Ten Years Later
Private Correspondence From Thomas Harrow:
Harrow Cottage, Dorset
To: the Right Honourable Frederick Sedgewick, Earl of Chester
Chester House, London
Frederick,
You may be surprised to receive this letter, and I will not waste time on pleasantries, as I have neither the strength nor the inclination for them.
We have not spoken since the night of the accident.
Ten years ago to the day since you fled England and the consequences of your actions.
You left Julianna and I alone to bury our parents and shovel through the ashes of our lives.
I hate you for that cowardice almost as much as I do for your callous disregard for the safety of others.
I understand from your lawyer that you have inherited now. He wrote to us with the news when he made your offer of an annuity. As if 120 pounds a year could in any way make up for the death of our beloved Mother and Father.
Julianna and I refused it, of course, as you must know. That annuity was blood money, and we both know whose blood paid for it. I would rather starve in rags on a cold, rainy night than touch a penny of your so-called generosity.
But I will not countenance that same fate for Julianna. I write to you now because I am dying. Slowly but quite certainly, although my sister refuses to believe it. I contracted the wasting disease in the Crimea and my lungs are failing me. I fear I will not see the end of the year.
Julianna does not yet understand what it will mean to be alone. She believes herself strong, and she is, but strength is no defense against the cruelties this world bequeaths to poverty-stricken gentlewomen.
The cottage and what few funds we do have will go to Cousin Howard.
He will do no more an adequate job of protecting her from the realities that prey upon unmarried women without family nor fortune than he did undertaking his courses at Eton.
You may recall he did not make it six months in those hallowed halls of learning.
So here I find myself, asking you to do the only decent thing you’ve done in a decade: You will come to Dorset. You will marry my sister.
Please know that I would ask any other man were one available, but fortune finds there is not.
So it must be you, the so-called Local Adonis.
You are wealthy, influential, and, despite all odds, an unattached peer.
Neither your title nor your moniker is compensation for the lives you ruined but you do have the means to ensure her safety.
You owe her that, Fred. You owe it to us both.
There will be no question of intimacy, of course. You are not to touch her. You are not to expect love nor warmth nor welcome. This marriage is to be a contract in name only, and nothing more.
Trust that I do not write this out of reconciliation. I do not want your friendship, and I do not believe in your remorse. You took our parents from us and then you ran. Whether through recklessness or cowardice or something worse, I no longer care to know.
I only care that you return here, to Dorset, within the month. You will promise yourself to my sister and repay the debt owed to us.
Thomas Harrow