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“—Your Loving Father, Lionel St. George”
This final word was marred by a tear that rolled down Clara’s face and splashed across the page. With a frustrated bite on her lip, Clara blotted away this tear and rubbed her eyes on the sleeve of her maid’s uniform. She took a shaky breath, then stared once more at the words, uncomprehending.
This cannot be right, Clara breathed. I am an orphan, a child of the London streets. All this time I had a mother and father—a true mother and father?
Though she had but three-and-twenty years, Clara had always felt the years passed her by with a cruel slowness. She had spent so many long, long months and years under the cruel care of the Sisters of St. Julian, and her deprivation and misuse at their hands were replaced with deprivation and misuse on the streets of the city when she turned fifteen. Clara had been a strong, canny young woman to evade the pimps and robbers, but that feat had cost her almost every last piece of innocence and goodness that the nuns had not beaten out of her. Even her previous six or seven years’ employment at the Fitzroy household, which had seemed positively blissful by comparison, now soured in her mind.
All my life I have worked and fought and toiled. And now I find all of it was needless? Had one man been kinder, one woman less callous, I might have been spared every last lash and curse?
Hot tears of anger rushed to her eyes once more. All at once, she was furiously angry, though she could not quite determine at whom her anger was directed.
This strange Duke, her true father who had loved her mother and claimed to love her, yet had abandoned her to the cold streets all these years?
His noble wife—a cruel, sinister woman, Clara was instantly sure—who had prevented her from growing up in a loving family?
This strange lawyer named Mr Finch, who in less than ten minutes had upended everything she thought she had known about herself?
Of course, she had long carried a burning brand of anger in the name of the Sisters of St. Julian, but now it burned hotter still, furious at the sheer purposelessness of her years of struggle.
Clara started as another harrumph reverberated through the room like a tennis ball bouncing across the table.
Face calm and collected despite his obvious impatience, Mr Finch moved to rise as he said, “As I said, I would not be opposed to revisiting your domicile if you need any additional time, Miss, or require any assistance reading the words in—”
“No!” she blurted, clutching the paper more tightly. Seeing Mr Finch’s eyebrow arch at this outburst, she sat back in her chair and paused to consider her next words carefully.
Trust your instincts, Clara, said the small voice in her head that had always kept her company on her lonely nights and threatening days. They’ve kept you alive. This man may be rich and intelligent, but he’s no different than all the sharps and swindlers in Camden Town.
“No…no, thank you, Mr Finch,” Clara said in a more measured tone, folding her hands in her lap with a renewed sense of confidence. “But I do have some questions, sir, begging your pardon.”
Mr Finch hesitated for only a moment before he settled back in his chair and tented his fingers expectantly, still and quiet as a corpse.
“What can you tell me of His Grace—my father?” she asked, trying to ignore how loudly her heartbeat thundered in her ears. “You said he died recently?”
“Indubitably. His Grace perished after a sudden illness, I fear. Typhus, if you must know,” Finch said with a bloodless frown on his face. “He scarcely had sufficient time to sort out his affairs—including those that pertain to you, Miss—before he succumbed.”
“And what of his family? The letter mentions a wife, and…?” Clara trailed off.
The lawyer waited a long moment for her to finish her thought before, with a slight twitch under his right eye, he answered, “Lady Mary passed away three years ago, I fear. Their children still live, however, including the new Duke.”
Clara leaned forward in her chair, feeling her breath come more quickly once again. “My brothers and sisters? Or—no, half-brothers and half-sisters?”
Mr Finch sniffed, “Young Master Christopher, your younger brother, has inherited his father’s title and lands, though due to his juvenescence he remains under the guardianship of a certain friend of the family named Mr Morton. Ladies Helena and Judith are about your age and married shortly after growing to womanhood. They naturally live with their husbands, but still reside in the vicinity.”
Clara shook her head, trying to puzzle out the man’s impenetrable language. I have a brother, then. And sisters! So many nights she had lain awake in the orphanage dreaming of such a revelation. She used to wonder if she had parents or siblings alive somewhere in the world, and what sort of people they might be. Now that the reality was staring her in the face, she felt positively overwhelmed by all the sudden reversals in her circumstances.
A chilling thought came to her mind: her father claimed it was his wife who prevented him from taking in his bastard daughter, yet that wife died three years ago? Was he more worried about his own reputation in life than he let on in his letter, then?
Remembering another detail that had jumped out at her, Clara pointed at the letter and gave Mr Finch her most earnest expression, the one she reserved for pleading with landladies and moneylenders. “Father wrote something about a fortune in his letter. Er, His Grace, I mean.”
The man nodded ever so slightly. “As I said, His Grace the current Duke of St. George naturally inherited his father’s house and the largest portion of his estate. But yes, in addition to being granted the surname St. George, some portion of the St. George inheritance has been reserved for you, Miss Clara. Pursuant to the late Duke’s final wishes, I have been charged to maintain this money in an account at the bank on your behalf, and to make myself available to discuss all matters fiduciary and…”
But Clara’s mind had flown her too far to hear the continuation of Mr Finch’s oration. Instead, it cast her back once more through her hardscrabble upbringing.
Every apple I filched when I could bear my hunger no longer, every miser and slumlord who tried to squeeze my last penny from my exhausted fingers… she thought, eyes growing wide with wonder. I wonder if I shall ever go hungry again, now?
“Now, if you will excuse me, Miss,” said Mr Finch, rising from the chair and straightening his jacket. “I have a considerable amount of other business today. If our affairs here are concluded, I would prefer to make our egress post haste.”
“Wait!” she cried, rising from her chair on trembling legs. Mr Finch looked at her expectantly.
