Page 32 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

Her own mother did not recognize her. It shouldn’t have hurt so badly as it had, really. Felicity knew it in an intellectual sort of way, could acknowledge to herself that twenty-eight years had come and gone since last they’d encountered one another. That last day, she’d been only a puling child, just three years old, wrenching at her mother’s skirts and begging piteously for her to stay.

Don’t go, Mama. Please don’t go.

Her palms grew hot even now with the remembered burn of the fabric yanked from the clench of her small hands. Her eyes ached with the sting of tears. Somehow she had become a child again, just as small, just as helpless. There was a wail lodged there in her throat, and she thought—she thought it must have been the last remnants of the very same one she’d given decades ago, coming loose at last. It emerged in shards, in tiny, sharp sounds that felt as though they sliced her throat on the way up.

“Don’t make a scene; you’re far too old for such things now.”

With a dismissive sniff Mama turned and brushed past Felicity in a sedate, unruffled stroll.

She couldn’t have cared less, Felicity realized, whether Felicity followed or not. Probably she would not even look back if Felicity declined to follow. Just as she had all those years ago, she would walk away without a care, without a thought. As if abandoning her children had been the easiest decision in the world to make.

Like a puppet pulled by invisible strings, Felicity wheeled about, forcing her shaky knees to support her—and she tottered after her mother like the child she had once been as she dashed the stinging tears from her eyes and swallowed back the painful, wracking sobs that wanted to tear from her lips. “Mama, I—”

“Lord, I do loathe that word.”

A long sigh, followed by a sharper demand.

“Well? Which?”

“Felicity.”

“I suppose I ought to have guessed. Charity was quite pretty, to my recollection, while you—”

Mama turned her head just briefly to cast a cross look over her shoulder.

“Well. I suppose we can’t all be great beauties.”

The paper crinkled as she unwrapped the little package of chestnuts to pop one into her mouth.

“And you did always have the propensity to whine and carry on so. Felicity means happiness, you know. I thought you’d have a more amiable temperament.”

Each word was a stab to the soul of that little girl who had been left behind. Even the bitter winter air was not so cold as Mama.

“Didn’t you—miss us? Even a little?”

Felicity’s voice tore upon the words, her heart aching in her chest.

“No; never.”

Another chestnut popped into her mouth.

“Children are the price a woman pays for the protection of a husband. My mistake was in not realizing what a sorry excuse for that your father was until it was far too late.”

Mama paused upon the pavement, looking out toward the sea in the distance.

“You left us with him,”

Felicity said in the pitiful tone of a lost child.

“You left us. Just children, at the mercy of a man who had none. A man who hated us for being your daughters. Who hated Charity especially for having the audacity to resemble you so strongly. Who hated me only for existing.”

A shrug, offensive in its nonchalance.

“Well, I could hardly go on to my next husband with two young children clinging to my skirts.”

“You abandoned Mercy, too,”

Felicity said.

Another sigh, testy and faintly impatient.

“I did my duty by you girls,”

Mama said.

“As much as I was capable. I suckled you at my breast as babies. I raised you—”

“Until you tired of us. Until we ceased to entertain.”

God, it hurt so damned badly. A terrible question slipped through the wretched tightness of her throat.

“Did you ever love us?”

She oughtn’t to have asked. The answer was there, scrawled in Mama’s flat, unmoved expression. She hadn’t cared if Felicity had followed her because she had never cared about Felicity at all. She had never cared about any of the children she’d left behind. Probably she’d never spared any of them a thought once she had left. She’d never wondered how those children had fared, what sort of women they’d become across the years which had separated them.

She hadn’t treasured the memory of her daughters enough even to have made a reasonable guess as to which had approached her, hadn’t glanced at Felicity long enough in those first moments even to search for fragments of the childish face she had once known in the woman that child grown into.

She’d never cared about any of them. Perhaps she had never cared about anyone other than herself.

Too late, it occurred to Felicity that Mama had not at all been surprised by the mention of Mercy. But how could she have known that they had all found one another? It had taken decades for them to learn that Mama had married again, borne another daughter. And it wasn’t, to the best of Felicity’s understanding, common knowledge.

