Chapter 17
Alight shone from beneath Orla’s door. Mabel made it two yards past the latch before she wheeled around and stood staring down at the little sliver of illumination on the floor.
Why sow enmity between me and Wealtha? Why emphasize our faults, dismiss our virtues, and position yourself as necessary to us both? These questions went back prior to Richard’s arrival, to a pattern of mischief that had existed for years.
Mabel rapped on the door before her courage deserted her and before she could talk herself out of her anger.
Step-mama sat on the tufted love seat, reading yesterday’s London Times, her slippered feet on a footstool embroidered to resemble a bouquet of irises. Mabel had come to hate working with purple thread as she’d created that design, but Orla had wanted the perfect purple accent piece.
Step-mama lowered the newspaper a few inches. “Mabel dearest. I am quite well, for me. If you’ve stopped by out of concern, I thank you and bid you good night. I know how busy you keep yourself and would not deny you your slumbers.”
The Glen kept Mabel busy, and Orla had denied Mabel a night’s sleep on any number of occasions, gently insisting that Wealtha’s next beaded reticule or matching fichu must be finished with completely unnecessary haste.
“You’re not suffering a megrim, Step-mama?”
“Not at present, thank the heavenly intercessors. I trust supper was uneventful?”
“Entirely. We spoke mostly of fashion and the upcoming assembly. Wealtha seems to be looking forward to it.”
“As she should. As she most definitely should. This will be her first outing as the new viscount’s sister, and we must ensure she looks the part.”
No, we must not. That job fell exclusively to Mabel and explained her mild dread of the seasonal gatherings.
Mabel took a seat in a wing chair. A supper tray—not a crumb to be seen—remained on the low table before her. A second tray held a tea service and a dish bearing a few petits fours.
For an invalid, Step-mama enjoyed a consistently robust appetite. “His lordship, Mr. St. Didier, and I spent the rest of the evening reviewing the Glen’s ledgers from the days of Abernathy Blackstock’s tenure.”
Step-mama sat up and put her paper aside. “Whyever waste your time on such an endeavor? Doesn’t Richard have enough to do with planting and haying and entertaining that dreadful Johnson woman and her galoot of a son?”
“That galoot could well become Sir Magnus before too much longer, ma’am.” Mabel held out the plate of petits fours.
Step-mama took one. “Better that Richard get the neighborly calls out of the way than bury his lordly nose in the ledgers. Really, Mabel, you must explain this to him in plain words, one of your several dubious gifts. The Glen is now on solid financial footing. His lordship is free to return to London or Spain or wherever he prefers to bide. We have discussed this often enough, but you don’t seem interested in persuading him onto the proper course. ”
He prefers to bide here. So do I.
Painful thoughts. “Perhaps I could ask his lordship to call on the Fielding solicitors and have a look at my funds,” Mabel said, mostly to distract Orla from her usual make-Richard-leave chorus. “My competence should be available to me as of my last birthday, if I recall aright.”
Orla put down the uneaten half of her petit four.
“Your competence? Mabel… I hardly know… Your competence? You have no competence. Whatever made you think…? Oh, my dear. When Joseph died and our means were so terribly restricted, I was forced to use that money simply to keep a roof over your head. The solicitors assured me the terms of the bequest allowed those measures. The alternative was to see you go into service or, worse, put you on the parish. My conscience would allow neither fate.”
You have no competence. The rest of Orla’s explanation washed over Mabel as so much false solicitude.
Mabel understood in that moment why Wealtha had smashed more than one tea service to bits. Why she’d upended furniture and hurled any available projectile through the nearest window.
“I have no funds of my own?”
“Not unless you’ve saved a bit from the Glen’s monthly allowance.”
“That would have been stealing, ma’am.” And there had been no bit to be saved, in any case. Mabel put the dish of petits fours back on the tray. “If you will excuse me, I will follow your advice and seek my bed. I’m glad you are well.”
She rose and made herself advance on the door at a dignified pace.
“Mabel, if the news of your relative poverty comes as a shock, I do apologize. I thought the solicitors would have told you. This was all so very long ago, and you had not yet attained your majority. It wasn’t that much money, and I could not have lived with myself had I consigned you to a life emptying chamber pots and scrubbing floors. ”
Mabel nodded, hand on the door latch. “I understand, Step-mama, and appreciate that the situation was difficult following Papa Joseph’s death. Good night.”
