Chapter Twenty-Five
Kitty awoke to a chilly body lying next to her and an arm that felt like it’d had a whole bucket of her sewing needles dropped atop it.
She’d had the strangest dream, that Cordon had apologized for drinking her blood and revealed he had fangs.
It was so absurd, she almost laughed. Of course, her brain had conjured a reason for her exhaustion.
She almost wished she could believe it. As terrifying as the prospect was, it would’ve been easier to blame him for her state than admit she had worked too hard again.
The only thing she could not regret was asking Cordon to stay with her. She threaded her fingers through his as the window let in a gentle breeze of cool, night air that ruffled his hair. His lips were parted, and his eyes moved beneath her eyelids.
“Wake up,” she said. As beautiful as he was, her arm hurt. She tapped him on the nose. When that didn’t work, she gently ran her nail along his jaw. That seemed to do the trick. His eyelids lifted. He met her gaze and smiled.
“You’re awake.”
“Yes,” she said. “Might I have my arm back?”
He lifted his head from the bed, and she hissed as blood came rushing back into her extremity. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, flexed and relaxed the muscles of her arm.
“There’s some tea left in the kettle,” he said. “It will be cold by now, but it’ll have to do.”
Kitty groaned but did not otherwise complain. Then her gaze landed on the fabric strewn upon her desk and she cursed. Mrs. Klein was expecting her dress this morning, and it wasn’t nearly done.
She pushed herself upright. She hadn’t before disappointed a client and she was not about to start today, sickness or no sickness.
Her body no longer felt like it were being weighed down by bags of sand, and she didn’t feel the same haziness, like she was looking at the world through a sheen of water.
The worst of the fever was over, and it was time to go back to work.
But as Kitty shifted her legs off the bed, Cordon appeared in front of her, set the teacup aside, then put his hands on her shoulders.
“No.”
She gestured to the table. “I have responsibilities. Commitments. Alyssa will be arriving to open the shop soon.”
He dropped to his knees. “Just a few more hours of rest. Please? If any customers show up asking for work that you have not yet completed, I’ll convince them to give you more time.”
She sighed. At least seeing a lord in her shop would prevent customers from getting too angry. “I will rest.”
He rested his head on her knees. “Thank you.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. He was such a contradiction. Brash and flirtatious, but also sweet and caring. She could imagine living with him for the rest of her life.
She swallowed. Where had that thought come from?
She looked down at the top of his head. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. It was worse than she’d thought. She didn’t just care for him. She loved him.
There was a knock at the door. “Miss Carter?”
Alyssa’s voice.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Kitty said.
Cordon squeezed her legs. “Don’t.”
“I can’t stay here all day without explaining, Cordon. I won’t be long.”
She had to get away from him, if only for a minute. Having him so close made it impossible to think clearly, and she had to figure out what to do. He was a viscount. She could never be anything more than his mistress. If he eventually married, what would she do?
That was assuming he didn’t tire of her by then.
She was so foolish.
“You have three minutes,” he said.
She left him in the room and limped down the stairs.
When they’d first met, she’d dismissed his flippant attitude. He’d seemed like another rich member of society gallivanting about without concern for his future. Everything would always work out for him because he had wealth and privilege.
Except it wouldn’t. He’d come across like a typical selfish member of the gentry, but that was only how he presented himself because he’d known he was going to die. Unlike her, he had no reason to cling to a grandiose vision of the future.
She sighed. Despite what she’d said earlier, she couldn’t let him go. She cared for him so much that she wanted to spend every minute possible at his side. Even if he didn’t feel the same way. Even if their relationship was doomed. Even if he would inevitably break her heart.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and squared her shoulders. She’d instruct Alyssa to mind the shop, then return to Cordon and tell him they could continue his list.
But when she walked into her shop, she found her mother peering through the door. Kitty reluctantly opened the door and allowed her inside.
“There you are!” Mrs. Carter gathered her skirts and rushed across the room. “So disheveled. You need a proper lady’s maid.”
Kitty resisted the urge to smooth the wrinkles from her blouse. Her mother would find something to complain about no matter how proper she looked.
Mrs. Carter’s lower lip trembled. “But oh, darling, you must come home at once. Everything has gone wrong. Your father…” She burst into sobs.
Kitty put her hands on her mother’s shoulders. “What is it this time?”
She was extremely aware of the promise she’d made to her sister, that she wouldn’t let her parents manipulate her or extract more money out of her.
Kitty had twenty years of experience dealing with her mother and the rest of her family.
After rescuing them so many times, there was little they could say to surprise her.
Which only made the next words that came out of her mother’s mouth that much more shocking.
“Your father is dead.”
Kitty stumbled back, knocking over a hat rack.
Her father, who had always been a pillar of strength, an immovable figure in her life.
She’d know he would die eventually, of course, but not so soon.
Not already. Not before she’d proven her business could be successful.
Now she would never get the chance to hear how proud he was of her.
God, wasn’t that selfish, thinking only about herself?
She pulled her sobbing mother into an embrace.
“H-He was well l-last night,” Mrs. Carter sobbed.
Kitty’s throat grew thick as she imagined her father going to his bedchamber with a newspaper tucked beneath his arm. He’d always had the odd habit of reading the newspaper before he went to sleep instead of in the morning. Something he’d never do again.
Kitty rubbed her mother’s back until she’d stopped sobbing, then pushed away, handed her mother a handkerchief, and looked into her face. “Do you know what happened? Was it…?” She swallowed heavily, unsure of how to suggest that it was her father’s vices that had finally caught up with him.
