Chapter 25 #2
“He did. But I knew he’d send you here, so I took a coach as soon as I left Grosvenor Square, knowing you’d show up sooner or later. I’ve been fending off fishmongers all afternoon.”
“How very heroic of you, Mrs. Sweete.”
She held me tighter. “I couldn’t let you face this alone.”
“So you’re coming with me to Austria? But what about your sister? Your nephew?”
She looked at me, patient as always, then gave a soft sigh. “Before any of that talk, there’s something I must tell you… about your father.”
“Mrs. Sweete, if you’re about to reveal something that will break my heart more than it already is, I’m not sure I can withstand it.”
“You deserve to know the truth, no matter how painful it is.”
I swallowed, then nodded. “Do your worst, Mrs. Sweete.”
She led me back into the carriage and closed the door, then gripped my shoulders with both hands, as if bracing me for the news.
“Your father did not lose his fortune because his investors cheated him. He lost it himself. Gambling.”
I blinked at her. “G-gambling?”
“At first it started out small,” she said.
“He’d go to the club and bet a hundred pounds here and there.
Sometimes his bets paid off. The diamond bracelet he gave you?
He won it off another gentleman at the club.
But more often than not, he’d lose. Badly.
A hundred pounds turned into thousands. Eventually, he lost everything. ”
“But—my father is a viscount. He would never embarrass his title by losing his fortune in—in card games.”
Mrs. Sweete rubbed my arms as if she was warming me up from the cold. Perhaps she was, for I felt rather numb. “Which is exactly why I believe he kept gambling, with hopes that his luck would finally turn and he’d regain all he had lost, along with his pride.”
“How—how do you know for sure?”
Mrs. Sweete pulled out a folded piece of parchment from her coat pocket. It was ripped down one side, torn from a book. She held it out to me.
“This is from your father’s ledger. I’ve had suspicions for a long time.
I fought myself everyday whether or not to tell you, but since I had no proof—” She shook her head.
“After I was dismissed, I realized I had only one chance to know for sure. So, right after he sacked me, I snuck into your father’s study. ”
“Mrs. Sweete!” I gasped.
She gave me a self-conscious smile. “I promise it’s the first time I’ve obtained information through untoward means. But,” she pointed to the page, “it yielded results.”
My hands shook so much it was difficult to read the print. I searched the ledger with growing horror. Sure enough, there were clear payments made to half of the gentlemen in the ton, in increasingly alarming amounts. But one line made my heart plummet to my feet.
“This one here,” I said, pointing to the line. “Is this what I think it is? ￡30,000 to Mr. Pratt.” I swallowed the sour lump in my throat. “That was my dowry, wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Sweete nodded.
I crumpled the paper and threw it on the carriage floor.
Father’s betrayal was beyond belief, but the thought of Sybella with two dowries made my blood boil—especially since those dowries would go to Edmond.
It was like my father had stabbed me with a knife and twisted the blade for the joy of watching me bleed.
I looked at Mrs. Sweete, my entire body shaking. “Everything—losing our fortune, risking our home and our tenants, forcing me to marry myself off to whoever would pay—was his fault.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Sweete whispered.
“He lied to me. There were never any greedy investors. It was just my father and his reckless pursuit of luck.”
“Yes.”
“He exiled me for my mistakes. But it was his that ruined us!”
She took a breath. “Yes.”
The heat burning beneath my skin finally boiled over.
I kicked the carriage bench across from me, a cry ripping from my throat.
My breathing was ragged as the walls of the carriage seemed to press in on me.
It was like I’d been trapped in the golden cage of Mother’s songbird, with no way to fly free—and I hadn’t even realized it until now.
The hot anger snuffed out, replaced by its much colder counterpart: resignation. I sighed and leaned back in the carriage seat, looking out the window as the last of the passengers loaded onto the ship.
“It doesn’t matter, though, does it?” I whispered, utterly depleted. “As world-shaking as your revelation is, Mrs. Sweete, it changes nothing about my circumstances. I still must sail to Austria and become the fourth wife of a man who is halfway in the grave.”
“It does matter,” Mrs. Sweete urged, “because you should never have had to bear your father’s demands for perfection when he was so far from it himself. If you choose to leave, know it’s not because you weren’t enough.”
Her words washed over me, much like the frothy current of the river that would soon take me away from England forever.
“My ship is leaving soon,” I said. “I ought to be going.”
Deep lines formed between Mrs. Sweete’s brows. “If you don’t want to go to Austria, you can come live with me and my sister. The room is small, and you’ll have to work, but there is always a place for you there.”
I gave her a grateful smile. “I am touched by your offer. But I do not wish to hide away in London, constantly worrying about running into people I once knew. And more importantly, it would burden you and your sister. That house is far too small for all of us.”
Mrs. Sweete nodded. “I will always be just a letter away, Miss Weston.”
My throat felt like a croquet ball had been lodged inside of it. “Before I go—I owe you an apology.”
“A what?”
I leaned forward, looking at her squarely in the eye.
“I have been terribly selfish. You’ve given so much to me, and in return, I’ve treated you as less than a friend.
I ordered you around to do my bidding countless times.
I embarrassed you at the opera. I didn’t listen to you when I should have.
I took advantage of you in so many ways, Mrs. Sweete. And I’m sorry for it.”
Her mouth fell open, but only a heartbeat passed before she gathered my hands in hers and said, “My darling girl, you don’t have to apologize to me. My feelings for you are not determined by whether or not they’re returned. I love you for you.”
Her words were like a mother’s, and I hadn’t realized until now how much I needed to hear them. It was like a weight had been lifted from my heart.
I encircled Mrs. Sweete in a tight embrace. “Oh, Mrs. Sweete, I love you too.”
