would always choose to flick one at a beggar, squander the other on a bunch of violets, and look around for someone to provide him with two more.

“Besides, Susan, you know that we will come about again,” he said, taking her clenched fist between his two hands and trying to smooth out her fingers. He leaned closer, speaking confidentially. “And I have heard of a wonderful game tonight at Lord Crutchley’s.”

She opened her eyes and jerked her hand away. “Papa! We have lost everything! How can you speak of gaming!”

The hurt look came into his eyes, and he pouted, leaning back against the dusty cushions. “I had thought . . . your mother’s pearls,” he said finally, his voice heavy with misuse.

“No, Papa. That is all I have,” she said quietly.

He was silent then for the rest of the brief journey. I will not permit you to shame me into giving you my last treasure from Mama, she told herself as she wrapped her cloak tighter about her. She was so tired, worn out with the hurried packing of her clothes and what household items the estate agent had allowed her to keep. She burned with the humiliation of having to fight for the taken-for-granted treasures of her life that could have had no possible meaning for the new landlord. “What can he possibly want with a portrait of my mother?” she had finally shouted in frustration at the agent, weak-kneed almost at the humiliation of having to dicker.

“He’s a brash man from the weavers’ district,” the man explained. “He’s got an indecent lot of cash, but no background. These paintings will give him countenance, or so he told me. Instant ancestors,” he concluded, chuckling at the absurdity of his client.

“But this is my mother’s picture!” Susan had pleaded. “Can you help me?”

To answer her, the agent had patted her cheek, sidled a little closer, and suggested to her a service she could provide him in order to retain her paintings and some of the furniture besides.

Nothing shocks me now, she had thought grimly as the man folded his arms and leaned even closer to her. He knows there is no one beyond an aging butler to come to my defense. He knows how useless my father is. I have no champion.

From somewhere, she had pulled the tatters of her dignity around her shoulders and looked the agent in the eye. “I think not, sir,” she had informed him serenely. “You may keep the paintings and the furniture and go to hell on the next mail coach.”

She stared through the dirty pane of glass as the jarvey picked his practiced way through London traffic. “Do you know, Papa, the real estate agent told me I could keep the paintings and furniture if I let him lay with me,” she commented, keeping her voice normal and conversational.

Sir Rodney sighed and shook his head. “I know I can come about again, daughter, I know it! I need your help.”

“Papa, did you hear what I just said?” Susan asked quietly.

He looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time. “Something about paintings, wasn’t it? Don’t know why you gave them all up without a fight, but then, no one ever said Hamptons were any good at dickering for this or that like fishmongers.”

“Papa . . .”

He put a hand to his head and smiled at her in that brave way of his that made her want to grind her teeth. “I have such a headache, my dear. I do hope Louisa isn’t entertaining tonight. Do you think she will feel obligated to give a party for us? I sincerely hope not. My waistcoats have all seen too much duty lately; everyone knows them. It’s such a worry.”

I think we will be lucky if Aunt Louisa does not direct us to the nearest workhouse, Susan thought, and smiled sourly to herself. Well, at least Papa and I could learn a trade there.

“Papa, do you think you could ever get a job?” she asked suddenly, her mind on the poorhouse.

Sir Rodney’s shocked stare said more than words ever could. “Dear me, what was I thinking?” she murmured and settled herself lower into her cloak, drawing the folds around her.

“I cannot imagine,” he replied and ignored her for the rest of the ride.

The carter, arriving before them at Timothy and Quayle streets, had deposited their few boxes and luggage on the steps leading up to the front door. He left without lingering about for a tip to augment the agreed-upon fare that Sir Rodney had carefully counted into his mitten at the other house. How perspicacious he is, Susan thought. The carter knows there is nothing extra from such threadbare shabby-genteels as we.

“Well, Papa, knock,” she said a few minutes later as they stood together, facing the closed door. It was beginning to sleet again, the icy rain scouring them.

