"What windfall?" Violet wanted to know at once.
"Mr. Speedwell refers to the sale of some books yesterday," Mary hung her bonnet on a hook by the door, "but that money belongs to his shop takings, not to me, and I won't hear another word about it! It is not mine to spend." She spread her wet coat over the back of a wooden chair from the table and set it by the fire to dry. "However, I do have news to cheer you, Violet— I mean Violette."
Her sister looked doubtful. "What news?"
"I decided that perhaps I have been a little harsh on you." She held her fingers before the fire to get some warmth back into the tips, for although she possessed a pair of gloves, they were very worn and the stitching had come apart in several places, making them more of a sieve against the cold, rather than a shield. "As you pointed out to me yesterday, I had my chance as a young girl and yet, because of our misfortunes and papa losing his estate before you came out, you have had very few entertainments. It isn't fair."
Violet flushed pink. "But that is not your fault, sister. I didn't mean that—"
"You are now my responsibility. We are all we have left, and I ought to make an effort for your sake." Opening her reticule she took out some bank notes and showed them to Violet. "I found some savings I had forgotten that I ever put aside. So, since it is almost Christmas, we are going to buy you some good silk and make you a pretty gown. A proper ball gown in the very latest fashion."
"Oh!" Her sister gasped in delight, hands clasped around the back of a chair, but then her smile fell. "Where shall I wear such a gown? We have nowhere to go, nothing to attend."
"I'll find somewhere, sister— even if it is merely to keep you from beating some poor soul about the head with your shoe out of frustration."
Mary had decided that she would seek assistance from Raven's mother, Lady Charlotte Rothsey Deverell, on one of her visits. That lady would surely know somewhere Violet could show-off in a new frock. Lady Charlotte might even like to discover a new, pretty young lady upon whom to practice her polishing skills and Violet would soak it all up, far more enthusiastically than Mary ever could. Violet had a head start on her sister, for she possessed the prized ivory skin and pale golden hair that gave her looks a natural advantage. Unlike Mary, whose olive complexion could only be blamed upon some distant, little-known and never mentioned branch of the Ashford family tree.
"There is nothing more troubling to me than a young woman who does not make the most of her God-given attributes, even if they are not many in number," Lady Charlotte was fond of saying, while glaring hard at Mary. "It is a vulgar sort of false modesty to pretend one does not care about one's reflection. To give up and give in to the ravages of time is a mark of laziness and the greatest error a woman can make. The less she has to work with the harder she ought to try."
Yes, she would enlist Lady Charlotte's help with her sister.
Violet was so full of glee at the prospect of a new gown and a possible outing into society that she did not stop to wonder how her sensible and organized sister could have forgotten something as important as putting money aside. Nor did she notice that Mary's favorite cameo broach and silver earrings were missing.
But what did the loss of a few material things matter, thought Mary, if it meant that her sister could finally have something to which she might look forward. The pawnbroker had given her a good price for those pieces and hadn't tried to cheat her, so she was feeling a little flush with wealth and not at all sorry.
"Let's have some sherry!" she exclaimed, rubbing her hands together as the life came back into her fingers. She raised her voice. "We do have some sherry, do we not, Mr. Speedwell?"
"Mary!" Her sister was scandalized. "It is much too early surely."
"Let's say it's medicinal then. I'm sure Dr. Woodley would approve of that." She was certainly in need of a cure, with this feverish sensation running through her veins. "It is, after all, a very cold day."
Violet stared at her.
"What now?" Mary demanded. "You recently accused me of being the most horribly sensible woman that ever lived. You ought to celebrate my wicked relapse into reckless behavior."
"I'm sure we can have a little stiffener, Mary," Mr. Speedwell exclaimed eagerly, for he was never one to let the time of day intrude on his love for a quick sip.
And so they indulged in sherry before luncheon.
Whatever next, Mary mused. Clearly it was very fortunate that she didn't have a "windfall" very often, or she would go utterly mad. Probably also a very lucky thing that men like Ransom Deverell did not come into the shop every day, stirring up the dust and putting ideas into her head.
"What has prompted this change in you?" her sister wanted to know. "Surely not anything I said."
No, it was not entirely due to Violet's complaints, but she could hardly tell her sister about Deverell, how he had swept in and spun her around. Or how she had made it her project to get that man to read a novel.
It may not appear to be an achievement of much magnificence when weighed against other revolutions and rebellions in the world, but she was not a woman who expected grand things in her life anymore. Mary would be quite content with just a few good deeds fulfilled.
Chapter Nine
Two days later, that imaginary pet falcon having failed to chase Miss Mary Ashford off his moor, Ransom was at the door of his mother's suite at Mivart's Hotel. If anybody could be relied upon to remind him of the general wickedness of females, it was his mother, and he needed a dose of that dark medicine— her own particular brimstone and treacle— to put him back to normal.
"I would have come last week, mama, but I've been very busy with Deverell's. Now that father so seldom comes to London there is much for me to do."
Lady Charlotte immediately drew back from the peck he placed upon her cheek. "Your father cares nothing for you. Yet you spend all your waking hours working for him. Never can you spare a moment to visit me, the woman who ruined her looks to give birth to you!"
