Chapter 9
Chapter
“It was June, you know,” Catherine begins, “when I was officially, finally engaged. We’d held the Betrothal Ball weeks before, but my cousin, the new Earl of Chester, was in no hurry to get the paperwork in order.
Mother and I waited and waited but nothing ever came.
Not until that awful heat wave. You remember, the one where it felt like you were wading through wet blankets just to breathe? ”
“Aye,” McGann says. “I remember.”
“Right about that time, Janet, my lady’s maid, you’ll recall, woke me with a note from the solicitor, Mr. Wilson. He sent an identical one to Mother, so I knew it must be something about the marriage contracts or Chester House.
“We’d been waiting on some definitive news of both ever since Sedgwick, or Chester, rather, my cousin, came to town. Sedgwick decreed I would marry by the end of the season and that we depart Chester House, but he’d never given us any other details, nor a sense of timing.
“Or so I understood, anyway. Just as I understood he had every right to do it. After father died, it was all his: the money, the title, the land, all of it. So, it wasn’t so much the declarations that stung—we knew what was to happen—it was the not knowing when that drove me to distraction.”
“Losing your family money and home didn’t sting?” McGann asks, and Catherine’s brow furrows in response.
“It did, of course,” she says after a moment. “I was furious when I found out, but that was a year prior. I’d known since the reading of the will that Father left us with nothing.
“He’d always been angry, you know, that I wasn’t a boy.
An heir. And he’s always disliked me for it, but I didn’t realize how much until he died and I had to sit in that stuffy solicitor’s office and hear, in front of everyone, how little he cared about me.
” She takes a gulp of her wine. “He’d made no provision for mother and me at all, as if we did not merit so much as an afterthought. ”
“His death was an accident, was it not?” McGann asks. “Perhaps with more time—”
“It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it?
” She tries to smile at him, but she can tell it’s unconvincing.
Not a real smile at all. “But he made plenty of provisions for the new heir. Sedgwick inherited a great deal of instruction and forethought and planning. Reams of it. But nothing for us. So, no, I don’t think it would have been different had Father more time.
” She takes another long draught of her drink.
“I know it’s hard to believe a man wouldn’t care about his wife or child, but—”
“Nay,” he cuts her off. “That, I can well believe.”
She glances up at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
But he doesn’t say more, so she continues.
“Well, then, you’ll understand how it felt, to know that I’d have no portion of my own except a dowry that Sedgewick would set.
My future husband would have access to more funds at the new earl’s discretion, but not me.
Nor Mother. Nothing for her, even though it was her money that made the earldom solvent in the first place.
As far as Father was concerned, she could eke out a living on the little she had inherited from her own marriage contracts.
“Knowing what little he thought us worth made me feel so small. Unimportant. And,” she searches his eyes, “exposed, if you understand what I mean. Father’s disregard for us was right out there for everyone to see.
And then, when Chester didn’t bother to tell us anything at all except for those declarations—I’d marry, Mother and I would move—it felt as if it were happening all over again.
That we didn’t even merit a note or a visit or an explanation of any kind.
So, you can understand,” she looks at him and he nods, “how we might be anxious. We’d no real knowledge of what he’d planned for our futures at all. ”
“Aye,” McGann says. “I can well understand being at the arse-end of a relationship with a peer.”
“Can you?” she asks but he doesn’t answer. Only waves her on to continue.
“So, I opened the note,” she says, “hopeful for some details on what was to become of us. I’d urged mother to write to the solicitor after the reading of the will but he’d never replied to her. Nor had Sedgewick. Sorry, Chester, rather.”
“And what did it say?” McGann asks. “The note?”
“There was only one line. ‘The betrothal papers have been signed,’ it read. And nothing more.”
“But that’s ludicrous! How could the man not say more?”
“Exactly!” Catherine feels a real grin sneak across her face at his commiseration. “That’s what I thought too. So, I had no choice, really.”
She watches McGann’s eyebrows rise. “You had no choice but to what, Menace?”
“To go and see Mr. Wilson, of course. And when I did, can you believe he tried to ignore me? He left me standing there on the doorstep. In all that dratted heat!”
“You are impossible to ignore. Had you an appointment?”
“No. I don’t think he would have taken one.
He wasn’t my solicitor; he was Chester’s.
And ladies are not supposed to visit a solicitor at their offices.
We’re meant to sit at home and wait until one deems it convenient to come to us.
It’s enraging. What happens if said solicitor refuses your correspondence as Mr. Wilson did to mother? ”
“He’s a bloody fool, then.”
“I quite agree.” She nods her head emphatically and watches as little flecks of gold flutter around her head at the movement.
“So, I went there myself and I waited. By the time the clerk finally let me in… well… Violet would say I was very sweaty by that point because I’d been left standing on the doorstep on what must have been the hottest day of the year.
Mother would say I’d perspired, but I rather think Violet has the right of it.
Sweat is the only correct word for the results of that temperature.
And the inside of the office only made it worse.
It was somehow hotter there, in the warren of desks and papers and dusty air, than outside.
So much so that Janet waited in the carriage while I made my way inside.
