“We have been saved!” Lady Wethersby cried. “It is even better news than I thought. We have been savedandwe will not lose you, my dear.”
“I would not say we have been saved,” Catherine said, trying to temper Lady Wethersby’s expectations. “But it is certainly an improvement from this morning.”
After all, this morning twenty pounds from theWinchester Dailyhad seemed like a small fortune. She couldn’t help but smile when she saw Lady Wethersby’s beaming face. And she had to laugh when she heard Ariel’s sunny prediction that, in the not-too-distant future, she would buy him a treacle tart.
But then Catherine remembered John’s parting words.
“Elena, Ariel,” Catherine said, interrupting the Wethersbys’ bickering over what to purchase first with their windfall. “I do have to leave you. Just for a little while. To do this…work for the duke.”
“Leave?” Ariel said. “I thought you said you weren’t leaving—that this man wasn’t taking you away!”
The terror in Ariel’s voice shot a bolt of anxiety through Catherine’s heart.
“Just for a little while. I promise I will be back.”
“I’ll go with you.” Ariel puffed out his chest. “Who will protect you? You need to travel with a gentleman of your own family. Ladies can’t travel alone.”
With these words, he rushed Catherine and hugged her round the waist. She hugged him back fiercely.
In recent weeks, Ariel had begun to tell Catherine and his mother that he was too old for such embraces. Now, however, he seemed to have forgotten about his newfound maturity.
“I have to go alone,” she said, looking down at his little face, “but I will write, and I will be back. I have to do this forus. Think, Ariel, if I get this money, we could take back Wethersby Park.”
Ariel released her and she watched him consider this idea, his eyes moving from the carpet back up to her face. “And then I would be lord of the manor?”
“Precisely.”
“Catherine,” Lady Wethersby said, “I do not know—if you got this money—if it would be enough—for the debts—and, even if it was, I don’t know if I could let you—”
Catherine put her hand over Lady Wethersby’s.
“You and Ariel are my family. Please, Elena, if I can, let me do this for you. You have done so much for me. You have been my friend when I did not deserve it.”
“You have always deserved it,” Lady Wethersby said, choking back a little sob and giving her a small pat on her hand.
And then the other woman stood, her mind clearly flitting from this sentimental moment to the task before Catherine.
“Well, if you are going on a trip, you must take my trunk—it is the only one we have suitable for genteel travel. We can’t have you going to a duke’s estate looking like a common…” And then Lady Wethersby glided out of the room, leaving Catherine wondering how she had gotten so lucky with her strange little family.
An hour later, a messenger arrived with the promised salvation: a check for one thousand pounds.
That evening, as Catherine watched Ariel bite into a treacle tart, a smile stretched wide on his face, she resolved that she would do it. She would restore her little family to its former glory. She would save this family as she had been unable to save her first. She knew, down to her marrow, that it was within her power.
This money would put Lady Wethersby back into society and send Ariel to school, launching him as the proper baronet that he was born to be. And it would enable her to finish her manuscript, the volume that, besides Ariel and Elena, gave her life meaning. Her manuscript was the only other thing that made her feel like she might be able to gather the strands of her shattered life and, weaving them together, make something new and not irredeemably broken.
Only later, long after supper, when she was in her little room alone at the top of the house, did she have time to reflect back on the biggest obstacle standing in the way of her accomplishing this feat.
The problem that went by so many names.
His Grace.
Lord Edington.
The Marquess of Forster.
The Duke of Edington.
John Breminster.
