Chapter 1
Viola noticed the letter almost at once.
It was highly unusual for her father, the Viscount Tyne, to receive any letter at all from friends or acquaintances of late.
Other matters — business affairs, requests for payment of monies owed — came folded twice over and bore no particular seal. This one did.
She did not recognize it.
“Papa?” She looked from the letter to her father, who was sipping his coffee as he read over the papers he had set out on the dining table. “Who is this from?”
Her father glanced up, his thoughts plainly elsewhere, his brow furrowed.
“This letter.” She pressed on before he could ask her anything. “See it? There is a seal here I do not recognize, and I do not think it can be estate business.”
He reached out and picked it up, frowning at the seal. “I do not recognize it either,” he said slowly. He handed it back with a shrug. “You may open it if you wish, Viola.”
She took it from him. His hesitancy, she knew, came from fear.
His debts, formed when a great investment had failed some ten years ago, had only lately been paid off in full, leaving them little coin and a hard education in what careful living meant.
He feared this letter was another debt he had forgotten, a demand from someone he had long since put out of his mind.
Viola closed her eyes a moment and prayed it would not be so.
She broke the seal, unfolded the page, and felt her eyebrows lift.
“Well?” Anxiety threaded her father’s voice. “Who is it from?”
“From a Mr. Braithwaite,” Viola said slowly. “A solicitor, it seems.”
Lord Tyne’s breath hitched.
“It is not to ask for money, Papa.” She said it quickly, catching the way his shoulders dropped as he let out a breath.
“It is to inform you that Lady Warrington has recently passed away.” Her brow furrowed, and she lifted her gaze.
“We were acquainted with her, were we not? Very vaguely, from what I recall.”
Lord Tyne nodded. “She was an excellent lady. Formidable, yet kind.” The edge of his mouth lifted. “She was most considerate when things went poorly with my investments. I never did understand why — we were not well acquainted, which spoke of her fine character all the more, I think.”
Viola nodded and returned to the letter. “The solicitor writes that the reading of Lady Warrington’s will is to take place very shortly. At the beginning of next week.” She faltered, drawing the page a fraction closer. “He requests my presence at the reading.”
A momentary pause.
“Your presence?”
Viola blinked at the letter. The words stayed exactly as they were. “Yes,” she said. “Why would that be?”
Her father frowned. “Because you must be named in it — though I cannot think why.” He rose and came to stand behind her, reading over her shoulder. “How curious.”
Before Viola could say anything more, the door opened and her sister, the Countess of Manion, strode into the room.
She was smiling, then stopped short, her gaze moving between them in confusion.
“You will not welcome me, then?” Her visits were frequent indeed, given how little distance lay between her husband’s estate and their father’s. “Is something the matter?”
Wordlessly, Viola handed her the letter. A churning started in her stomach as she watched Hannah’s eyebrows climb, and then a smile spread across her sister’s face.
“Well. That is most unexpected, is it not?”
“I do not understand it,” their father murmured, retaking his seat. “Viola was only ever introduced to the lady, and now — ”
“Oh, but she must go.” Hannah did not let him finish. “There can be no question of it, surely?”
Viola shook her head. “Hannah, there must be some mistake, just as Father says. Were I to go, I should only be embarrassed — told the letter was meant for someone else entirely and sent to me in error.”
Hannah rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose.
“That can hardly be, when both you and Father are named outright,” she said firmly.
“Solicitors do not make such errors. I will go with you, of course.” She smiled as Viola looked from her to their father and back again.
“I shall speak to my husband, and all will be well. He knows I have been longing to return to London these several years. This lets him grant me what I have wanted whilst remaining comfortably at home himself.”
Viola hesitated. The truth was, she had no wish to go to London.
She had made her come-out already, and that Season had been a disaster — not one gentleman had glanced her way, her father’s standing being what it was.
To return now meant carrying the weight of her own insignificance, and a shame she had no right to bear.
“Papa?” She looked to him, knowing full well he had no desire to go himself. Whatever she felt, he would feel it tenfold, and among his own peers. She would not have that for him. Her sister was the wiser choice, married to an Earl these several years, her standing secure.
He ran a hand over his chin. “What of your children, Hannah?” The twins were nearly seven now. “Will they not miss you?”
Hannah’s lips curved gently. “I am sure they shall, and I shall miss them. But I have a duty to my sister, too.” Her eyes met Viola’s. “I will make the arrangements. Shall we say the day after tomorrow?”
The plan was settled before Viola had the chance to weigh any part of it. She opened her mouth, but Hannah was already speaking to their father of what must be done, reaching to pour herself a cup of tea without so much as a glance Viola’s way.