"I'm here now, aren't I?" he replied gruffly, tasting her familiar chalky powder on his lips. She wore it more thickly now than she once did. "Good afternoon to you too, mama."
"I suppose I must be grateful for the scraps of attention you throw my way. How like him you have become. Doling out your time to me in the tiniest of begrudging increments, the same as him with my allowance."
His mother was on usual form. Good. Ten minutes in her company ought to put him back on even keel and remind him of exactly why he didn't let women wander around on his moor longer than necessary.
"Why do you suppose he named you Ransom? Because you were the ransom demand he got from me, from my father, from the aristocracy he despised."
"Yes, mama," he muttered, following her across the room. Attar of Roses— her favorite scent— filled his nostrils. Anything she touched always seemed to hold a whisper of the fragrance for days after. Like Sally White's cheap perfume. He swallowed the wave of nausea that churned with sudden violence up into his throat and burned there.
"Men used to write poems about my figure," his mother added, turning with a flourish as she stood before her fireplace. "Now look at me. Your father put paid to all that with his base demands upon me." She smoothed hands over that self-maligned waist, but Ransom saw only the usual slender, corseted shape. "I had no choice, of course, but to submit. It is a wife's unhappy lot to bear children."
Ah, yes, this old rub.
For much of his youth, Ransom had been led to believe that his father forced himself on Lady Charlotte, to beget the three legitimate offspring she bore him during the miserable years of their marriage. The accusation of physical violence was never stated explicitly, but she planted the idea with partial whispers, frail and needy sighs left in her eldest son's ears. There they grew, taking root inside the impressionable mind of an unhappy, confused child. Like quick, vicious pinches they were not immediately evident, but developed later into mean little bruises under his skin.
As a grown man, when he finally found
the courage to ask her directly, his mother claimed complete innocence, pretending it was all Ransom's fault that he came by such an idea about his father. But she was still doing it now— alluding to the act of sexual intercourse as if it was something beneath her, something degrading that she never wanted.
His mother had a habit of circling an issue with suggestion and conjecture, then stepping back to let someone else fire the arrow. She'd been doing it to Ransom all his life.
These days he was wiser and cut her off at the beginning. "Yes, mama, I know how you dislike intimate relations with men." He took off his hat and removed his gloves, dropping both to the table by the window. "That's why I never hear of your dalliances with various colorful, and often continental, gentlemen."
Hands resting on her waist she posed in rigid outrage, treating Ransom to her specialty— an icy stare meant to freeze his blood. Something else that no longer worked on him.
"Did you really think I could have no inkling of your affairs?" He laughed.
Perhaps she did think that. Lady Charlotte appeared to live in a fantasy of her own making. A fairytale in which she was the abused, imprisoned princess. Yet she managed to live very comfortably in this "imprisonment", which happened to be an expensive suite of rooms at Mivart's Hotel in Mayfair. Her former husband still paid many of her bills, even all these years after their divorce, and she continued to coast along on the fringes of society by using her father's name whenever possible. She was, after all, the daughter of an earl, as she would remind anybody she met.
"I have gentleman friends occasionally," she snapped. "Do you expect me to live shut away from society altogether? I suppose you are embarrassed by me too these days. Like your ingrate sister, now that she has risen to the title of a Countess and left me behind, quite forgetting the part I played in getting her a husband."
He rolled his eyes. "No, mama. Of course you don't embarrass me."
"Perhaps I should become a nun and consign myself to a convent. Is that what you want of me?"
"Mama, I may not know a vast amount about nuns, but I suspect you don't possess the qualifications to become one. And, of course, there is no reason for you, or anybody, to lead a cloistered life. I merely ask that you don't try to pull the fleece over my eyes by feigning blamelessness and piety. We are, none of us, without fault. Or sin. The world would be a far better place if everybody admitted that to be the case."
She strode across to him, adjusted his cravat and reached further upward to brush a lock of hair from his brow. He stiffened at once, always wary of her touch. "You are looking tired and worn, Ransom. You should get away from Town for a while. Why don't we both travel to Oxfordshire to see Raven?"
He moved away from her. "I'm much too busy with the club to be away this time of year, and travel in winter is an abysmal trial. I think you ought to stay here until summer. I'll take you then."
"But now that she is expecting again, Raven needs me at Greyledge."
"What for?"
"What do you mean?" Her chin went up, eyes gleaming frostily. "A daughter needs her mother's advice at such a time. I thought that was evident."
"Even though motherhood is something you would have avoided if you could? I'm not sure that qualifies you to attend Raven in her confinement and give her any guidance on the subject of children. She doesn't really need the additional anxiety, does she?"
"Anxiety? How could I cause her anxiety?"
His mother was, as usual, oblivious to the wreckage she left in her wake. He shook his head. "Mama, I'm not escorting you to Oxfordshire until the summer and after the brat is born, so you may as well resign yourself to waiting."
"Then I'll find someone else to take me. Or I'll go alone."
"Hale doesn't want guests at the estate until after the birth."
"I'm not a guest! I'm family!"
