“I wasn’t finished.” Clara rolled those eyes again, but then her expression turned uncharacteristically serious. “Della, I need you to listen to me.” She removed the napkin from her clenched fist, unfolding that hand and covering it with hers. “Are you listening?” she asked, one brow arched in mock gravity.
“Of course I’m listening. What else am I to do?” Della really was far too bone weary for a conversation of this magnitude, but she didn’t appear to have been given a choice.
“Good.” Clara patted the hand she still held, sandwiching it between both of hers. “No one could ever lose themselves in caring for you.”
“But—” Della started to refute. Her parents had, she thought immediately. Her mother especially. Caring for Della had made her cold, and it had broken her heart so fully that there was simply nothing left of it anymore.
“No.” Clara’s voice was stern, authoritative in a way Della hadn’t known she was capable of. “Listen to me,” she demanded. “I know you are thinking of your stepmother, the wretch. She made you feel as if you are unlovable, as if caring for you is some exhausting chore. But I have been here with you for nearly eight years. Each and every day.In truth, we’ve grown up together. Have you once seen melose myself,as you say Andrew is doomed to?”
Clara didn’t give her time to answer. She wasn’t planning to, anyway. She wasn’t going to argue a moot point.
“And this sense of obligation! Whatever that means. Nonsense. What obligation would Andrew have to you, anyway? You played in the garden together as children. Do you know where the people I played with as children are now? I certainly do not. I don’t remember their names, let alone have some duty to care for them.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but—” Della tried to interject on her own behalf, but Clara was having none of it.
“I am not finished.” Clara arched a pointed brow. “Everyone who lives here has an obligation to you in some way, because you are the lady of the house in which we work. But you gave each of us a more than fair choice—to be freed of that obligation or to stay with you.”
Della’s eyes teared up again. She had to be defying the limits of her body’s natural capabilities at this point, she’d cried so many tears.
“All of us chose you.” Clara spoke so plainly, so simply. As if she weren’t changing Della’s entire perspective on herself. “Just because your parents weren’t capable of loving you properly does not mean the rest of us suffer the same affliction. Andrew certainly has no such problem.”
Della sniffled once. “Only time will tell, I suppose.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Della awoke atfirst light yet again. She’d exhausted herself with tears and emotions and silent goodbyes to the stairs and the wallpaper and the carpets. There was but one thing she had left to do before they all left Westfield Manor forever.
She sat behind her writing desk one last time. Clara had tried to convince her to take it with them, but the packing had really become excessive. There were only a few sheets of paper left, the rest tucked safely away in one of her trunks with all of Andrew’s letters. She couldn’t think of him right now, though, unless she wanted to cry again.
The first letter was to her brother. They’d always been so different. He’d always been groomed to be the next viscount. She was groomed to marry well. They had so little in common. But still, she’d loved him. That he was her half brother never mattered, so it stood to reason that finding out he was not truly her brother at all shouldn’t have mattered. And it hadn’t, really.
Until Andrew told her about their outing to the club. What David had said about her, how he held such resentment and repressed anger. It was enough for Della to sever the last ties she had to him, however fraying and weak they’d been in the first place.
DearDavid,
While you will always be the brother I grew up with, you must knowthat you mean less to me than the dirt under my boots.
I fear that you haven’t considered what your life might be like once Mother and Father are gone, beyond possessing the wealth that’s been stolen from other far more deserving people. Andrew tells me you have all of these grand plans for your viscountcy, but I fear that you will always be miserably alone.
I’m sure that you’ll seek a wife at some point, because Heaven knows Father will not rest until you’ve secured an heir. I do hope that you’ll be kinder to her than you have been to me. Even so, I do fear that no one could ever truly love you.I’m inclined to believe that everyone is worthy of love by virtue of their own innate humanity, but therein lies the issue. You have lost all of your humanity. Whether it was the excessive cruelty or the carelessness or the copious drinking, you’ve lost everything that ever made you capable of caring for others.
I hope you find some peace in this life, whatever that looks like for a spoiled aristocrat like yourself.
Della didn’t sign the letter, because she’d already decided he’d never read it. It was written at a much higher level than a man who failed his way through Eton could comprehend. She tossed the paper into the fire, and she watched it turn to ash. She’d sworn to leave her family behind here, and that was exactly what she was going to do.
Her father came next.
Father,
I don’t know what it means to know you any longer. To think that when I’d run into your office as a girl and sit on your knee, when you’d tug on my hair ribbon just to retie it for me, you were in that very office swindling others. Sending people to the poor house for your own gain.I don’t know if it matters to you that I thinkyou are despicable, but I very much do.
I’ve come to realize what it means to make a choice, and you’ve made so many poor ones. You had a choice, what was in my best interest or what made you the most money. For years, you chosemoney overyour own family. Overme, at least.
The only child you have left is an incredible disappointment, and that may very well be punishment enough for what you’ve done. I hope you never feel the destitution you’ve put others through, because that is something no one deserves.
But David Harris being the only legacy you leave in this world? That, you do so deserve.
At that, Della actually laughed. What a gift, to be able to laugh at her own pain. It was as cleansing as the tears or the writing itself. As she watched the second letter burn, Della felt the warmth on her smiling face.