Then it seems I am to go to London, Viola thought, looking again at the solicitor’s letter. And return within a day or two, thoroughly mortified at the mistake that has been made.
“Viola?”
She looked up. Her father was watching her keenly. “Are you quite sure you wish to go? That you are content to do as you have been asked?”
She licked her lips. He expected honesty.
“I believe I shall arrive, as asked, and soon be told there has been some confusion — that I ought not to have been summoned at all.” Her shoulders lifted.
“But it is important that I attend, all the same. To ignore the letter, even if it is a mistake, would be quite wrong of me.”
Her father nodded and reached across the table to take her hand. “You will do very well, my dear.” He spoke softly, reaching into his pocket. “Here. Will you take this with you — as a reminder that I am proud of you?”
Viola put out her other hand and took the gold chain he held towards her.
“It once bore a very fine watch,” he told her.
A vague memory surfaced — her father with that watch in his hand, turning it over.
“You were only a child when the watch was parted from the chain.” His lips curved, though no happiness reached them.
“It has value still, my dear, for it is finely made. I should like you to have it.”
She looked up, not understanding.
“If you have need of a new gown, or some such thing, you may pawn it.” His shoulders rounded, as if the words cost him more than he wished to show. “I am sorry I cannot offer you more.”
“Papa.” Hannah’s voice came sharp, breaking the moment. “You know my husband is well able to provide whatever Viola requires. There is no need to have her pawn anything.”
“It is a father’s duty to care for his daughter.
” Lord Tyne shot Hannah a look that quelled her, a roughness in his voice.
“I have failed Viola, have I not? You were fortunate, my dear Hannah, to have a gentleman fall quite in love with you, and so soon after my fall from society’s graces.
He cared nothing that your father was poor and disgraced, and you have been happy.
Have you not?” He gestured to Viola, who felt herself shrink.
“Viola, near seven years your junior, has not had the same chances. Were I to take her to London myself, I fear no gentleman would regard her with anything but distaste, and that is my doing, not hers. So let me give her something of my own. Something of value she might use to provide for herself, should the need ever arise.”
Viola rose and came around the table to her father’s chair.
Hannah, she saw, had lowered her gaze, her face flushed.
“You did not fail me, Papa.” She laid a hand on his shoulder and looked down into his eyes.
“It was not your fault the investments failed so badly. It was not your doing that the debts came after.” She took his hand and pressed it, seeing the dampness about his eyes, and her heart wrenched in two. “I do not blame you for any of it.”
His smile trembled. “You are much too good, Viola.” His voice was soft. “Take the chain. Go to London. Write to me of whatever you discover there.” His head tilted, his eyes holding hers. “I only pray it is something to bring you joy, my dear. You deserve a great deal more of it than I can give.”
Viola closed her eyes and tried to steady herself, the watch chain held tight in her hand.
Hannah had begun to talk of arrangements, of all that must be done, but Viola scarcely heard her.
She thought only of what was to come — of the reading, of strangers’ faces, of the mortification certain to follow once they understood she ought never to have been there.
She breathed out and lowered her head. The letter would amount to nothing, she told herself.
For many years she had not let herself hope for anything beyond the steady rhythms of her present life.
That was not about to change now.
Two mornings later, her father was up before the sun to see them off, standing in the drive in his one good coat while Manion’s borrowed carriage was loaded — a great glossy thing that looked, against the worn face of the house, like a visitor from another life.
He had shaved with particular care. Viola noticed that, and said nothing, and loved him for it until her chest ached.
“For the road.” He handed up a small parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string — bread and cheese and two winter apples from the store, she knew without looking. “The inns charge robbery for what they call a dinner, and Hannah’s coachman will not want to be stopping every hour.”
“Papa, Manion has given us money enough for a dozen inn dinners,” Hannah said, laughing, from inside the carriage.
“Then you may keep the money and eat the apples, and be twice as rich.” He said it lightly, but his hand found Viola’s where it rested on the carriage door, and held it. “You have the chain safe?”
“In my pocket.” She turned her hand beneath his and gripped his fingers. “I shall write the moment there is anything to tell. And when there is nothing to tell, I shall write anyway.”
“That is all I ask.” He stepped back, and the years sat visibly on him a moment, the gray morning light finding every line that worry had cut.
Then he smiled, and most of them softened.
“Go and hear what the lady wanted of you, my dear. Whatever it proves to be, you will conduct yourself in a way that would have made your mother proud. You always do.”
The carriage moved off. Viola turned at the window and watched him grow small before the old house — one thin figure in the drive with his hand lifted, holding his place there until the lane turned and took him from her sight.
He would go in now, she knew, and bank the breakfast fire down to embers, and tell himself the coal saved was worth the chill.
She pressed her hand against the pocket where the chain lay, and did not cry, quite.