Chapter 7 #3
“I have prepared a list,” Lady Eleanor said quietly. She drew a folded paper from her sleeve and placed it on the desk. “Eligible gentlemen. Their incomes. Their connections. Their prospects.”
Sophia stared at the paper. “You have ranked them.”
“I have organised them. The choice remains yours. But I would ask you to choose wisely.”
Wisely. The word meant wealthily. It meant strategically. It meant everything except what Sophia wanted it to mean.
She did not pick up the list. She looked at her mother, at the tired eyes and the twisting hands and the careful composure that was beginning to crack at the edges, and she felt a surge of something that was not quite anger and not quite grief.
It was the recognition that her mother was not her enemy.
Her mother was a woman who had spent her life doing what was required, and now she was asking her daughter to do the same.
“I will consider it,” Sophia said.
Lady Eleanor nodded. She rose, hesitated, and then pressed a kiss to Sophia’s forehead.
It was a gesture from childhood, from a time before seasons and suitors and the crushing weight of expectation.
Then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her, and Sophia was alone with the list and the letters and the silence.
She reached for Benedict’s letter. Her fingers were steady. She broke the seal and unfolded the paper, and her brother’s familiar handwriting filled the page.
Dear Sophia,
I hope Brighton is treating you kindly. I imagine you are already the sharpest wit in every drawing room, and I pity the gentlemen who attempt to match you in conversation. They will not succeed.
I write with less cheerful news. The steward has been unwell, as I mentioned to Mama, and his replacement is not yet trained.
The accounts are in some disorder, and I have discovered several expenses that were not properly recorded.
Nothing that cannot be managed, but it will require attention and resources that are not immediately available.
The roof in the east wing has deteriorated further.
I have authorised temporary repairs, but a more permanent solution will be needed before winter.
I do not wish to trouble you with these matters.
You have enough to occupy your thoughts.
But I know you would rather hear the truth than be sheltered from it, and the truth is that Greenly Hall is not what it was.
We are not what we were. I am doing what I can, but I am one man, and the estate requires more than one man’s efforts.
Do not let this weigh on you unduly. Enjoy the Season.
Dance. Laugh. Write whatever it is you are writing—I know you are writing something, and I hope it is as sharp as your tongue.
But if you happen to meet a gentleman of means who does not bore you to distraction, I would not object to an introduction.
Your affectionate brother,
Benedict
Sophia read the letter twice. Then she folded it carefully and placed it beside the list her mother had left.
The list. She picked it up, finally, and scanned the names.
Lord Henry Blackwood. Mr. Percival Thorne.
Sir William Ashby. Each entry was accompanied by a neat notation of income, property, and family connections.
It was a ledger. A balance sheet. A strategic document that reduced the most intimate decision of her life to a series of calculations.
She thought of Alistair Cavendish. His name was not on the list. It would never be on the list. His family was her family’s enemy, and even if it were not, his reputation made him unsuitable for a woman in her position.
He was a rake. A disappointment. A man who had refused every eligible match presented to him and seemed determined to squander his inheritance on idleness and wit.
But he had looked at her as if he saw her. Not Miss Sophia Ainsworth, the debutante, the commodity, the daughter of a family in decline. But her. The woman who wrote essays in secret and laughed at her own jokes and was so tired of smiling that her face ached.
She set down the list. Her hands were trembling, just slightly, and she pressed them flat against the desk to still them.
The essays had been her escape. Her weapon.
Her way of naming the absurdity of the world she inhabited.
But the essays could not repair a roof. They could not pay a debt.
They could not save Greenly Hall from the slow erosion of neglect and misfortune.
They were words, only words, and words were not enough.
She had thought she could write her way out of the cage. She had been wrong. The cage was not made of paper. It was made of stone and timber and the weight of generations, and her pen was not sharp enough to cut through it.
The realisation settled into her like cold water, filling the spaces where hope had been. She was trapped. She had always been trapped. The only question was how she would navigate the bars.
She looked at Benedict’s letter again. I am doing what I can, but I am one man.
She was one woman. But she was not powerless. She could investigate. She could ask questions. She could find out exactly how deep the trouble ran, and then she could decide what she was willing to sacrifice. Her freedom. Her pen. Her heart.
She reached for a fresh sheet of paper and began to write.
Dear Benedict,
Tell me everything.