You have no competence.
“Good night, dearest. I applaud your sensible attitude. Such a pity a sensible attitude so rarely characterizes Wealtha’s little upsets and disappointments.
” Orla propped her feet on the stool, picked up the newspaper, and appeared to dismiss the whole discussion as easily as turning from the Society pages to the fashion articles.
Mabel stood in the corridor torn between rage, heartbreak, and fear. She had meant to confront Orla about a campaign of disparagement that had shone a bad light on Wealtha and Mabel by turns.
All thoughts of confrontation had scattered like thistledown in high wind.
You have no competence.
That little store of funds had sat in the back of Mabel’s mind as the universal antidote to homelessness, hunger, cold… A small sum invested prudently and left to appreciate for a few decades could become an adequate sum.
She’d skipped off to Mayfair, secure in the knowledge that her modest bequest could form the foundation for marriage settlements. Her inheritance could have even added to the security Mabel’s daughters might have enjoyed.
She’d come home from that excursion with one comfort remaining in her life: I have my competence. If all else fails, I have my own funds, slowly gathering interest, waiting for the day when I can be free of Orla and Wealtha.
Mabel marched down the corridor, sleep nowhere on her mind.
“Papa Joseph set aside that money when I was five years old.” Five hundred pounds from a windfall inheritance that Papa himself had not seen coming.
The rest of that boon had gone to debts, of course, or perhaps to augmenting Orla’s jointure.
Or to buying Orla the jewels that seemed to bring her such joy.
Mabel had positively delighted in calculating the fund’s total each year on her birthday. What a petty, comforting exercise that had been. She stopped at the head of the stairs, sat on the top step, and in the shadows of the sconces, tried to calm her thoughts.
She had yet to achieve that goal when Richard came up the stairs, a carrying candle in hand. He paused on the landing and held the candle a trifle higher.
“Do I dare hope that this is an ambush, Amabel? If so, your expression suggests I might conclude the encounter in very sorry condition.”
She regarded him through a fog of hurt and determination. “I have been thinking.” Also growing chilly, but still too upset to consider going to bed.
“You left the library well over an hour ago, Amabel.” He took the place beside her on the step, warmth radiating from his nearness. “Were you contemplating the eternal verities this whole time?”
To sit right next to him was a pleasure and a heartache. “I am penniless.”
“Figuratively? I thought—?”
She waved a hand to cut him off. “Orla has just informed me that my competence was used up years ago to pay off the arrears on Papa Joseph’s mortgage, or something of the sort.
To keep a roof over my head, so I was spared the ignominy of going into service.
I would gladly have gone into service to safeguard that money, and possibly even add to it, but I was denied the choice. ”
Mabel spoke carefully, lest the ache in her throat become audible sobs.
“Your stolen funds coincidentally kept a roof over Orla’s head, too, I take it? Amabel, what else did she say?”
“She said that I have been a very great fool, and she said it lightly and even kindly.”
Richard put an arm around her shoulders. Mabel resisted the consolation he offered for the length of one shuddering breath, then she laid her forehead against the solid muscle of his shoulder.
“Step-mama stole from me, and you and I have matters to discuss somewhere private.”
Richard wrapped her in a two-armed hug. “Will your sitting room suffice?”
“Yes.”
He scooped her up and rose. Mabel wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as if her very last, most precious dream depended on keeping him close.
Richard had chosen Amabel’s sitting room because he wanted her in the most familiar, comforting surrounds available as she dealt with the reality of Orla’s crime.
Perhaps as the adult responsible for Amabel, Orla hadn’t committed theft of the funds in a legal sense—Richard would research the particulars thoroughly—but Orla had most certainly purloined Amabel’s dignity.
At fourteen or even twelve, many a girl went into service, and Amabel—sturdy, sensible, in good health—could have fared as well in a domestic role as anybody. In any decent household, she would have thrived and even distinguished herself.
Richard dipped at the knees, Amabel dealt with the door latch, and then they were alone in her sitting room.
A single candle was burning on the mantel. “Why haven’t you any fire?”
“Clementina forgets sometimes. She’s the oldest of the maids, and we allow her latitude.
She should have become a housekeeper, but that would have meant breaking ranks with her familiars.
She had a hard enough time leaving The Oaks, and I suspect she will wear her maid’s cap until the three of them can retire together. ”