“Miss Whitby,” the solicitor began, “Your dowry, while left to you by your grandfather, was not in trust.”
“No, but it was mine,” she insisted. “Papa would never—” She couldn't finish the thought. A cold uneasiness settled over her, growing with every passing second until it crowded out every hopeful thought she had carried into the room. Her grandfather had settled the money upon her before his death. It had always been spoken of as secure, protected for the day she married. She had never questioned it because there had never been reason to do so. She had never imagined that her father might be the one it should have been secured from.
That thought, unbidden, threatened to swamp her. To break her and leave her collapsed and weeping like her poor mother. “No. Please tell me, Papa, that you did not.”
It was scarcely more than a whisper.
Her mother covered her face, her sobs and wails so anguished it was like someone had died.
Lydia looked back at her father. “Papa...do I not deserve an answer? Am I not owed some explanation as to why the thing set aside to secure my future is now gone?”
At last he lifted his head, revealing eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. His expression one entirely unfamiliar to her. Shame. Not the passing embarrassment of a gentleman caught in some social impropriety, but the crushing shame of a father who had failed the one person he had most wished to protect.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice little more than a rasp. "God forgive me, Lydia... I truly believed I could restore it before anyone ever knew it had been touched."
The words struck her with astonishing force, not because they surprised her but because they confirmed what she had already understood. The dowry was gone. Not diminished. Not borrowed. Gone. Squandered… just like her future.
For several moments she could neither speak nor think. Her gaze drifted almost without intention to the window, though she saw nothing beyond the darkened glass. In her mind she was once again standing beneath the trees with Oliver, laughing over a fat orange cat while he spoke of the day when they needed no longer settle for stolen kisses in other people's gardens. Hartwell depended upon her fortune almost as surely as it seemed her own family had. Without it, he could not restore the estate his father had left him. Without it, he would shoulder burdens that were never meant to be his. And yet he would marry her anyway.
She knew it with complete certainty. He would sacrifice Hartwell before he sacrificed her. Because he loved her the same way he did everything else—with his entire heart and soul. But could love survive that kind of sacrifice? Or would he grow toresent her for it? It didn’t matter, truthfully. She loved him too much to permit such a sacrifice on his part.
The realization settled quietly into her heart with a certainty that admitted no argument. She crossed the room to her mother, kissed the top of her head, then looked once more at the man who had been the center of her world since childhood.
"I understand," she said softly. "And you should understand this… so long as I live, I will never forgive you. Not for the money. For the lies. For letting me hope for a future that, by virtue of being ignorantly penniless, I was never entitled to. You have broken me… just as you have broken everything else.”
She turned and walked from the room. No one tried to stop her. They were all too consumed in their own misery. So Lydia did the one thing she could. She fetched a small valise from the wardrobe and began packing it with whatever the bailiffs had been too stupid or lazy to cart away. Gowns like hers could be sold for a decent sum of money. It would be enough. It would have to. Between that and the pin money she’d tucked inside one of the muffs in her wardrobe, she might be able to keep body and soul together for a bit, at least.
Baggage in hand and the sum total of her remaining fortune stuffed into her reticule, Lydia slipped down the back stairs and out through the garden. No one was there to stop her. They were all too consumed with their own miseries. Just as well.
As she walked, the night's fog swarmed around her until she simply vanished, lost to the London night and to the life that was supposed to be hers, the one that had been just within reach.
There were no wails and sobs. Only quiet tears burning a path down her cold cheeks. They weren’t tears of wounded pride or humiliation. They were tears of true heartbreak. Of bitter disappointment and of loving someone enough to let them go, even when it was the last thing she wished to do.
Chapter
One
London, 1826
The offices of Mrs. Baxter's Select Registry occupied the upper floor of a respectable townhouse just off Cavendish Square, where polished brass, spotless windows, and an unwavering commitment to propriety reassured those seeking employees that every governess, companion, and nursery maid who crossed the threshold had been thoroughly investigated before her name appeared in the register. Lydia had often wondered whether the same scrutiny extended to those seeking positions. If it did, she could only be grateful that twelve uneventful years had passed since anyone had called her Miss Lydia Whitby.
The clerk who had shown her upstairs asked her to wait only a few moments before ushering her into a comfortably furnished office overlooking the square. Shelves lined one wall from floor to ceiling, each crowded with ledgers whose neat labels testified to decades of careful record keeping. Behind a broad mahogany desk sat Mrs. Baxter herself, a widow of perhaps sixty with iron-grey hair drawn smoothly beneath a lace cap and a manner that suggested she had spent many years deciding, within the spaceof a single conversation, precisely what sort of person stood before her.
"Miss Mercer." Mrs. Baxter inclined her head toward the chair opposite the desk. "Please, do sit down."
Lydia thanked her quietly and complied, placing her gloves neatly beside the small reticule resting in her lap. Interviews had become considerably easier over the years. During the first few she had spent so much effort suppressing every trace of the young lady she had once been that she scarcely heard the questions put to her. Experience, however, had taught her that the safest disguise was not pretense but simplicity. A competent governess had nothing to conceal because no one expected her to possess an interesting history.
Mrs. Baxter opened the folder lying before her. "Your references continue to be exemplary. Mrs. Ellsworth speaks particularly highly of your patience and your ability to manage spirited children without resorting to severity."
"I was fortunate in my pupils," Lydia replied. "They were good children, even when they occasionally forgot they ought to behave as such."
The older woman's expression softened almost imperceptibly. "Mrs. Ellsworth also remarks that you remained with the family until the youngest boy entered school."
"There was no longer a need for a governess."
"And you left on excellent terms."
"I did."
