Page 11 of The Devil to Pay

It wasn’t as if anyone else was going to do it. Lord knew they couldn’t have another governess, not with Hubert about. Her older brother was far too familiar with pretty girls and had no compunction about seducing the staff. Selina guarded all her servants and slept ill whenever he was home. More than anything, though, she did not wish for them all to think her such a wretched nag, even if she felt it more often than not. So, Abigail could keep the book. Besides, it would be hypocritical as Selina had thoroughly enjoyed the story herself and did not wish to deny Abigail the pleasure of reading it. The only difference being, Selina knew full well, it was all entirely fantastical. There was no such thing as happy ever afters.

“What about me?” Charlie piped up.

Selina smiled at him. Charlie was thirteen and, like both her and little Julia, who was ten, had inherited their father’s shock of unruly red hair and freckles. Julia was dreadfully touchy about her vivid red curls and convinced she would die an old maid because of them. Selina did her best to reassure her but found the task somewhat challenging in the circumstances.

“Charlie, you may ride into town and fetch the items on the shopping list I’ve left on my desk.”

Charlie gave a little yip of pleasure at the thought of a few hours of freedom.

“That’s not fair! I want to go too,” Julia protested.

“No, you’ve schoolwork, madam,” Selina told her firmly. “But if you get those sums right this time, I might add a bag of barley sugar to the list, if that will sweeten your temper.”

“I suppose,” Julia said reluctantly, but stuck out her tongue at Charlie, who was looking appallingly smug.

“Jammy go too?”

Selina turned her attention to the baby, Benjamin, who had just turned three years old. “No, sweet. You will stay with Nurse this morning, and then we shall go out for a walk and feed the ducks.”

“Feed duck sweeties?” he said hopefully.

“No. The barley sugar is for Julia if she gets her sums right, but I shall ask Mrs Parry if we might have scones for tea, with jam,” she added, for this was his favourite thing in the entire world.

“Stawburry jam?” he demanded eagerly.

“Certainly,” she agreed, deftly wiping his sticky hand before he could grab hold of the sleeve of her dress. Selina looked up as the nurse, Hilly, came into the breakfast parlour.

“Where’s my little man then?” Hilly demanded, her sweet face crinkling with pleasure as she saw her favourite person.

“Here! I’m here, Hilly!” he said, as if he could be missed, and stretched up his chubby arms.

Selina laughed and got to her feet, picking the robust little boy up out of his seat before Hilly attempted it, for she was not as young as she’d once been. Benjamin ran to her, and she swept him up all the same, planting a big kiss on his cheek.

“Did you have a nice egg for breakfast?” she enquired with apparently genuine interest.

“Yes!” Benjamin agreed, and went out of the room with her, deep in discussion about just how good the egg had been.

As she had expected, Selina’s relatively peaceful morning was not to last.

“Oh! How could he?” she raged in frustration, staring down at the invoice for two more shockingly expensive horses they neither needed nor could afford.

They already had a dozen purebred eating machines that her heedless father was hardly ever around to exercise. Then he would descend upon the family, bringing a horde of his loathsome cronies to murder the wildlife, deplete the larder and the wine cellar, and fill the house with bawdy stories and language of the kind impressionable children ought never to hear. Selina thought that if she were a man, she might very well have knocked him down long ago. As it was, she railed at him as best she could and was labelled a harpy and a shrew for her trouble, though he never minded leaving his household in ‘that shrewish creature's hands.’

“Because it would never occur to him not to,” Jacob replied blithely, not taking his nose out of The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, whatever that was. “He’s selfish, that’s all.”

Selina cast an affectionate if despairing glance at her brother. In his own way, Jacob was selfish too, though not purposefully. Unlike Hubert, the oldest of their clan and her senior by three years, he did not waste his money and time on wine, women, and song. He was just entirely oblivious to anything outside of his books and his studies. But at least he was doing something, not just indulging his baser instincts, a pastime which made Selina wild with frustration and anger. Oh, if she had been a man, the things she would have done! As it was, she was stuck here, managing a house that would pass to her indolent brother when her father died, leaving her with a very limited income. But she would not think of that.

Instead, she added the invoice to the discouraging pile on her left and wrote out a draft from her father’s bank. They were far from destitute; she knew that. Indeed, if her father would not spend quite so lavishly on horses and entertaining his cronies, they’d do very nicely. Hubert had his own income, inherited from his uncle—thanks be to Providence—though at the rate he was running through it, he too would become a burden on the estate before very much longer. But she wouldn’t think about that either.

Passing the draft to Jacob so he could note it down in the accounts, she gave a loud cough to regain his attention and force him to put the book down. Duly noting the date of payment on the irritating invoice, she moved it to the right, and the pile for paid invoices. As she did so, her eye snagged on a recent copy of La Belle Assembly, left open at a page revealing a lilac taffeta morning dress. It was feminine and frivolous, with little silk tassels and very tight sleeves, and entirely impractical for the life Selina led. She’d had a season once, long ago it seemed, with pretty dresses and her very own maid, but that had been before Mama died and… Well, she just wouldn’t think about that.

She picked up the next invoice, staring at it in alarm. “How many books, Jacob?” she asked faintly.

Jacob grew very red about the ears. “Ah, yes, Lina, about that….”

Jules stared down at his hands in frustration. They were chapped from the cold and sore from the rough handle of the spade, and he had a blister on his right palm.

“Want to go home yet?” Briggs asked in an undertone.