“Not sell, no.”
“A pawnbroker? A money lender?”
Izzy laughed. “Look out of the window, Sophie, across the street. What do you see?”
“Oh.‘Garthwaite and Sons of York, Jewellers of distinction to the gentry since 1689’”
“Precisely. Mr Garthwaite has supplied many pieces of jewellery to my family. I am sure he will be happy to oblige a long-standing customer by advancing me a suitable sum. Ian may redeem the pendant when he is next here, or I can, when I have my next quarter’s allowance.”
“How much will you get for it?”
“Perhaps two hundred. Two hundred and fifty, if I am lucky.”
“And your allowance will cover that?” Sophie said, her eyes widening.
“Well… almost. Ian is very generous. Before we were married, he asked me how much I wanted as pin money. What would be‘a comfortable amount’,as he put it. Papa had given me two hundred a year, so I asked for five hundred from Ian, and he just laughed and said,‘Shall we say eight hundred — two hundred a quarter?’I could not imagine how I would spend half so much, and said so, but he said,‘You will find a way, but you must not exceed that amount, and no gaming debts, ever, or I shall lock you up at Stonywell until they are cleared.’I have never been sure whether he was serious, so I take the greatest care only to spend what I can afford. But I must have moneynow and Mr Garthwaite will oblige me, I am sure. Back in five minutes.”
It was slightly longer than that, for Mr Garthwaite wished to celebrate her visit with a glass of wine, but at the end of it her purse was heavier by an astonishing five hundred pounds.
She returned cock-a-hoop to the inn, to be greeted by a pair of serious faces.
“Izzy, what does Lord Farramont mean,‘safely in wedlock again’?”Sophie said in a small voice, waving Ian’s letter.
“Oh. That.”
“Yes, that. Olly thinks it must be about the chaplain who was murdered. Was there something underhand about him? Was he defrocked, or some such?”
“He was never ordained in the first place, that was what was wrong with him,” Izzy said crisply. “Ian and I are not legally married. The girls are illegitimate. And since he married my mother and father, too,Iam illegitimate. Everything I had has been taken from me, so can you blame me for being angry and not wanting to see Ian? I have been given my freedom, for a little while, and I intend to make use of it.”
Sophie chewed her lip, an anxious look on her face. “Izzy… I do not like this. First Mr Marsden, and now we are going north again, and I am guessing to Northumberland, to see Sydney Davenport. I do not know where Mr Osborn is from, but—”
“Scotland. His principal seat and most of his land is in Scotland.”
“So, you plan to visit Mr Davenport next and then Mr Osborn, is that it? Because you are free now and could marry someone different, and pretend your marriage to Lord Farramont never happened?”
“It is not pretence,” Izzy said, anger rising inside her. “It is the truth — I have never been married. I am illegitimate and a spinster. My daughters are illegitimate. I doubt anyoneelse would even want to marry me now, but yes, I want to understand, if I can, what my life might have been like if I had chosen differently five years ago. I could have married any one of the four of them, Ian or Godfrey or Sydney or Robert. They all offered. They were all eligible. But I could only marry one of them, and I chose Ian. Was that the right thing to do? I thought I would never know, but now I have been given this opportunity to find out… to discover if my life might have been incomparably better if I had chosen differently. Or incomparably worse, of course, as with Marsden. There is a reason a rich man is rich after all — it is because he never spends his money. But the others… Sophie, I have to know, once and for all.”
Sophie nodded. “I understand but… the past is gone, Izzy. Whatever has happened between you and Lord Farramont, he wishes to marry you again and is that not for the best? For you and for your daughters?”
“I have no idea what is for the best, Sophie, and nor do you,” Izzy snapped. “That is what this journeying is all about, to answer that question. Am I not entitled to find my own happiness wherever I may?”
“What about your daughters’ happiness?” Sophie shot back. “What about your husband’s happiness? Do they count for nothing?”
For an instant, Izzy’s heart quailed. Her girls… and Ian, who was the best of husbands, in so many ways. But she must not surrender to sentimentality now. She had made her plan and she would follow it, no matter what.
“They are better off without me, Sophie. Believe it or not, I am well aware of my own shortcomings. Ian deserves a better wife, and now he is free to find her — someone better suited to his quiet disposition, who will not throw the decanter at his head… someone who will give him a son. That is what he wants,after all, and I have signally failed in that regard. As for the girls…”
She paused. Her daughters! How could she leave them behind? She might never see them again. For a moment, despair washed over her, but she must not waver now.
“If I never go back, the girls will forget their wayward mama soon enough,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. “Ian will look after them. Now, are you going to stand my friend and help me on my way, or shall I point you to the stage coach office, and you can go back to Durham and that miserable house?”
“We will come with you, of course,” Olly said quietly, before Sophie could speak. “It will be an opportunity to take a look at my own estate, but even without that, we would come. That is what friends are for. But we would not be your friends if we did not tell you when we think you are making a mistake.”
Izzy paced twice across the room, keeping her anger below the boiling point. The cheek of it! To presume to offer her advice! Surely she was allowed to manage her own life as she saw fit? But she could not rage and throw things with friends as she could with Ian or her own family, and besides, she had five hundred pounds in her purse and had bested Ian royally, so she could not be angry for long. The post chaise was still waiting and the Great North Road was calling to her. It was time to leave York behind, and head for Northumberland.
***
On their last overnight stop on the road, Izzy was in an odd, brittle mood. She had slept badly the night before, waking fretfully not long after dawn, her mind filled with images of Ian and the girls, her beloved daughters. She regretted now so many days and weeks spent away from them. And Stonywell! If she walked away from her marriage now, it would not only beIan and the girls she would be leaving behind, it would also be the house that had been her home for five years, that she had grown to love. And not just the house, the people there — Henry and Mary, for instance, and their string of children, and her loyal servants who smiled even as they swept up broken china. They would hate her if she abandoned them all.
