Perhaps she should have simply asked her mother then and there what she wanted. Then she could’ve given it to them and returned home to beg Cordon for forgiveness. Refusing his money had been a mistake. It would have been much easier, and less painful, to let him solve her problems and then indulge whatever distraction struck his fancy.
But it was too late now. She’d made her choice.
As she walked with her mother into the house, the weight of responsibility sat heavily on her shoulders. There had to be something she hadn’t considered yet. Some way of saving the entire situation.
She had a lot to clean up, and very little time.
*
Several hours later,Kitty put her elbows on her father’s desk and then put her head in her hands. Three hours of sorting through paperwork, and she was no closer to a solution. Her mother had come by twice, presumably to draw Kitty into someactivity or afternoon tea, but Kitty was too stressed to sit for hours around a table and listen to her mother’s criticisms.
How had the situation become so dire? Her parents earned regular income from the bonds they’d inherited from Kitty’s grandfather, yet the money flowed out of their pockets as quickly as water in a bucket with a hole in the bottom. She was glad Grandfather was not alive to witness his family’s decline. The old man had been as much of a pinchpenny as his son was a spendthrift.
She spread her hands over the papers on the desk. Bills from the grocer, a cordwainer, a milliner… Not to mention several hastily scrawled notes that represented debts owing to less-reputable proprietors.
Her father lounged in a chair near the window, swirling brandy in a glass, apparently unconcerned by the disaster he’d created.
She tallied up the numbers again, hoping she’d missed something, but the resulting sum was no less enormous. She could not dig her parents out of the debt they’d accumulated if she sold a hundred gowns. What did that leave? Convincing her family to sell their possessions was impossible. They refused to let go of their trinkets, even to save themselves.
Perhaps it was time to talk to her mother. Convince her to sell the house and lease something smaller. A row house in a less-reputable area, perhaps.
Assuming the house would even sell. Given the mess on her father’s desk, she had to assume he had leveraged the property.
She picked up a sheet of paper, which listed the name of the man to whom her father owed money: Mr. Blaylock.
It shouldn’t have surprised her.
The next paper, however, was a marriage contract, naming Betty and Mr. Blaylock.
“No,” she whispered. She looked at her father and raised the paper. “What is this?”
Her father huffed. “Betty and the man get along well. Your sister will have a husband, and we will be free of our debts. What is the problem?”
“The problem,” she said, speaking slowly so as not to shout, “is that Betty is not a chess piece that you can move at your whim.”
Her father shifted his feet. “Mr. Blaylock does not require a dowry. In fact, he has offered to forgive my debt and pay us a significant sum for the privilege of having Betty as his wife. That is all that matters.”
“Does Betty know about this?”
Mr. Carter winced. “She does not need to know.”
Kitty bit back a scream. What could she do? They were herfamily. She couldn’t let them suffer, but they wouldn’t believe the truth about Mr. Blaylock. If Cordon had failed to send the man away before she’d told the viscount to stay out of her life, she had no chance.
Her father walked over to the sideboard and unstopped a crystal decanter of amber liquid, then poured some into a glass. “There is one condition. Mr. Blaylock requires that you give up being a dressmaker.”
“No,” Kitty said. “You…you can’t ask me to do that.”
He sipped his glass, then set it down without looking at her. “I am sorry, my dear, but I have no choice. Mr. Blaylock insisted. He believes a lady’s place is in the home and does not want his wife to be associated with a businesswoman. A rather old-fashioned way of thinking, but your mother agreed, and it is the fastest way to free us from the debt. We have nothing left to sell.”
The anger that had been simmering inside her since she’d arrived and found her father wasn’t dead bubbled up her throat. “Nothingto sell?” She stomped over to her father’s desk andpicked up the first sheet that came to her hand. “Three wool suits.” She slammed the paper down and selected another. “A carriage.”
Slam.
“Ten.Ten!New dresses for Betty.”
Slam.
“Fifteen boxes of imported cigars. Father, really?” She glared at the man who had made her life so miserable. “I think you have quite a lot to sell.”
