Ever your devoted,
James
Sebastian readthe lines again and again.
I wishI could be with my family on this Christmas day.
I miss you more than is seemly to confess, and I loathe that business keeps me so long from our little household.
The words struck like ice.In his father’s sentences, London and the earldom, his mother, sister and himself, were reduced tobusiness, while the hidden household in the country was the real and cherished family. Cold and bitterness spread in Sebastian’s chest until even the fire in the room offered no warmth. He set the letter upon the desk with care, as if gentleness might undo what he had learned.
Why do I feel this heaviness upon my chest?
The rain kept up its soft assault upon the glass; the longcase clock ticked with maddening civility. Sebastian pushed from the desk and strode into the hall, taking the curve of the staircase two at a time. He was a fool for having allowed them even a night. He owed themnothing. He did not know them, and he did not wish to. Servants gossiped; London lived upon whispers and scandal; a single careless word could ride the first post to Bath and find its way into a morning scandal sheet. His mother’s heart had broken once already when his father died, and she had not yet recovered. He would not permit anything that might break it again.
How had his father contrived such a life? The man whose steadiness he had sought to imitate in every vote and speech had written of another hearth as home. Had duty been a mask worn with perfect ease. Had affection been so divisible? The questions pressed until Sebastian’s chest ached.
He reached the eldest girl’s door and opened it without knocking, careless of courtesy. Sebastian halted halfway to thebed. All four lay asleep together, curled about the eldest as if she were the tree that kept them rooted and safe. He stood for a long moment, then turned away, uncomprehending the impulse that had driven him up the stairs. It felt as if he needed to fight and rail, to loosen words and fury in a manner unbefitting an earl.
With a harsh breath, he left the chamber and walked to the east wing. In his own chamber, he crossed to the bed and let himself fall upon it. Sleep kept its distance for a long while before, at last, darkness closed over him.
CHAPTER 3
Darcy stirred and gently freed herself from her sisters’ limbs. She had slept a little, yet dread still rested on her shoulders and would not let her lie long. She looked about the bedchamber and understood she had never seen such opulence. Earlier, she had been too overwhelmed to notice. A small coal fire ticked and settled in the grate; the scent of beeswax and clean linen lingered in the air. Chintz curtains in rose and cream framed a window beaded with rain. Beyond the glass, the square lay drowned in lamplight and shadow, water coursing along the cobbles like quicksilver. Two candles burned in brass sconces, their light soft upon a carved walnut bedstead and a counterpane white as new snow.
Darcy sat upon the edge of the bed and gripped the stitched border until her knuckles whitened. Thankfully, her sisters still slept. She could not let them see her worry, else they would fret themselves into a state. A shudder moved through her. For a moment, the steady hiss of the downpour seemed to wash through her chest and carry off the worst of her fear. She had lived through the packing of their few possessions, the selling of what little remained, the long road from Hertfordshire in a hiredconveyance that smelled of damp wool and tired leather. Twice she had told the driver to turn back. Twice she had remembered the solicitor’s cold voice and colder proposal, and she had set her teeth and faced forward.
Not even the house that had seemed theirs in childhood could shelter them. It had never been theirs at all. The solicitor had unfolded the entail with dry fingers and a bored expression, delivered the notice of eviction, then observed that an arrangement might be made if she were willing to be agreeable. His glance had stripped her more cruelly than poverty. Darcy had refused him. She would refuse a hundred such men before she allowed her sisters to see her fall.
The notion of appealing to the Earl of Raine had been reckless and desperate, yet hope had risen when Darcy remembered a father who, in his visits, had been kind, gentle, and generous when he could be. Perhaps character might pass from parent to child. Perhaps the son would show a measure of the same heart.
Darcy had not prepared herself for the man who met her at the door. Beauty could be a kind of shock. His eyes were a dark, level blue that stripped away her pretense at calm. Handsome or not, his coldness struck harder. The way his attention settled, then dismissed with a single glance, had felt like the shutting of a door.
A soft rustle behind her told Darcy that someone was awake. Emelia shifted and sat beside her.
“You cannot sleep either, Darcy,” she murmured, stifling a yawn.
“I am thinking about how forthwith I ought to be with Lord Raine tomorrow. I believe he would be able to see through any falsehood right away. I shall be honest in all regard.”
Emelia sighed. “I know we did not keep to the plan. I am sorry.”
“I shall explain to the earl in the morning,” Darcy said softly. “I am not his sister. Only you girls are.”
“No, please,” Emelia said, her eyes dark with worry. “If you tell him that, he will send you away. You are our sister.”
“But I am not his,” Darcy answered, gentler still. “It would not be right to allow him to believe it, and the consequences when he discovers the falsehood would be more than we could bear. He already does not trust us; this will make it worse.”
Emelia shook her head. “Do not tell him. He will make you leave. I can tell. He is not like Papa.”
A tight ache arose in Darcy’s throat. “We are not even certain he will help you, Jane, and Sarah. We might all have to leave and endure the mercy of the world.”
“That is why we must not reveal anything,” Emelia begged. “Please, Darcy. We cannot lose you, either.”
Darcy’s chest ached. “You will not lose me.”
Once his lordship learns there is no familial connection between you and him, he will have you leave.”
Perhaps Emelia was right. There had been a hard indifference in the earl that his father had never shown her, at least not in those remembered afternoons when he had laughed and listened and placed a book in her hands as if it were a treasure. Yet resentment had been gathering in Darcy for months, souring even the tender recollections. The man she had called father all her life had been a wealthy nobleman and had left no provision she could find for the women who depended upon him. Their mother had sunk into the slow suffocation of sorrow until illness took hold and carried her away.
