“Edwards last,” Wil reminded them, casting a troubled glance at Eli.
“If ever,” Eli agreed.
Wil stiffened, glanced at Fanny, and got up abruptly. “I should seek my bed. Amy has been asleep for an hour.” He gave Fanny a one-armed hug and disappeared before anyone could comment.
Wil’s instinct to protect Fanny, unusual in one so young, won Eli’s admiration.
*
A week ofemotional upheaval sped by, making Fanny’s head spin. It took three of those days to evaluate their assets. They turned Horace’s personal goods into cash the first day. Benson insisted on accompanying Fanny to the tailors, who gave them shillings on the pound off their debts, one explaining, “For I fear these will be long out of fashion before I find someone to purchase them.” The rest sold for a pittance. Benson insisted they keep Horace’s watch for Wil, though the boy would have sold it.
“You may regret it when you’re older,” Benson told him.
“It will only remind me the sort of man I do not wish to be,” Wil answered, breaking Fanny’s heart.
None of their suppliers had lined up with the creditors. Fanny dreaded approaching them, even to evaluate their inventory. Local mills provided most of their bolts of cloth. None wished goods returned, and all added sums to their list of debts, though the amounts were modest. Debt continued to rise, with little increase in Fanny’s small box of coins.
She and Benson went to the office of the Home and Orient Shipping Company, near their quay along the canal. Their agent took her few bolts of silk, leaving that account even. The woolen agent in Scotland with which Grandfather had established a relationship decades ago, however, had not replied by the end of the week. Fanny had to guess the value of the remaining bolts.
Fanny opened the store for business every afternoon, often leaving Wil behind the counter while she and Benson ran errands. Traffic was thin, and the customers who did come cast such pitying looks at her that she wished they stayed away. After three days, when creditors began stopping by “to see about progress,” they simply closed up.
She had no time to write. At the end of the week, she finally found time to tally the finished material stored in the drawers in the store. Benson cautioned her to list it at its lowest likely sale price. Her heart grew heavier with every line she added. She didn’t get far before a deepening realization caved her world in.
If we can’t pay the mortgage, the lenders will confiscate it all.Those lenders would not give her family credit for as much as these treasures were actually worth.We could sell it for more ourselves and maybe scrape up enough to pay the mortgage, but then we’d have no money to replenish inventory.They were trapped in a vicious circle.
Her legs felt like lead weights when she trudged up the stairs. Benson sat at their kitchen table, absently encouraging Amy with her arithmetic while reading some sort of legal tome.
He smiled brightly when Fanny came in. “Finished already?” At her expression, he sobered and stood, pulling out a chair for her. “What is it, Fanny?”
She glowered at him. “Fanny?”
“Miss Hancock.”
“I reached a decision,” she said.
Benson glanced at Amy, who rolled her eyes.
“I know. Go read in my bedroom. May I go down to Saint Olaf’s instead?” Amy asked hopefully. The tiny churchyard was a patch of green in their brick-and-stone neighborhood.
“Go on, then. Take Wil with you. Tell him he’s done enough inventory,” Fanny told her.
Benson sat across from Fanny, studying her as if worried she might shatter. “What is it you have decided, Miss Hancock?”
“You may as well call me Fanny,” she grumbled.
His smile was warm but swiftly gone. “In that case, I better be Eli to you. It may make conversation easier.”
Something about using his Christian name made what she had to say more of a confession of sorrow and less like a transaction with her solicitor. She attempted to smile back.
“Eli, then. We aren’t going to be able keep the store. You’ve known it all along.”
His expression, equally rueful and open, told her she was correct. He shrugged. “We haven’t spoken to the earl yet.”
“He might pay the mortgage and some of the more pressing bills—I can’t ask him to pay the jeweler. That was on Horace, and it wouldn’t be right. But we need to sell off inventory to begin to pay some of the rest. Selling quickly means selling below cost, and we’ll have no reserves to replace it or keep us in coal. By the time Wil reaches his majority, we’ll have had nine years of hand-to-mouth struggle, and he’ll have a bankrupt store and two sisters dependent on his earnings. The earl’s money might be better spent on Wil’s education.”
“I confess, Fanny, I couldn’t recommend to the earl that the drapery store would be a good investment, not without a large influx of cash immediately and regularly. Frankly, his estate can’t manage it.”
“How much went to the heirs the old earl bothered to remember?” she asked bitterly.
