Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Kitty stepped out of the carriage onto the gravel that lined the pathway in front of her family’s squat, red brick home, she was greeted with an armful of her squealing sister.
“It has been forever since you visited,” Betty said.
She wore a light-blue cotton day dress, as well as a straw bonnet edged with white lace. Kitty would have a conversation with her sister later about what was appropriate to wear now that they were in mourning.
“I thought you might be avoiding us,” Betty said.
Kitty pushed her sister away and clasped their hands together. “I am happy to see you, too. I’m just sorry it took something so tragic to bring me back.”
Betty frowned. “‘Tragic’? What do you mean?”
Then Kitty spotted her mother standing in the door to their home, twisting her hands together, wearing a gown as colorful as Betty’s, and a sneaking suspicion dawned on Kitty.
She didn’t want to believe it was possible for her family to manipulate her in such a terrible way, but everything she was seeing suggested that this was not a family in mourning.
“I shall show you my newest bracelet!” Betty said, bouncing in her excitement. “Father bought it last week. Oh, Kitty, it’s such a beautiful piece, but I don’t have a gown to wear with it.” She touched her neck and stuck out her lower lip.
Kitty sighed. This was the least surprising of all, that she’d barely left her carriage and already, her sister was begging her for favors. “Yes, I can make you a dress.”
Their mother joined them, an uneasy smile on her face. “Dear, why don’t you dress for dinner? Your sister must be tired from the journey.”
“Yes, Mother,” Betty said, although without the bitterness Kitty had expected. Things had changed quite a bit since she’d left home, it seemed. Before Kitty had moved out of the house, she’d grown used to Betty pouting and throwing things whenever she didn’t get her way.
“I am surprised to see you in such high spirits.” Kitty fluffed her own dark-brown skirt. “I was relieved to find this in the bottom of one of my trunks.” She paused, examined her mother’s expression, then added, “If you require mourning garb…”
Then came a familiar laugh from behind Kitty’s mother.
“‘Mourning’!” Kitty’s father—who was most assuredly not dead—said. His light-blond hair was shorter than it had been the last time Kitty had seen him, but he did not appear sick in the slightest. In fact, he was so rotund that the buttons of his brown tweed suit jacket were strained.
He came to stand behind his wife, beaming a most lively grin. “Patches was an old dog, but not worthy of such dramatics.”
“Patches,” Kitty said. She looked at her mother, who was blushing so hard, she looked like a ripe tomato.
Kitty should have been furious. Incensed. Or, at the very least, angry with her mother for such an egregious lie. But as she tried to summon the words to express to her mother how this betrayal made her feel, she realized she felt nothing.
Of course, her mother had manipulated her. Kitty would not have returned home for anything else. Mrs. Carter had only done what she’d felt was necessary to have her husband bailed out of his newest mess.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Carter said. “I-It was the only way. Your father, he—”
“Don’t,” Kitty said. “I’ll sort out whatever problem you’ve landed yourself in later. For now, you have me here. Can we act like a proper family, if only for a few hours?”
Mrs. Carter’s eyes grew glassy. “It is nice to have you home, Katherine.” She clasped Kitty in a hug. “We’ve missed you.”
Kitty wished she could have enjoyed the moment, as it had been too long since she’d felt anything but annoyance for her mother. But knowing her father wasn’t dead, and her mother had stooped to such awful tactics just to get her to return, to do God-only-knew-what, ruined it.
Perhaps she should have simply asked her mother then and there what she wanted.
Then she could’ve given it to them and returned home to beg Cordon for forgiveness.
Refusing his money had been a mistake. It would have been much easier, and less painful, to let him solve her problems and then indulge whatever distraction struck his fancy.
But it was too late now. She’d made her choice.
As she walked with her mother into the house, the weight of responsibility sat heavily on her shoulders. There had to be something she hadn’t considered yet. Some way of saving the entire situation.
She had a lot to clean up, and very little time.
*
Several hours later, Kitty put her elbows on her father’s desk and then put her head in her hands.
Three hours of sorting through paperwork, and she was no closer to a solution.
Her mother had come by twice, presumably to draw Kitty into some activity or afternoon tea, but Kitty was too stressed to sit for hours around a table and listen to her mother’s criticisms.
How had the situation become so dire? Her parents earned regular income from the bonds they’d inherited from Kitty’s grandfather, yet the money flowed out of their pockets as quickly as water in a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
She was glad Grandfather was not alive to witness his family’s decline.
The old man had been as much of a pinchpenny as his son was a spendthrift.
She spread her hands over the papers on the desk. Bills from the grocer, a cordwainer, a milliner… Not to mention several hastily scrawled notes that represented debts owing to less-reputable proprietors.
