Page 42 of Mail-Order Viscountess

What she needed.

She stared at their reflections in the window glass—two women far from home, their futures hanging by threads that could snap at any moment.

What she needed was security. Independence. The ability to support herself and Clara without relying on anyone else’s goodwill or charity.

What she needed was exactly what Edmund Hartwell had destroyed with his assumptions and his rigid morality.

“You should at least think about it,” Clara murmured. “About staying here. Both of us. The Balfours seem like good people. And Thomas⁠—”

“He’s leaving for California.” She forced the words out, as though repetition could make it hurt less.

“Then maybe he needs a reason to stay.”

CHAPTER 14

The remnants of supper had been cleared away, but no one moved to leave the table.

Thomas sat in his usual chair, between Mandie and Mrs. Wang. The weight of expectation pressed down from every direction. At the head of the table, Enoch’s steady blue gaze tracked him with that particular brand of patience that had always made Thomas want to bolt.

James sat to Enoch’s right, Rose beside him, both wearing expressions that said they’d already discussed what needed to happen here. Robert leaned back in his chair across from Thomas, arms folded, watching with the kind of quiet assessment that meant he was calculating details.

Kate and Clara had been shown to their room an hour ago. Mrs. Wang carried up their supper herself, insisting they needed rest more than company. The absence of the sisters should have made the coming conversation easier. Instead, it amplified the weight of what had happened. Proof this was something his family needed to face without witnesses.

Mrs. Wang broke the silence first, as she so often did. “We talk now about what must be done.” Her accent thickened a little, the way it always did when she was being particularly direct. “No more pretending. No more waiting.”

His ribs ached. His face throbbed. But neither of those pains compared to the heaviness settling in his chest as every eye in the room fixed on him.

“I know what you’re going to say.” He forced the words out before anyone else could speak. Before Enoch could use that reasonable tone, or James could lay out the practical arguments, or Mrs. Wang could cut straight to the bone with her knife-edged truth.

“Do you?” Enoch’s question carried no challenge, just genuine curiosity.

Thomas met his eldest brother’s gaze. “You’re going to tell me I need to marry her. That it’s the honorable thing to do. That her reputation is ruined, and marriage is the only way to fix it.”

“And is it?” Robert’s voice came quiet from across the table. “The honorable thing?”

The question landed differently than Thomas expected. Not an accusation, but an actual inquiry—as if Robert genuinely wanted to know what Thomas thought, rather than simply telling him what to do.

He looked down at his hands, at the calluses from ranch work and the cuts that hadn’t quite healed from gathering wood in the storm. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if it’s honorable?” James leaned forward, his expression intent. “Or you don’t know if you want to do it?”

Both. Neither.

His throat tightened around words he couldn’t quite shape. How did he explain that marrying Kate felt simultaneously like the right choice and a trap closing around him? That the thought of her leaving made his chest ache, but the thought of staying at the ranch made him feel like he couldn’t breathe?

“She deserves better than being trapped in marriage because of circumstances.” He forced himself to meet Enoch’s gaze again. “She came here with plans. Dreams of building something that was hers. And now those are gone because I⁠—”

“Because Edmund Hartwell is a fool who looks at appearance over truth.” Mrs. Wang’s sharp tone cut through his wallowing. “You keep her alive in the storm. You do what any good man do. The shame is his, not yours.”

“She’s right.” Rose’s voice carried that gentle strength he’d always appreciated about her. “You protected Kate when she needed it. What Hartwell chose to see says more about him than about either of you.”

Thomas shook his head. “But the damage is done. Her seamstress business—everything she was counting on—it’s finished before it started.”

“So we give her another option.” Mandie tipped her head as her expression turned thoughtful. “Both sisters could stay here. We have the room. Kate could still do her needlework—there are plenty of Walnut Springs families in these mountains who’d pay for quality work. She wouldn’t have Butte society, but she’d have independence.”

“Would she though?” He caught the frustration in his tone and reined it in, but not before Enoch sent a glare. “Or would she be trapped here, dependent on our charity? That’s exactly what she was trying to escape.”

“There’s a difference between charity and hospitality.” Enoch’s voice carried that steady authority Thomas had grown up both respecting and resenting. “Between offering help and forcing dependence.”