“I know.”
The dockmaster shouted the last call for passengers.
I pulled back, hot tears sticking to my eyelashes. “Take the carriage back to your home. It’s not like Father can yell at either of us anymore.”
“Want me to walk you to the gangplank?” she asked, wiping away tears of her own.
“No, I need to do this on my own.”
I left the carriage, picked up my luggage, and made my way down the dock, pausing for one final look over my shoulder to Mrs. Sweete. She gave me a sad smile from inside the carriage, then saluted me. I laughed, then saluted her back before turning and facing my future head on.
So this is it, I thought, stepping onto the gangplank.
A sharp wind whipped at my skirts, and I pulled my pelisse tighter around me, as if its thin fabric could shield me from the nightmare I was about to embark on.
I was truly leaving England and those I loved for good, with only a single piece of luggage, twenty pounds, and a broken glass bead to my name.
I stilled in the middle of the gangplank, my hand slipping into my pocket to retrieve the two broken pieces.
The bead had split the painted jasmine flower cleanly in half—a painful reminder of my failure.
Even if Father had gambled his fortune away, I had gambled too.
I’d put my future at risk, and like him, I had lost.
Ever since Mother died, Father had made sure I was his flawless diamond, never allowing a single mistake. That was all a lie—just like his diamond bracelet was.
But perhaps I was never meant to be a diamond. Perhaps I was more like this bead—still beautiful despite its flaws, still worth cherishing even if broken.
I pushed the two pieces together to reveal the jasmine flower painted on the glass. Edmond’s words rang clearly in my head. Its beauty lies not in its fragrance, but in the persistent way its vine climbs ever closer to the sun.
I knew now that he was talking about himself, as if he were the vine stretching toward some unreachable version of me. But in this moment, I felt that I was the jasmine flower. I too had been striving toward something unreachable—and I had been burned for it.
But the beautiful thing about flowers was that they could bloom again.
I held the bead close to my heart. I had always believed that one misstep would cost me everything. But Edmond had accepted the version of me without the gold-painted veneer. So had Mrs. Sweete.
Oh dear. Had I been blind to it all along?
“Miss?” the dockmaster grumbled. “Ship’s leaving. You gettin’ on or not?”
I closed my fingers around the broken bead, a wild grin spreading across my face. “No, sir, I am not. Good day to you!”
I swept past the dockmaster and ran back to the carriage, my heart thundering in my ears. The coachman’s eyes went wide when he saw me, but I waved him off, saying, “Don’t try and protest, Stevens. We both know I’ll get my way.”
He sighed and opened the door for me.
When I flung myself inside, Mrs. Sweete startled and said, “Did you change your mind? Are you coming to live with me and my sister?”
“Thank you, but no.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I tossed my hands in the air. “For the first time in my life, I don’t know.”
“You don’t… have a plan?”
“No! And it feels incredible!”
Mrs. Sweete stared at me, but all I could do was smile.
I had been taught my entire life that my only future was one Father approved of.
I couldn’t see beyond the gilded cage he had built around me.
But now, I refused to stay locked away. I refused to marry the awful count.
And I refused to be sent away to cover up Father’s mistakes.
In fact, at that moment, I decided I would never do anything Father told me to do ever again.
There would be consequences and hardships, yes. But I would face them head on if it meant flying free.
Mrs. Sweete opened her mouth, likely to inform me that I’d gone absolutely mad, but a loud commotion from up the dock caught both of our attention. We nearly butted heads as we looked out the carriage window to see what all the fuss was.
The crowd of fishermen and dock workers split down the middle as a figure ran through at full speed, shouting something I couldn’t quite make out. I’d never seen a person move so fast, and I squinted to better see the runner as he avoided colliding into a fishmonger’s cart by leaping over it.
It was then, as he soared over the staring crowd, shouting my name at the top of his lungs, that I recognized who this crazed ruffian was.
“HELENA!” Edmond shouted, racing toward the edge of the dock where my ship was just leaving the harbor. “STOP THAT SHIP!”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Sweete said, covering her smile with her hand.
“What—what is he doing here?”
“He’s going after you.”
“But I’m not on that ship!” I croaked. “I’m right here!”
Mrs. Sweete picked up her needlework. “Yes, but he doesn’t know that.”
“But he’s engaged! We saw him kiss Sybella!”
She held up a brown thread, connected to her needle.
“One thread isn’t enough to know what the subject of an embroidered piece will be.
But if you look at all the threads together…
” She turned the frame around, revealing a bird with colorful wings soaring over a patchwork of rolling green hills.
“Perhaps,” she said with a pointed look, “we saw only one thread of the story.”
My heart pounded wildly in my chest. Could there possibly be another explanation for what I saw that night?
I looked back at Edmond. He had reached the end of the dock where the ship had departed.
He stared at the ship for three seconds, then quickly discarded his hat, cravat, and jacket on the ground.
Goodness. He was going to jump off the dock and swim after the ship.
“What should I do?” I breathed.
Mrs. Sweete didn’t look up from her needlework. “My darling girl, you have never needed me to tell you what to do.”
My thoughts raced as I tried to sort through a thousand different outcomes. But one quote kept surfacing in my mind.
In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.
I knew what I had to do.
I threw open the door and jumped out of the carriage, grabbing my skirts so I could run faster. I ignored the stares of onlookers, keeping my eyes on the target ahead.
“Edmond!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “I’m right here! EDMOND!”
He whipped around at the sound of my voice, just as he was about to leap off the dock.
“Helena?” His eyes went wide, but the sudden twist of his body threw him off balance. He staggered back—and with a dramatic splash, he plunged straight into the Thames.