Chapter 13
W
“Julia and Garrett never believed Anna was real. I’m starting to wonder if perhaps they were right.”
By the afternoon of the next day, I’d accustomed myself to the idea of leaving Breckenridge.
I’d had a few days of seeing what life could have been like if I had been the kind of woman who was given her heart’s desires.
I’d had a fiancé, a sister, neighbors who cared about me, a place to live, and a mother who hadn’t needed to worry about how long we would be welcome in our place of living. And now I didn’t, and that was life.
When there was a knock at the door, I was fully prepared not to break down while having one last walk with David to discuss the dissolution of our engagement.
Mary was at the main house, so I motioned for Mama to stay seated and went to the door myself. Smiling what I hoped was a confident and friendly smile, I pulled open the door.
Only to find Mr. Green standing hat in hand, his greased hair slicked down to the side in an effort to cover the balding spots on his head. My stomach lurched at the sight of him.
“Miss Atwood,” he said stiffly. “Is your mother at home?”
“I . . .” What was he doing here? And why would he want to speak to Mama? “She is.”
He nodded. “Good. I have some papers for her.”
I frowned. What kind of papers would Mr. Green have for Mama, and why couldn’t he have simply sent them through the post?
Mr. Green cleared his throat, and I grimaced, realizing I’d been standing there staring at him as though he were an apparition. I wanted nothing more than to shut the door in his face, but instead, I opened the door wider, and he stepped in.
He sniffed at our closet-sized foyer, then looked to me for directions. Gritting my teeth, I led him to the drawing room.
“Mama, Mr. Green has come,” I announced when we walked in.
Mama’s eyes flew to mine and widened in a way meant to convey that this time, she’d had nothing to do with his arrival. She stood from her sewing. “Mr. Green, to what do we owe the pleasure?” Her voice held anything but pleasure in its tone.
“I’m afraid visits of pleasure are no longer possible between our two families,” Mr. Green said with an air of superiority. “Today, I’ve come on business.”
The color drained from Mama’s face. “What business?”
Mr. Green walked unbidden to a small table and placed a satchel on top of it.
He unfastened the strap and pulled out a stack of papers.
“I have here a list of items with outstanding debts. Debts I have been overlooking for the past five years, due to our”—he took a sidelong glance at me— “connections. But now that those connections have been severed, I would like to take care of this business in the most expedient manner possible.”
He handed Mama the papers, and she rifled through them, her eyebrows furrowing as she glanced quickly down each page. “Almost every one of our purchases are on here,” she said. She pulled the last page from the stack. “Going back to 1844.”
Mr. Green nodded. “1844 is when you started receiving a discount.”
I marched to Mama’s side and looked over the papers with her. It was true. Every purchase we’d made at the haberdashery and the butcher shop was there. Most of the totals were small—only a portion of what meager items we bought for ourselves—but a few were larger. One, in particular, caught my eye.
“My coat? You gifted that to me,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, I credited it to you.”
“This is preposterous, Mr. Green,” Mama said. “You never set any expectation that these were credits that would need to be repaid.”
“Do you have receipts to prove that?” Mr. Green pressed his thin lips together while waiting for our reply. Of course we didn’t have receipts to prove anything, but anyone could look at Mr. Green’s accounts and understand what he’d done.
“Why would we keep receipts for five years?” I asked, letting my exasperation show.
“I did.” He pointed to the papers calmly. “And I will expect payment within two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Mama gasped.
“Yes, but I’m certain that won’t be a problem. After all, your daughter is engaged to a viscount’s son. An amount like that should be paltry to his father.”
“I don’t want to ask David for money,” I burst out.
Mr. Green winced at David’s name. “That, Miss Atwood, is your concern, not mine. I’ll be sending my solicitor to collect the payment in two weeks’ time.”
With a groan, I stormed out of the room and raced through the foyer toward the kitchen, where my coat hung. I ripped it off the rack and marched back into the drawing room.
“You can take this payment now.” I threw the coat at him, and he barely managed to catch it, the top half of it covering his face. “Mama, scratch the coat off the list.”
Mr. Green pulled the coat from his face and held it out. “It is not at all in the same condition as when I bought it for you. If I sold it now, it wouldn’t be worth half of what I paid for it.”