Her mother dabbed her eyes with a corner of the handkerchief. “No, it wasn’t his drinking.” Her shoulders slumped. “They said it was his heart. It simply gave out.”
Her stomach clenched. At least her father had died without pain. The same could not be said of Cordon’s future demise.
Cordon.
He would be upset, but she couldn’t deny her mother now. Not after such a tragedy.
“You must come home at once,” Mrs. Carter said. “There are…payments to be made.”
Of course there were. Even in death, her father had left a mess for her to clean up. She would never be free of them.
Mrs. Carter tilted her head to her chin. “If I had known what your father had done, I would have tried to stop him.” She sniffed. “There is also the matter of the funeral…”
Kitty could practically feel all the cash she’d made in the past month floating out of her pockets. But what was she supposed to say in the face of such devastation? This was a family emergency. An exception.
“Come home,” Mrs. Carter said.
There was only one response she could give. And as her mother departed, in possession of a purse that contained enough money to pay several months’ rent on Kitty’s shop, Kitty slammed her fist on her worktable. Once again, she’d folded like a piece of wet vellum beneath her mother’s tears.
Then Cordon appeared, wearing one of the black jackets from her trunk, his hair tucked beneath a black felt hat. He touched the brim. “Do you like it?” He grinned. “When you feel well again, I thought we might complete another item on my list and go to a funeral.”
A funeral. Her father’s funeral.
“I always avoided them,” Cordon continued. “But I think it’s time to see what all the fuss is about.” His smile faltered. “Then I’ll know what mine might be like. Perhaps I could get some ideas for what…Kitty? What’s wrong?”
Tears flowed down her face. “My father is dead.”
“I am so sorry.” He swept her into his arms and cupped the back of her neck. “We will leave at once.”
She sniffed. “You would come?”
He kissed the top of her head. “I would not let you face them alone.”
She sniffed. How could she tell him it was too late, that her mother had already left with a significant amount of Kitty’s money?
“What is the matter?” He rubbed her cheek with his thumbs. “Do you not want me to accompany you?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. I…” The words would not come out of her throat. The tears that she had forced back earlier threatened to surface again. She breathed in and out several times, then said, in a steady voice, “I’m sorry. My father left a mess behind and I—”
“You took care of it.” He detangled herself from her and stepped back. “As you always do, correct?”
There was no judgment in his tone, but she felt colder than she had in weeks. “I had to.”
She’d been unable to stop herself.
He crossed her arms. “What, exactly, did you do?”
He didn’t sound angry, so that was a relief. But he did not yet know everything.
“My father left debts,” she said, staring at Cordon’s feet. “I couldn’t let my family deal with that burden while they are grieving.”
“I suppose I understand. When we arrive, we will ensure the money goes to the correct place so that your mother cannot swindle it away.”
“I’ve already given it to her.”
The room fell silent.
He heaved a sigh. “I cannot blame you. You could not have expected that your father would die.”
She felt as if an enormous weight had lifted from her shoulders. Everything was well between them. They would visit her family, resolve whatever disaster her father had left behind, then continue helping Cordon.
“What is your next task?” she asked, mostly to change the subject.
He enveloped her in his arms. “Do not worry about that. I want you to focus on recovering.”
She ran her hands down his chest, then felt a slight bulge. “What’s this?”
He removed a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to her. “A physical copy of the list. I started carrying it with me as a reminder.”
More than three-quarters of the lines were crossed out, but the ones that were left made her smile. Of course he would want to make an obnoxious man lose all of his money at a gaming hell and sneak aboard a pirate ship. But then she reached the end, and her blood turned to ice.
“Woo a dressmaker,” she whispered.
He jerked the sheet out of her hands. “That’s not what you think.”
She stared at the man she loved, a man who was going to die, who had made a list of all the things he’d wanted to complete. And it included her.
“Was that all this was?” Her heart ached.
“That’s how it started,” Cordon said, his voice strained. “But it changed, Kitty. Things…changed, between us.”
Despite his words, she couldn’t help but remember everything they’d done. With this new information, she saw it all differently. He had first engaged her at the market, drawing her into the seduction that had all been part of his plan. Every item, every activity, had been part of a larger game.
She’d been wrong. He wasn’t focused on the present, ignoring the future. No, he was a master manipulator. Just like her parents. He’d planned several steps ahead, and she’d failed to see it.
“You’ve successfully wooed me.” She turned her back. “What else do you need?”
“Don’t do this,” he whispered.
“Do what?” Her anger grew, compounding with every whispered word she remembered him uttering. All of it had been part of a greater scheme. He was no better than her parents, who were constantly using her sympathy and soft heart to convince her to do things for them.
Well, no longer.
She would harden her heart and focus only on what mattered to her.
“I have to go home,” she said.
“And let your mother manipulate you.”
She spun around. “Don’t pretend you haven’t done that, too! You would have bought me.” She threw up her arms. “You basically did!” She was shouting now, but she couldn’t stop.
“I thought you wanted to be with me,” he whispered.
“I could never be with someone like you.”
The moment she’d spoken the words, she clenched her eyes shut. She knew how painful it would be for him to hear that, but she’d said it, anyway. She opened her eyes and looked at him but immediately regretted it. His face had gone cold.
Her heart squeezed. She’d done this, made the man she loved miserable.
“I see.” Cordon removed a heavy purse from his pocket and placed it on the table. “Your payment, Miss Carter.”
She wanted to cry out. Say she hadn’t meant it. But she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. It was as if she’d frozen in place as he strolled out of the shop, leaving her alone with the latest payment he had promised.
For once in her life, she didn’t care about money.