“But looking after him on your own will be a huge responsibility, Abigail,” Wren said.
“He does not need looking after,” Abigail said. “He isnot an invalid. He is just very weak after two years of injuries and surgery and fever. He needs time and space and quiet in which to rebuild his strength and recover his spirits, and I am confident he will do that better without people here to agitate him, however well-meaning they are. He is not going to be content to be a semi-invalid all his life. I will be here simply as a companion when he needs one. And I will be able to run the house and lighten the load for Mrs. Sullivan.”
“Abby.” Jessica had been sitting on the window seat with Winifred while the girl told a story in such a way that Andrew could enjoy it too, though he could not hear. But she got to her feet now, frowning, and crossed the room toward her cousin. “I might have expected it. You never hadanyintention of rejoining society or of attending any balls or parties, did you? Even when you agreed to come to London this year for Estelle’s come-out. You have clung stubbornly instead to yourstupidfear that you will be spurned because of the stain upon your birth.Everyonehas told you that is nonsense. Avery has and Mama and Alexander and the Marquess of Dorchester and... oh,everyone.”
The other ladies looked at her, concerned by her sudden outburst of emotion. Even a few of the children paused in their play. Richard rubbed one knuckle over the eye that was not pressed against Wren and snuggled closer.
“Jessica,” Anna said soothingly, laying a hand upon her sister-in-law’s arm. But Jessica jerked it away.
“It makes nosense,” she said. “It is stubborn nonsense.”
“I am sorry, Jess,” Abigail said. “I have explained to you time and again that I will never try to cobble together the tattered remnants of my old life. You have chosen to believe that eventually I must change my mind. It has beensix years, Jess. It is the difference between eighteen years oldand twenty-four. I am a different person than I was all that time ago. I am sorry. I know you have been hurt too. But I cannot— Well, I cannot heal your pain. Only you can do that.”
The anger went from Jessica as quickly as it had come. “I am finally to believe you, then, am I?” she asked, though it was not really a question she expected to be answered.
“I will be staying here when everyone else leaves,” Abigail said. “It is what I want to do, Jess. It is not because Harry needs me. He does not, though his coming here has made it possible for me to come home too. And it is not because I fear that at any moment I will be driven out of London over the scandal of my birth. I do not care to be in London or to be part of polite society. I need to live my own life on my own terms, and for the next while at least that is going to be done here.”
Jessica nodded unhappily and turned to watch Nathan and Jacob, who were building a precarious tower of wooden bricks.
“Oh, Abby,” Camille said with a sigh before smiling at Andrew, who had come to sit on her lap, story time being over. “I thought at the beginning that you would be the easy one. You were so sweet and placid and accepting when we went to live with Grandmama Kingsley in Bath while I hid and raged. But you were not the easy one after all, were you? You pushed everything inside and have not even begun to recover.”
“Oh no, Cam,” Abigail protested, grimacing and then laughing. “I willnotbe made into a figure of tragedy. I am not staying here to lick my ever-open wounds and live out my life in unhappy seclusion and self-pitying misery. I amcominghome. Because I want to be here to live my life. Because it is where I think I can be happiest. For now at least.”
No one understood. But how could they? She was on a journey she could not explain in words even to herself. She did not know what the next step would be and had no idea what the final destination was or even if there would be one. She knew only that she must take one step forward at a time and that she must do it herself, even when that made her family unhappy. For they all seemed to believe that if she could only find a place in society and a kind husband who would disregard the blot upon her birth, all would be well in her life. Once upon a time it had been her sole aim to make her come-out, find an eligible husband, and live happily ever after. But no longer. That dream belonged to another lifetime. She did not even feel nostalgic about it.
“Abigail,” Anna said, getting to her feet, “will you come walking outside with me? I see that the rain has stopped.” She did not extend the invitation to anyone else.
Six years ago Abigail and Camille had resented Anna because she had suddenly appeared in their midst, their father’s only legitimate child. She’d come straight from her orphanage in Bath, where she’d grown up unacknowledged by him. She arrived the sole inheritor of their father’s vast fortune and unentailed properties, which meant they and their mother and brother were stripped of everything that had made up the fabric of their lives, their titles included. Their very identities, it had seemed. Even at the time, of course, they had realized that Anna was undeserving of their resentment. She had suffered terribly too, though her suffering had been donebeforethe big discovery, whereas theirs had just begun. She had grown up as an orphan, knowing nothing of her father and his family or of her dead mother and her mother’s parents, who would have been only too happy to raise her and shower her with love if they had not been told she was dead.