But he knew his sister's husband would throw a fit if Lady Charlotte turned up, uninvited yet again, especially until after the baby was born. He couldn't blame the man for wanting his mother-in-law out of the way. Raven had miscarried one child already, and her husband did not want to risk any danger to her health this time— hence her latest letter begging Ransom to keep their mother safely out of the way in Town.
It was three years since Raven married Sebastian Hale, the Earl of Southerton, but their mother had, by now, been a visitor to their estate enough times to make a nuisance of herself. Once she was there she was apparently very difficult to be rid of too. Like an infestation of ants.
"Try to keep her occupied in Town for as long as you can. I really think my husband's head might explode if she arrives here again before she is wanted," his sister had written. "But for pity's sake, do not tell her that she is not welcome here, or that I asked you to intervene! Be tactful."
Tactful. How was he supposed to be tactful with their mother? She was much too thick-skinned for subtle ploys.
"You can play the ‘doting grandmama’ in July as much as you could now in December, don't you think?" he said. "In the summer there will be something for you to dote upon at least. A wet, leaking, sniveling creature that will probably upset you at once by ruining your gown and putting sticky fingers in your hair."
"But I should be with my daughter at such a time. Nothing will stop me. I shall go! I am determined."
So much for tact. He might have known that nothing less than the brutal truth would make a mark. "Mama, they don't want you there. Plain and simple."
She blinked against the lace trim of her handkerchief, feigning a tear. "How could you be so unkind!"
"Somebody has to say it. Somebody has to keep disaster from happening, and that responsibility seems to have fallen to my lot lately where this family is concerned."
Once again it was obvious to Ransom that he had become the sin-eater for his family. To him they came with their dark secrets, problems, and worries. On him they placed their burdens. When did it begin? Probably when he was a child, the vessel into which Lady Charlotte poured her animosity and disappointment. Since then he had taken on the secrets of his brothers and sister. He knew where all the skeletons were buried and he kept the knowledge inside himself, having relieved the others of that responsibility. For some reason he had never questioned this duty. It seemed to have happened before he knew it.
Even his father had used him to dispense of an uncomfortable deed, when, six years ago, he chose Ransom to inform Lady Charlotte of his remarriage.
"Better she hear it from you, than in a letter from me," he'd said, waving a hand at his son as if it was nothing, a mere trifle. "You're her favorite."
So when Ransom delivered that news, he alone faced his mother's immediate pain and fury. Her former husband's remarriage had affected her terribly. Lady Charlotte may, or may not, have wanted True Deverell herself, but she did not want any other woman to have him. A long line of temporary mistresses she could handle, but a new wife was a bitter pill that no amount of her favorite champagne could wash down.
Ransom could have felt more pity for her, had he not, shortly before that, discovered another of her lies, one that stuck a thorn in his heart, deeper than any other. It had made him doubt everything his mother ever told him.
Because he had learned the truth about the first time she left his father, when Ransom was a baby.
For years she'd told him how True Deverell refused to let her take her son with her when she left, how her husband cruelly separated mother and child. It was, so she had claimed, the reason why she came back and tried to bear her marriage. In effect, her years of unhappiness and degradation, were Ransom's fault.
But, six years ago, just before his father sent him to inform Lady Charlotte of his remarriage, Ransom had heard another version of that story. He discovered that his father had wanted her to take her son— that True Deverell had told her she would get no money and no help from him if she left without her baby. His mother left anyway, desperate to get away and be free, not caring about her own child. She only returned to her husband and "motherhood"
when she ran out of money and found her old friends less companionable than they once were.
The story about how she had cried and begged when forced to leave Ransom behind was entirely cooked up in her own mind, to earn his sympathy, to make him her pawn, and to develop more hatred for his father.
So as he stood before her six years ago, watching her choke back angry tears at the news of his father's new marriage, Ransom had been very tempted to let it all out, to strike while she was down and weakened.
But he found that he could not do it. Enraged as he was, he could not bring himself to wound her further when she was fragile and broken. Sometimes, when he still thought of that particular lie and that day, he wondered why he had not confronted her. She had never spared his feelings, so why did he hold back?
He did though. He let it fester inside himself and then he'd left his mother in London while he rode into the West Country to collect his new curricle in Exeter. From there he was driving to his father's castle on the coast for the wedding, but first, of course, he had encountered Sally White. And a life already begun unraveling, soon fell utterly apart.
Today the memory rushed back again, of standing in this room all those years ago, fighting the urge to tell his mother that he knew what a liar she was, what a pernicious fraud of a mother she had always been. How she had used him in her war against his father. He had left this hotel confused and angry, with a pounding headache and a dry mouth, in desperate need of libation. He could not see straight, certainly could not think prudently.
But if he blamed his mother, even partly, for what happened on the moor with Sally White, would that not make him just as bad as Lady Charlotte blaming him for her wretched marriage and "ruined" figure?
He took another breath, trying not to inhale his mother's perfume, and forced himself back to the present. "Well, that's my news delivered. You're not to go to Greyledge, so put it out of your mind. I was supposed to break it gently, but that's the best I can do since you're so bloody stubborn."
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