Her father lounged in a chair near the window, swirling brandy in a glass, apparently unconcerned by the disaster he’d created.
She tallied up the numbers again, hoping she’d missed something, but the resulting sum was no less enormous.
She could not dig her parents out of the debt they’d accumulated if she sold a hundred gowns.
What did that leave? Convincing her family to sell their possessions was impossible.
They refused to let go of their trinkets, even to save themselves.
Perhaps it was time to talk to her mother. Convince her to sell the house and lease something smaller. A row house in a less-reputable area, perhaps.
Assuming the house would even sell. Given the mess on her father’s desk, she had to assume he had leveraged the property.
She picked up a sheet of paper, which listed the name of the man to whom her father owed money: Mr. Blaylock.
It shouldn’t have surprised her.
The next paper, however, was a marriage contract, naming Betty and Mr. Blaylock.
“No,” she whispered. She looked at her father and raised the paper. “What is this?”
Her father huffed. “Betty and the man get along well. Your sister will have a husband, and we will be free of our debts. What is the problem?”
“The problem,” she said, speaking slowly so as not to shout, “is that Betty is not a chess piece that you can move at your whim.”
Her father shifted his feet. “Mr. Blaylock does not require a dowry. In fact, he has offered to forgive my debt and pay us a significant sum for the privilege of having Betty as his wife. That is all that matters.”
“Does Betty know about this?”
Mr. Carter winced. “She does not need to know.”
Kitty bit back a scream. What could she do? They were her family. She couldn’t let them suffer, but they wouldn’t believe the truth about Mr. Blaylock. If Cordon had failed to send the man away before she’d told the viscount to stay out of her life, she had no chance.
Her father walked over to the sideboard and unstopped a crystal decanter of amber liquid, then poured some into a glass. “There is one condition. Mr. Blaylock requires that you give up being a dressmaker.”
“No,” Kitty said. “You…you can’t ask me to do that.”
He sipped his glass, then set it down without looking at her.
“I am sorry, my dear, but I have no choice. Mr. Blaylock insisted. He believes a lady’s place is in the home and does not want his wife to be associated with a businesswoman.
A rather old-fashioned way of thinking, but your mother agreed, and it is the fastest way to free us from the debt. We have nothing left to sell.”
The anger that had been simmering inside her since she’d arrived and found her father wasn’t dead bubbled up her throat.
“Nothing to sell?” She stomped over to her father’s desk and picked up the first sheet that came to her hand.
“Three wool suits.” She slammed the paper down and selected another. “A carriage.”
Slam.
“Ten. Ten! New dresses for Betty.”
Slam.
“Fifteen boxes of imported cigars. Father, really?” She glared at the man who had made her life so miserable. “I think you have quite a lot to sell.”
Her father’s jaw worked. “I have only provided this family with what we deserve.”
Kitty threw up her arms. “That’s the problem!
None of you deserve any of this. You never have.
We never have. My entire life, I’ve seen this family reach for a level of respectability that we will never achieve.
” She stabbed her finger out the window toward the town in the distance.
“They will never see you as anything other than the blacksmith’s son.
It doesn’t matter how much money Grandfather left you, how many dresses you buy Betty, how fancy your carriage is, how big of a house you buy, w-whom you attend events with.
” Kitty fell into her father’s chair and put her head in her hands. “You’ll always be lesser.”
Her father was silent for a long time as she struggled to hold her tears in.
She knew what she needed to do, but it hurt.
There was only one way to make sure her father never manipulated her again.
She had to come down to their level, become as broke as they were.
Hiding would do no good—they knew how to find her, and she would always struggle to stay away.
Trying to achieve her dreams had been a waste of time.
She was more like her parents than she’d ever admitted.
Just as they were reaching for a status they would never achieve, she was damned determined to love Cordon despite him being of a different class.
She was tired of trying. It was time to give up.
“I’ll close the shop and sell my wares,” she said. “Between that and what I have saved, it should be enough to pay Mr. Blaylock. Tell him he can have the money if he breaks off his engagement with Betty.”
As much as it hurt, her family had to come first. She would pay careful attention to ensure the money made it to Mr. Blaylock instead of to her father, who might fritter it away.
Her father set his glass down and refilled it. “Your mother will pleased to have you back home.”
Kitty closed her eyes. That was true. Her mother had never approved of Kitty’s interest in business.
Kitty stared at her clasped hands on her lap. It was time to let her dreams go. To accept that she’d created this situation for herself. She would have her father’s lawyer make the arrangements and locate a seller. Betty would be safe, but everything Kitty had worked for would be gone.
She was done.