But how could Mama have known, unless—unless she’d had reason to know. Unless she’d been watching from the shadows. Unless she’d slipped through the periphery of her daughters’ lives like a ghost, collecting bits of information. Determining which she could use, which might prove valuable.

Perhaps to the tune of five thousand pounds.

Felicity’s blood iced over in her veins.

“It’s you,”

she said.

“It’s you. You sent me those notes. You’re extorting me.”

Her stomach churned at the realization. The beautiful woman that Mr. Graves had become so swiftly enamored with—that woman had been her mother.

“I prefer to think of it as obtaining what is due to me,”

Mama said with a mocking little moue.

“And really, my dear, you’ve made me wait rather too long already. Weeks and weeks for you to be married and finally worth more than a school teacher’s wages. Longer still to ensure your husband could not easily set you aside with an annulment.”

Nausea churned in Felicity’s gut.

“You owe me for your very life, after all,”

Mama said lightly—so carelessly that they might have been discussing the weather.

“So I would suggest you wrest the money from your husband’s purse however you must.”

Felicity swallowed hard as she clenched her hands at her sides, the sour taste of bile coating her tongue.

“I’ll—I’ll—”

“You’ll what, darling? Cause a very public scene in the center of the city?”

Mama’s brows lifted in a patently false expression of innocence.

“I wouldn’t recommend it. You’ll ruin your own reputation faster than I ever could. But if you insist, I’ll be certain to attract an audience for your theatrics.”

The thinly-veiled threat fell precisely as she had meant it to do. Between the two of them, Mama would seem the more credible. She would only have to pretend some sort of altercation, make the right sorts of sounds, profess that she had been attacked without cause…

She could, in only moments, make Felicity appear entirely deranged. Suggest that a woman prone to such wild outbursts had no business in the educating of impressionable young minds. Probably she had never intended to meet with one of her daughters face-to-face like this, in such a public place—but she certainly knew how to turn even an unexpected meeting to her advantage.

There was nothing she could do in this moment. Inches away from the villain that had caused her so much stress and worry these last months—and powerless to stop her.

“Why?”

she asked.

“Why me? What did I ever do to merit this?”

Mama shrugged, bland, blasé.

“My last husband turned out not to be quite so wealthy as he purported himself to be. And you—you married rich,”

she said.

“In fact, all three of you did well for yourselves. I never imagined two of you would snag titles.”

“Mercy is wealthy in her own right, her husband’s fortune notwithstanding,”

Felicity said.

“And Charity is now a duchess. They’ve both got more money even than my husband.”

“But only you have got your charming little school,”

Mama said.

“Only you have got a reputation capable of being ruined. I suppose in a way, you’ve proved to be the most useful to me.”

She reached out one hand and patted Felicity’s cheek.

“Oh, come now, don’t cry over it. You’ve always looked so dreadful when you cry.”

It took every ounce of her will not to slap Mama’s hand away.

“You’ll ruin your own reputation, too,”

Felicity said.

“What you are threatening to expose—it will ruin you, as well.”

A patronizing smile.

“My dear, I haven’t gone by the name I was born with since I was sixteen years old. I’ve had half a dozen names since, and as I don’t intend to remain in England, there is no one to connect me to those lives I once led any longer. Why ought I to care if your mother is so slandered? I haven’t been that woman for a very, very long time.”

She was right—she was right. And there was nothing Felicity could do for it. Every consequence would fall upon her shoulders alone.

“It’s only five thousand pounds, dear. Now be a good girl and don’t attempt to follow me any farther, or I shall have to scream,”

Mama said in a simpering coo, with a last pat to Felicity’s cheek.

“Once our business is concluded, you’ll never have to see me again.”

Until, of course, Felicity thought, Mama found herself once more in need of funds. Ian had been right all along. And still she could do nothing for it.

Nothing but to watch as Mama sashayed away, fading into the thick of the milling crowd, secure in the knowledge that she had made herself untouchable.