He only stood there, as though unable to raise his hand to his sister’s overly impressive door knocker. He stared at the thing—a somewhat dyspeptic-looking gilt lion—as though he expected it to roar and lunge at him. “My dear, do you recall how we used to laugh about Louisa’s vulgar door knocker?” he said, not taking his eyes from the thing.

He glanced at her then, wincing as the sleet drove into his eyes, and for the smallest moment she could see the pain that he had contrived so earnestly to hide for the last three days. “My dear, Louisa is Louisa, even if she did marry a purchased baronet who smelled ever so slightly of the shop.” He took her arm. “I trust this will not distress you.”

We are destitute, without a home, it is sleeting again, and you wonder if I mind a little vulgarity? she asked herself, amazement edging out contempt by only the slightest margin. She opened her mouth to pour out her distress, then closed it again, stopped in time by the sight of her father’s anxious face. Unbidden from nowhere like an additional dousing of cold water came her mother’s last words to her: “My love, do take care of your father,” Mama had said. Susan had been fourteen at the time, but as she shivered on those steps with Sir Rodney Hampton, she understood them finally. She swallowed the great lump lodged in her throat and touched his arm.

“I do not mind, Papa. Let me knock.”

And so they found themselves rescued by Lady Louisa Sanderson, relict of Sir William Sanderson, a man with distant Yorkshire mill connections who had indulged himself in life with a purchased title and did not object to vulgar door knockers. With a pang, Susan watched as her father allowed himself to be rescued, clucked over, and folded into the depths of his sister’s obligation and disdain, dished out in equal parts to her little brother.

They were treated well enough, better than Susan would have suspected, considering the nature of the burden Sir Rodney represented to his older sister. True, their rooms were at the back of the house, when there were larger chambers to spare elsewhere. And was it her imagination that the servants only turned away to chuckle when Sir Rodney, dressed impeccably if shabbily, passed them as he made his stately progress from room to room? Never mind; he did not notice, nor would he ever. It was Susan’s misfortune to writhe inside, bite her lip, and overlook that which she was powerless to control.

For all that she was unhappy, it was a quiet week. Families were only just now straggling back from Christmas celebrated on their country estates, and the Season was yet an anticipation. Few came calling, and it was just as well. To hear Louisa tell it, breakfast room tables all over London were littered with pattern cards and modistes’ drawings as mothers and daughters conspired over swatches of spring fabric and dreamed of grand entrances.

In the Sanderson household, Louisa’s youngest daughter, book on head, practiced her own entrances and exits while her mother frowned at the dressmaker’s news that jonquil would be all the rage this year.

“Emily will completely vanish in that shade of yellow,” Louisa protested as she pushed away the fabric pieces.

“It is the high kick of fashion, my lady,” said the dressmaker, obviously not a stranger to the pale-eyed, pale-haired daughters of the Sanderson household.

“But she will disappear!” Louisa lamented, careful not to disturb Emily’s gliding progress up and down the room. “I ask you, how will she find a husband if no one can
see
her? Show me some blue fabric, Madam Soileau,” she insisted.

“It is
not
à la mode,” said the dressmaker, gathering up her swatches. She glanced at Susan, who was watching the pageant before her as she worked her way through Louisa’s darning. “Now, this one, with her dark hair, would fairly glow in jonquil.” She took Susan’s chin in practiced hands and turned her head this way and that. “And with brown eyes! Madame, hearts will break!”

“They will mend with amazing speed when their owners discover I have no dowry,” Susan said, her amusement genuine.

The dressmaker let out a great gust of a sigh and released Susan. “Men are pigs,” she declared. With her martyr’s air, well developed through some twenty Seasons, she shook her head at Emily’s wispy blondness. “I shall find some blue from somewhere, but I do not think you can hope for more than a second son.”

