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How dared Caroline decide for her what she should do?
Long before she and Caroline had ever kissed, her worst nightmare was that she would be rebuffed if ever she told Caroline that she loved her. After a summer spent in courtship and lovemaking and a thousand intimate details, the reality was far worse than the nightmares.
And yet, there was relief in the pain.
If the nightmare had come true, then it also meant that it was over and could hold no more fear for her. Whether or not she agreed that it was right or fair, Caroline had ended things between them. For the first time since she had tumbled into love at thirteen, she felt a sense of detachment that felt…healthy.
She hadn’t wasted her life away while pining for Caroline, after all. She had friends and neighbors and family and her art and her cats. All of those things filled her life with blessings.
The absence of one person had the ability to wound.
But she would mend.
She was her own person, capable of making her own decisions, and now she had the freedom of choice before her.
Chapter Twenty-four
The next week was the worst that Caroline could remember in years.
It was awful knowing that she had hurt the dearest person in the world to her. She had sobbed after Arabella had left, but she felt a bone-deep certainty that it was the right choice. More than anything, she wanted to make sure that Arabella had the very best chance for happiness.
Even if it was at the expense of her own.
It would be worth it to know that Arabella finally had found the freedom that she was looking for. Whether she married Mr. Worthington or whether she made her own success with her miniatures, there was no one in Inverley who deserved success more than her sweet, kind Arabella. It was better that she didn’t have to worry about the Reeves any longer.
After all, she had already done so much for the family.
Arabella had been by Caroline’s side for every headache as she tried to raise her siblings. She had helped the boys learn to walk with cheers of enthusiasm. She had read aloud to the girls on lazy summer evenings after spending the afternoon looking for seashells with them. She scolded Jacob as much as Caroline had when he had tried to climb the vicar’s tree on the front lawn of the rectory during the sermon.
Arabella had been there that dreadful summer when her parents had died. Her throat closed up as she remembered. Time had helped her manage the pain of their loss, but it could never close the hole thattheir absence left in her heart. Arabella and her family had stepped in and taken care of them, making meals and doing chores and doing all they could to ease their grief. Rachel had even kept the youngest children at the Seton household for a few weeks while Arabella had helped Caroline meet with solicitors and bankers to try to understand what was left of the Reeves’ finances.
The only memories that Carolinedidn’thave of Arabella were from the year that she had spent in Bath when she turned nineteen. It had been the year after Caroline’s parents had died, and she had felt lost without Arabella next door. It hadn’t been entirely unexpected. Plenty of young people left Inverley when they were grown, finding a spouse or a career in a bigger town. Someone was bound to see what a prize Arabella was and snatch her up into holy matrimony.
Caroline had coped by writing Arabella letters every week and guiltily expecting her to pay the postage upon receipt. It had felt like a luxury to cross a page with all of her thoughts and feelings and the news about town, much as she had wished Arabella was right there. With each return letter, she held her breath as she opened the seal. She was shocked each time that there was no announcement of an engagement.
It wasn’t a surprise now to find out that therehadbeen a suitor, and therehadbeen an opportunity. But Arabella had always been so shy. She might not have felt capable of taking the chance at nineteen. At twenty-seven, however, she had proven that she had confidence in spades. Marriage was a risk worth taking when there was so much to gain.
That’s what people said of it, anyhow.
Caroline endured the week with stoicism, forcing herself to attend the assembly rooms with her family. She listened with half an ear to her sisters’ complaints about the decided lack of attention that they received now that word of Jacob’s fall from financial grace was making its rounds.
It seemed as if none of the Reeves were happy with Caroline.
Betsy was angry because Caroline still hadn’t approved of Mr. Graham as a suitor, and she spent her days mooning about love lost.
George and Will were sulking because they had been looking forward to attending Eton after hearing stories from Lady Margaret about the mischief one could get up to at school.
She caught sight of Jacob scowling to himself in the library from time to time, swigging more brandy than was good for him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. He was enduring his own private hell, after all, still struggling to understand what was left after he had drained most of his investments and sold off the land that wasn’t entailed.
Mild-mannered Susan was in poor spirits, pacing her room filled with beautiful clothes and nowhere to wear them.
Even Shelley was cross with her. He had found a hatpin from the bonnet that Arabella had dropped on her last visit, and it had become a cherished toy that he pawed under the dresser and dragged out every time she entered her bedchamber. It pained her to see anything that reminded her of Arabella, though her battered bonnet was kept safe in the lowest drawer of her dresser. Her refusal to toe the hatpin across the room for Shelley to scamper after meant that he now stayed in Will and George’s room in the evenings.
Jacob spent his evenings with her and Lady Margaret, as he had decided to try to pay court to the young ladies who fluttered and fawned over him. There were plenty of women willing to exchange money for a title, as minor as Jacob’s was. He would have been buried under competition in London, as thick on the ground as penniless baronets were there, but in Inverley Jacob was still considered a good prospect.
The sole comfort to the family was Mr. Taylor.
He brought flowers when it was rainy to coax a smile from her sisters when it was too wet to go visiting, he listened to Jacob with sympathy when he railed against his situation, and he purchased a set of tin soldiers for George and Will to brighten their spirits.