∞∞∞

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you wish,”

Ian said, striving to strip the irritation from his tone as he addressed Felicity’s family.

“but I see no particular reason that would require your presence in my office.”

Of course, his not quite subtle suggestion that they had overstayed their welcome within had fallen entirely upon deaf ears. They were Felicity’s family, after all.

“One can discern a great deal about a man from the way he keeps his office,”

Thomas said, bouncing his baby daughter in his arms as he settled into a chair.

“Is that so? What, then, have you discerned of me?”

It had come out like a challenge, but then, it had been intended as one.

A muscle flexed in Thomas’ jaw.

“You keep a tidy office.”

“I don’t like clutter.”

From her corner where she had been quietly conversing with her husband, Charity issued a little snort, rather unbecoming of a duchess.

“That’s rich. Felicity has never been what anyone would consider tidy.”

Her husband gave a low, exasperated chuckle.

“You’re one to talk.”

“I don’t mind Felicity’s clutter,”

Ian said. Besides, he’d hired on a whole host of staff. There were at least three maids-of-all-work who could be prevailed upon to straighten up after her, should it become necessary.

Mercy, who had been making circuits of the perimeter of the room, ventured back toward the desk to drop a kiss upon her daughter’s chubby cheek.

“It’s rather too obvious, isn’t it?”

she asked. And then, when that failed to garner anything but silence as a response, she sighed.

“I suppose I sometimes forget that not everyone is familiar with such things.”

She gave a sweeping gesture of her hand to the room at large.

“This is a place of business,”

she said.

“Probably everyone who steps foot into this room wants something of you, Mr. Carlisle. Is that not so?”

By and large, yes.

“My staff and my solicitor both serve as a barrier against unwanted intrusions,”

he said.

“But otherwise, yes. Most everyone who walks through those doors has got some sort of proposition for me.”

“So no personal effects,”

Mercy said.

“Nothing anyone might use to ingratiate themselves, to manipulate your emotions. When they enter your office, they see only a blank slate—and they must stand alone upon the strength of their proposition.”

She was more astute that she appeared.

“It suits my purposes to be cold and impersonal in such situations,”

he said.

“Sentimentality ill becomes a man of my position.”

“But you are sentimental,”

Charity charged.

It was an effort not to roll his eyes.

“With all due respect—”

Charity tipped her nose upward and shot him a superior glance.

“I’ve seen Felicity’s ring.”

Hell.

“I know quite a lot about gemstones, Mr. Carlisle,”

Charity continued.

“and it is…well, there is no accounting for taste.”

Ian suppressed a wince. In fact, there was accounting for it, when one had to account for everything else, besides. It had simply been the best he could afford.

“The stones are tiny,”

Charity continued.

“the color and clarity negligible at best. And yet…”

Her dark gaze drifted about the room, taking in the tasteful furnishings that revealed nothing, the utter lack of personality within the office he’d practically lived within these last years. At last her eyes settled on him.

“You could have bought another,”

she said.

“Bought some god-awful gaudy bit of jewelry worth more than a house. But you didn’t. You gave her an objectively ugly ring of dreadful quality.”

Mercy made a scathing sound deep in her throat.

“Why? To send a message?”

“Of a sort,”

Charity replied.

“It’s ten years old, if I had to make a guess. An acrostic ring. The gems within it—they spell out love. Felicity didn’t know.”

Didn’t know. But clearly she did now.

“She doesn’t want to hear it,” he said.

“She asked,”

she said.

“She asked me about the stones.”

By the tone of her voice, he supposed he was meant to infer that Felicity had asked because she had cared. And that if she had cared, it might well mean that her feelings, complicated though they might be, had turned away from wholesale antipathy. That even if the duchess did not, precisely, like him, she might be prepared to offer him some small amount of grace for the sake of her beloved sister.

That that particular show of sentimentality had, somehow, earned some minuscule fraction of her approval. And that he would be wise not to squander it.

“I’ll admit that the ring is…meaningful to me,”

he said carefully.

“I doubt it carries much meaning to her. She knows she doesn’t have to wear it.”