Louisa did not flinch from the dressmaker’s hard-eyed pronouncement. “I would even settle for a clergyman for that one,” she whispered, her eyes on her daughter, “although I am sure Emily does not know Genesis from Ecclesiastes.”

“Most clergymen don’t, either,” Susan added, her eyes lively.

The dressmaker put her hand to her bosom. “La, my dear, what a treasure this one is! Her face is this Season’s face, and she has a sense of humor, and her figure is just enough without being too much—although, my dear, I think you should lace tighter. I would say an earl at least. Perhaps a marquis.”

“And she is quite twenty-five,” stated Louisa, delivering the final blow. “Madam Soileau, we will concentrate on Emily. Susan, you may put away that darning now.”

I know when I’ve been dismissed, Susan told herself as she dutifully folded up the darning, dodged around Emily and her books, and made her own graceful exit from the room. I do not think Aunt Louisa will want me tagging along at any of this Season’s events. It was not a reflection that caused her any pain, but she did pause in front of the mirror at the top of the landing to admire herself for a moment. How nice to know that I have this Season’s face, she told herself. Some eligible marquis will never know what he is missing.

The thought made her giggle. She was still smiling over the absurdity of it during dinner. Her amusement lasted into the drawing room as Aunt Louisa signaled for the footman to set up her embroidery frame. Sir Rodney, hands clasped behind him, traveled to and from the windows, peering out, looked back at Susan, and repeated the circuit.

Susan watched him, her good cheer gone. I know the signs, she thought as she threaded her darning needle. If he had any money, he would tell me now that he is going to White’s, and give me that pugnacious stare, daring me to say no.

But he had no money. With a sigh, Sir Rodney collapsed onto the sofa next to his sister, who looked at him over the spectacles she wore for close work.

“Rodney, you are a flibbertigibbet,” she said, her tone querulous. Obviously the afternoon’s plain speaking from the modiste about Emily’s prospects still rankled. Susan tried to make herself small in her corner of the sofa, wondering already how soon she could decently say good night to them both.

“I suppose I am, sister,” he agreed, ever the complacent one.

Susan jabbed at the darning in her hand, embarrassed for her father.

“Rodney, I want you to know that there is no way I can finance a comeout for Susan,” Louisa said, her eyes on the canvas before her.

“Oh, Aunt, I never . . .”

“I know you have not, my dear,” she said to Susan, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on her brother. “I want your father to understand my situation. Rodney, Susan is your responsibility. If you have some little fraction remaining of your dear wife’s expectancies, it might be enough to find Susan a clergyman, or perhaps a widower who is not disgusted by her age. Rodney, speak to me plainly: can you provide anything for your daughter?”

Sir Rodney stared back at his sister, the astonishment evident in his face. “Of course I can!” he declared, glaring at his sister with indignation.

“When?”

It was a little word, but it hung on the heated air of the drawing room like a vulture over carrion. Louisa was looking at her brother now, her hands idle in her lap. “When?” she repeated, more softly this time.

Sir Rodney leaped to his feet, his face red. “As soon as I can, Louisa!” He looked at Susan. “Just ask Susan! She knows that I have great plans for her comeout. Tell her, Susan.”

I wish I could, Papa, she thought as she stared back at him, then lowered her eyes to her darning again.

“Susan!”

“It is much as I thought, Rodney,” Louisa said as she selected a skein of thread. “More shame to you.”

He went to the doorway and stood staring from one to the other. Susan looked at him once and cringed at the pleading expression in his eyes.

“Susan, can you get my embroidery scissors from the breakfast room?” Louisa said.

“Of course, Aunt.” She rose and went to the door. “Is there anything else you would like?”

It was a simple sentence, but when she said it, Susan knew that their relationship had changed. From now on, if she stayed in that house, she would be the one to fetch and carry. Papa could do nothing for her, and his sister would not, beyond providing for her and using her for errands, interventions with the cook, contact with the tradesmen. The years would pass and she would gradually become Louisa’s almost-maid.