I strode right to him and pointed a finger at his face. “What did you just say?”
“I said the condition is not the same as when I bought it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So, youboughtit.”
His lips disappeared when he pressed them together, realizing his mistake. “For you.”
“Which most of the world would consider a gift. I didn’t ask you to buy it for me. Scratch it from the list.”
Mr. Green narrowed his gaze at Mama. “Reduce it to 25 percent of what I paid for it. That is very generous of me.”
“No, Mama, don’t mark anything.” I blew out a deep breath. Seeing Mr. Green so ostentatiously use the wordgenerousmade me ill. I couldn’t allow him to feel as if he were doing us any favors. “I’ll pay for all of it. And he can take the coat as well. We’ve had enough of yourgenerosity, Mr. Green. It is a perversion of the word.”
Mr. Green shrugged. “I’ll send my solicitor in two weeks.”
“You could have sent him today,” I said. “Didn’t he feel comfortable telling a widow and her daughter you’ve been secretly putting them in debt for years?”
Mr. Green wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I assumed it was so.
“You could always get your own solicitor,” he said. “Although with the court systems being what they are, it could be years before this is settled. And let’s be honest, it isn’t that large of a sum.”
I’d seen the sum. It was large for us.
“Please leave.” Mama’s voice was icy. Mr. Green turned to her in surprise. He’d expected me to be the one to expel him from our home. “And never darken our doorway again.”
Mr. Green narrowed his eyes but gave her a very short bow. “I never plan to.”
I didn’t bother showing him out. It wasn’t as though he could get lost in our little cottage. We both heard the door close, and the moment it did, Mama crumpled the top paper in her fist. After taking several deep breaths, she turned to me. “I cannot believe I almost made you marry that man.”
“But you didn’t.”
“When I see the difference between him and Mr. Tate ...” Mama shivered. “Some things are worth going through hardships for, and a marriage to a man you can trust is one of them. I’d starve before I allowed him anywhere near you again.”
My eyes pricked, and I strode over to Mama, dropped to my knees at her feet, and put my head in her lap. Immediately, her hand went to my head. When I’d been younger and had worn my hair down, she used to stroke it while she told me stories or while Papa read to us from the Bible. My hair was pulled up now, but she smoothed what she could.
I’d been dreading going back to living with just Mama, not having anyone else to turn to, but we would be able to do it. We’d been doing it for seven years.
If only we didn’t have to pay Mr. Green. The total was 150 pounds, a bill that would have been noticed, but not with alarm, when Papa had been alive. We’d spent triple that amount on my one Season in Town. But Mama’s jointure had withered to nearly nothing. What was left was only enough to cover the cost of food and a few items of clothing each year. If I were able to take a position near the cottage David had found for us in Lincolnshire, it would take me years to earn enough to pay Mr. Green back.
“Perhaps we will be able to talk some sense into his solicitor when he comes,” I said. “There has to be a way to fight him.”
“Tate Hall must have a solicitor.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. We had no right to anything Tate Hall had to offer. “As Mr. Green said, even with a solicitor, it could be years before we are done with this.”
“Then we can speak to the solicitor about making the payment at a later date. Your inheritance is ten times that amount. We can pay it once you are married.”
I settled deeper into Mama’s lap, wishing the world could be simple like it had been when I was a child. I wasn’t going to marry David, and I doubted Mr. Green would be willing to wait a year and a half for his money.
Mama didn’t know it yet, but she was about to get a lot worse news than this bill from Mr. Green. Would it be better to tell her now, while she was already distraught, or wait until I’d formulated some kind of a plan with David? When David and I had parted, it had been clear that I would wait until we’d spoken, but I no longer understood why. This was my mother. And who was David to me? He was practically a stranger, or at least, he would be in a few years. Mama was the person I should be making plans with, not him.
But I wasn’t ready to give up this moment of her hand on my head quite yet. I kept my eyes closed and pretended my biggest concern was how I was going to escape my lessons on the pianoforte.
But I wasn’t as good at pretending as I used to be. With a deep breath, I lifted my head and met Mama’s gaze. She gave me a wobbly smile, but then she must have seen something in the way I looked at her, for her face froze.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Mama,” I said, my voice breaking.