“Things tend to have meaning whether or not we desire them to do so,”

Charity replied.

“They grow meaning over time. And what grows from them is less dependent upon the message intended and more upon the roots which feed it. What are you growing, Mr. Carlisle? Weeds or roses?”

He hadn’t the time to answer, even if he might have found a ready response to the question she had asked of him, for the pound of feet upon the floor outside the office suggested they were about to have an intruder.

A moment later, the door slammed open and Felicity stumbled inside, her face a study in misery. Red-rimmed eyes glassy and too bright, the last echoes of a heartrending sob still clinging to her lips. A tremble in her chin which suggested that what little composure remained to her was in imminent danger of shattering entirely.

Ian was out of his seat and striding for her just as the first of those valiantly-withheld tears came streaming down her cheeks in a flood, moving so swiftly, with such urgency that he reached her even before Charity, who was the closer between them.

“Felicity. What has happened?”

he asked, reaching for her instinctively.

She tottered into his arms, muffling a sob against his shoulder. Her fingers curled into little claws as she clutched at his shoulders.

“I couldn’t stop her,”

she said in a plaintive little voice rife with pain.

“I couldn’t do anything at all. She threatened to cause a scene. I had to let her go.”

Her? Christ. A missed opportunity there.

“It’s all right,”

he soothed as he cupped the back of her head, pressed a kiss against her temple.

“It’s all right,”

he said again.

“Did she come to the school?”

Blast it, it was supposed to be watched at all hours. How had his men missed her?

A tiny shake of her head.

“She was at the city center,”

she said on a shuddering breath, and he felt the rapid expansion of her lungs with each unsteady breath.

“Kings Road. The promenade at the seafront.”

Ian felt a frown crease his brow.

“Whatever were you doing there?”

he asked. It wasn’t precisely on the way home.

“I—I wanted to buy some roasted chestnuts,”

she said shakily.

“But you hate roasted chestnuts.”

Unimportant. Entirely immaterial at the moment.

“Do you recall what she was wearing? Which direction she went?”

Anything; anything at all which he might use to point his men in the proper direction.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

A hiccoughing sob; her nails scratched at the wool of his coat.

“She disappeared into the crowd. I couldn’t do anything.”

A rustle of fabric as the duchess paused behind her, only a step or two away, smoothing awkwardly at her crimson skirts.

“Felicity?”

Charity ventured, her voice quavering uncertainly.

“Is something…amiss?”

Amiss. That was certainly a word for it. Ian kneaded the tight muscles at the nape of Felicity’s neck.

“You really ought to tell them,”

he whispered, sotto voce.

“If there’s even the slightest chance they might recognize her—”

“It’s Mama,”

she whispered so softly he almost didn’t catch it. With a fierce sniffle, she lifted her head.

“It’s Mama,”

she said again, louder, as she swiped at her streaming eyes.

“Our mother is extorting me.”

For a long moment, no one spoke. No one even breathed in the deafening silence which followed Felicity’s horrifying revelation. It had stunned them all. He’d thought it a distinct possibility that the villain had been in some way connected to her family. But he’d never imagined her mother.

Felicity’s fingers trembled as she tried, with little effect, to stem the flow of those tears, vivid green eyes glassy and framed with spiky wet lashes.

“She didn’t even know me,”

she said pitifully.

“She only asked—‘which one are you?’”

Two infuriated, indrawn breaths. Mercy he couldn’t see but Charity—Charity crackled with indignation, her hands fisted at her sides.

“That nasty bitch,”

she seethed.

“I’ll kill her myself.”

Given the anguish the woman had caused, Ian briefly entertained the idea of letting her. But first they would have to find her. And as Felicity broke down once more into agonized sobs, Ian again urged her head against his shoulder.

“It’s all right,”

he repeated in that same soothing cadence he’d employed earlier.

Over Felicity’s shoulder, Charity cleared her throat.

“It will be all right,”

he corrected, meeting that grim look Felicity’s sister gave him with one of his own.

“It will be. I promise you that.”