Their resentment had faded over time for lack of fuel. Anna had never stopped reaching out to her half siblings. She had steadfastly refused to take offense at their rejection—though truth to tell that very saintliness in her nature had at first added to their irritation since it had exposed their own pettiness for what it was.
“A bit of fresh air would be very welcome,” Abigail said, and went to fetch a bonnet and pelisse and stouter shoes before meeting her half sister downstairs in the hall. How typical it was of Anna to have sensed that she had needed an excuse to escape from the nursery after her big announcement.
They strolled along the cobbled terrace rather than venture onto the wet grass. The air still held some dampness, though it had stopped drizzling for the moment. Anna linked an arm through Abigail’s.
“You must stop me,” she said, “if what I am about to say is offensive to you. I will just come out and say it. I want you to have your quarter of our father’s fortune. It has always been yours, set aside for you and your descendants after I am gone if you will not take it before. But if you are to live here alone, though Harry will be here too, of course, you really ought to have an independence, Abigail. And it is yours anyway. Please say yes.”
Anna stopped and glanced apprehensively at her half sister when she did not immediately reply.
“I find it very distasteful,” she added, “to talk about money. But it would be absurd for me to go home and then write you a letter. Abigail, you are mysister.”
From the start Anna had seen the injustice of their father’s will, made years before his death while he was still married to Anna’s mother, before his bigamous marriage to Abigail’s. He had never made another. It had seemingly never occurred to him to provide for the three children whoknew nothing of their illegitimacy. Perhaps he had assumed the truth would never come to light. Perhaps he had forgotten all about that will, gathering dust in the offices of a lawyer in Bath. According to that will everything that was not entailed was to go to his wife and their daughter.
Anna had wanted to do what had seemed to her the only fair and just thing and divide the fortune into four parts, one for each of their father’s offspring. In addition, she had made arrangements, even before she could be asked to do so, for Abigail’s mother to recover the dowry that had been given on her marriage and all the interest it would have accumulated in the more than twenty years since.
Her half siblings had all spurned her offer as though she were somehow insulting them by making it. They had refused to take even a penny of the money. How ridiculous and ugly they had been, Abigail thought now, when they had chosen to be offended rather than grateful. But they had been so dreadfully, terribly hurt. Was that a valid excuse? Probably not, but when one was hurt to the core of one’s being one could not always think in terms of fairness.
“It is legally your money, Anna,” Abigail said.
“Yes, of course,” Anna said, making a dismissive gesture with her free hand, “though I do believe the three of you might have made a convincing case against me had you chosen to pursue the matter in the courts.Ifit had been necessary to do so, that is, and if you had believed you were entitled to your share. It was nothing short of wicked of our father to deceive you and Aunt Viola all those years and then to leave you unprovided for. I am very glad I never knew him, Abigail. His will was an abomination and should not be binding upon us, regardless of what the law says.Morallyhis fortune belongs to the four of us, and the sooner you accept your portion, the happier I will be.”
“Even if Camille and Harry never accept theirs?” Abigail said, frowning.
Anna started walking again, though they were almost at the end of the terrace. “Camille approached me in Bath before she married Joel,” she said. “She told me she would accept her portion, not because she needed or even wanted the money, but because she did want to make peace with me and make more of an effort to accept me as her sister. I know that was an extremely difficult thing for her to do. I was a stranger who came into her life at the most stressful moment imaginable. But she has done what she was determined to do. She has given me a gift every bit as precious as the one I was able to give her. More so, since I gave her only what was rightfully hers.”
“Oh,” Abigail said, mortified and touched. “I did not know.”
“No,” Anna said. “We both decided to say nothing. We did not want to put undue pressure upon either you or Harry. Avery had a word with Harry yesterday. Not about his share of the fortune. That will have to wait until a more opportune time. Rather he persuaded Harry to accept the benefits of this house if he will not yet agree to a legal transfer of ownership. From now on he will receive the rents from the tenant farms and the income from the home farm. He saw the hole in the argument Avery made, of course, and insisted that if he was going to accept the income, then he must also handle all the expenses of the house and estate. But it is a profitable property. He will be able to lead a comfortable life here even if he merely maintains it as it is and does nothing to develop it—and even if he never will take his share of the fortune.”