The less bodies in that small room the better.
And the worst of it was, Mr. Wilson was nowhere to be found.
“The clerk tried to send me home, but I had no intention of going. Not after all that. I was prepared to wait the man out. And I’m glad I did, because then I saw him, through a little side door, with the Local Adonis, of all people.”
She looks up to see McGann nearly choke on his wine.
“Who?”
“Sedgewick. Chester. My cousin.”
“You call your cousin the Local Adonis?”
“Everyone does. Not to his face, of course. Can you imagine calling an earl the Local Adonis to his face?” She laughs, delighted at the thought, before sobering again.
“But it is his defining characteristic, how handsome he is. Even the solicitor remarked on it. It’s really quite irritating to be his relation.
He shouldn’t get everything and the looks on top of it. It isn’t fair to the rest of us.”
“Menace,” McGann says quietly, “you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Nothing,” he replies quickly, but she can see the tinge of embarrassment coloring his cheekbones. She loves that tinge.
“Go on with your story,” he says, and she knows he won’t repeat what he said. But she doesn’t need him to. She’d heard it the first time, and that’s enough to send a flare of warmth through her.
“Well,” she says. “Chester left before either he or Mr. Wilson knew I was there. Slipped right out the side door. I wonder what might have happened if I’d spoken to him then instead of at the wedding?
” She sips her wine and shrugs. “Not that it matters now. He’d gone before I could speak with him.
But the solicitor hadn’t, and I was not leaving his office until he gave me my answers. ”
“You mean you held the solicitor captive in his own office?”
“Not per se, no. But I did sit in his office chair behind his desk until he provided me with the information I needed. He’d only himself to blame. He could have answered mother’s letters at any time but chose not to.”
“A siege, then.” McGann smirks. “And what did you learn during your siege?”
“That is the strangest part of this story. As I said, my father really had left us with nothing. Mother kept the small portion that she’d been entitled to from her own marriage contracts, and everything else went to Sedgwick.”
“The Local Adonis?”
“Yes, Chester. And he… he’d treated us well.
A handsome sum for mother. Enough for her to live on without worry.
A weekly allowance for me that started that very day, the day the contracts were signed.
And a generous dowry. I knew he’d had to have given me something because Pembrooke’s father wouldn’t have agreed to the marriage otherwise, but I didn’t realize it would be quite so much. It was all very unexpected.”
“Who is Pembrooke?”
“The Honorable Henry Pembrooke, heir to the Waverly Viscountcy.” She looks at him expectantly but he only shrugs. “My fiancé,” she says, but then pauses. “Former fiancé. The point is Sedgewick, Chester, whatever you want to call him, he saved us.”
“That was good of him.”
“It was, but as I left, I couldn’t help but think, What if he hadn’t?
It was by the grace of God and my cousin whom I barely knew that Mother and I weren’t turned out on the streets.
Paupers or worse. And we’d have had no recourse at all.
There would have been nothing to stop us from becoming beggars.
“Father had stipulated that I be married as soon as possible, with a suggestion of only the smallest of dowries to make that happen. Sedgwick didn’t have to increase it. He could have pushed me off on anyone. He didn’t, but he could have.” She shudders. “So, now you understand, of course.”
“I understand your father was a cur and a fool to boot,” McGann says, “and not a damned other thing about that story.” He looks at his watch. “But you can explain it to me tomorrow. It’s time for sleep now.”
“That’s the story, Captain, of how I came to meet you. That very same day, in fact, in Covent Garden. I was on my way home when the storm frightened the horses and the carriage crashed and you came to my rescue.”
“Ah.”
“And the weekly allowance the solicitor gave me provided the sums of money that I used to invest in your company.”
“Ah,” McGann says again, but this time with a raised eyebrow and a decidedly cooler tone in his voice.
“That I eventually invested in your company,” she amends, watching his face, knowing they’re edging into difficult territory. “After all the rest of it.”
She waves her hand in the air, as if the incidents that came after that fateful carriage crash: attempted robbery, fighting lessons, the time she’d all but thrown herself at McGann and he’d refused her, could be wiped away by the flutter of her fingers.
“Time for bed, Menace. Dawn comes early on the water.”
“Not so fast, Captain,” she says, squelching a yawn. “A story for a story was our deal. You promised.”
“Tomorrow, lass.”
He stands and stretches, and she knows she should avert her eyes from his long, muscular body, but she doesn’t. “I’ve to find someplace to hang my hammock.”
Another wave of guilt washes over her as she watches him exit the room that should have been his. “Goodnight, Captain McGann,” she says quietly. “Thank you for the use of your cabin.”
He turns to give her a short, elegant bow. “My pleasure. Sleep well.” And then he pauses. “Be careful tomorrow, Menace. This is a new crew. I won’t have you wandering about unattended with a lot of unknown men.”
She might have argued if she were less tired; the crew had been perfectly lovely when she’d finally made her way out of the hatch earlier that morning.
But more than that, she feels like she and McGann have arrived at some new place tonight at dinner.
That some thread of understanding now connects them.
One she doesn’t want to risk by arguing, so she only nods while he closes the door behind him.