I strode right to him and pointed a finger at his face. “What did you just say?”
“I said the condition is not the same as when I bought it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So, you bought it.”
His lips disappeared when he pressed them together, realizing his mistake. “For you.”
“Which most of the world would consider a gift. I didn’t ask you to buy it for me. Scratch it from the list.”
Mr. Green narrowed his gaze at Mama. “Reduce it to 25 percent of what I paid for it. That is very generous of me.”
“No, Mama, don’t mark anything.” I blew out a deep breath.
Seeing Mr. Green so ostentatiously use the word generous made me ill.
I couldn’t allow him to feel as if he were doing us any favors.
“I’ll pay for all of it. And he can take the coat as well.
We’ve had enough of your generosity, Mr. Green. It is a perversion of the word.”
Mr. Green shrugged. “I’ll send my solicitor in two weeks.”
“You could have sent him today,” I said. “Didn’t he feel comfortable telling a widow and her daughter you’ve been secretly putting them in debt for years?”
Mr. Green wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I assumed it was so.
“You could always get your own solicitor,” he said. “Although with the court systems being what they are, it could be years before this is settled. And let’s be honest, it isn’t that large of a sum.”
I’d seen the sum. It was large for us.
“Please leave.” Mama’s voice was icy. Mr. Green turned to her in surprise. He’d expected me to be the one to expel him from our home. “And never darken our doorway again.”
Mr. Green narrowed his eyes but gave her a very short bow. “I never plan to.”
I didn’t bother showing him out. It wasn’t as though he could get lost in our little cottage. We both heard the door close, and the moment it did, Mama crumpled the top paper in her fist. After taking several deep breaths, she turned to me. “I cannot believe I almost made you marry that man.”
“But you didn’t.”
“When I see the difference between him and Mr. Tate . . .” Mama shivered. “Some things are worth going through hardships for, and a marriage to a man you can trust is one of them. I’d starve before I allowed him anywhere near you again.”
My eyes pricked, and I strode over to Mama, dropped to my knees at her feet, and put my head in her lap.
Immediately, her hand went to my head. When I’d been younger and had worn my hair down, she used to stroke it while she told me stories or while Papa read to us from the Bible.
My hair was pulled up now, but she smoothed what she could.
I’d been dreading going back to living with just Mama, not having anyone else to turn to, but we would be able to do it. We’d been doing it for seven years.
If only we didn’t have to pay Mr. Green.
The total was 150 pounds, a bill that would have been noticed, but not with alarm, when Papa had been alive.
We’d spent triple that amount on my one Season in Town.
But Mama’s jointure had withered to nearly nothing.
What was left was only enough to cover the cost of food and a few items of clothing each year.
If I were able to take a position near the cottage David had found for us in Lincolnshire, it would take me years to earn enough to pay Mr. Green back.
“Perhaps we will be able to talk some sense into his solicitor when he comes,” I said. “There has to be a way to fight him.”
“Tate Hall must have a solicitor.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. We had no right to anything Tate Hall had to offer. “As Mr. Green said, even with a solicitor, it could be years before we are done with this.”
“Then we can speak to the solicitor about making the payment at a later date. Your inheritance is ten times that amount. We can pay it once you are married.”
I settled deeper into Mama’s lap, wishing the world could be simple like it had been when I was a child. I wasn’t going to marry David, and I doubted Mr. Green would be willing to wait a year and a half for his money.
Mama didn’t know it yet, but she was about to get a lot worse news than this bill from Mr. Green.
Would it be better to tell her now, while she was already distraught, or wait until I’d formulated some kind of a plan with David?
When David and I had parted, it had been clear that I would wait until we’d spoken, but I no longer understood why.
This was my mother. And who was David to me?
He was practically a stranger, or at least, he would be in a few years.
Mama was the person I should be making plans with, not him.
But I wasn’t ready to give up this moment of her hand on my head quite yet. I kept my eyes closed and pretended my biggest concern was how I was going to escape my lessons on the pianoforte.
But I wasn’t as good at pretending as I used to be. With a deep breath, I lifted my head and met Mama’s gaze. She gave me a wobbly smile, but then she must have seen something in the way I looked at her, for her face froze.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Mama,” I said, my voice breaking.
She put a hand to my cheek. “Tell me.”