Page 34 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

Felicity had needed the calm comfort of this afternoon tea with Nellie, she thought. Even a few minutes of pleasant, peaceful conversation was an invaluable respite from the chaos that so often reigned in a school populated with so many young ladies. And a much-needed diversion from the strain of other matters.

She had, to the best of her ability, endeavored not to worry. To turn her mind from the dire thoughts that wanted to creep back in despite her best efforts. It was just that it was so much more difficult without Ian’s presence—

“All right,”

Nellie said with a grim sigh.

“I believe I’ve waited long enough now, don’t you?”

Felicity blinked, startled.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“My girl, I’ve known you altogether too long not to be perfectly aware when something is troubling you. Generally,”

Nellie said, with a patient look.

“I have had only to wait you out. You were always a secretive little thing, you know.”

Felicity pulled a wince, her fingers tightening around her tea cup. Nellie had no idea how secretive she had truly been.

“Whatever troubled you, I always knew you would share it with me when you were good and ready,”

Nellie said.

“You only required time, I think, to collect yourself, to put your thoughts into order. Has that changed? Or have I—have I become the sort of person you can no longer trust with such things?”

“No, of course not,”

Felicity said, reaching out to touch Nellie’s hand.

“It’s only…well, there’s rather a lot of thoughts to put into order.”

And for so many weeks they had kept shuffling themselves like playing cards, and Ian—Ian had slipped so many new thoughts into her deck, turning them all topsy-turvy again.

She had always come to Nellie with her problems. If only for the comfort of an understanding soul who had always had her best interests at heart. The things which now plagued her…they were, in essence, the only secrets she had ever kept from Nellie. Which made them all the more difficult to speak of now.

She said, tentatively.

“You’ve asked so little about my marriage.”

“I assumed you would tell me,”

Nellie said.

“if there was aught you wished for me to know. Naturally, I have got my questions. But a marriage is such a private thing, and I have never wished to invade your privacy only to satisfy my own curiosity.”

Carefully, cautiously, she asked.

“Is there something you wish for me to know?”

Felicity chewed her lower lip, uncertain.

“You must have wondered what brought it about so…”

“Quickly?”

Nellie inquired, and at Felicity’s weak nod, she continued.

“Of course. I’m not a complete lackwit, my dear. Although I confess I am somewhat surprised that you managed to keep a romance secret from me.”

“It wasn’t a romance,”

Felicity blurted out.

“At least, it wasn’t a romance when we married.”

Oh, blast—she still hadn’t managed to order her thoughts into any semblance of coherence.

“I mean to say, it wasn’t a romance then. It was a romance...many years ago.”

“Many…? Oh. Oh, my.”

Nellie took a bracing sip of her tea.

“I’ve no idea how you managed to pull the wool over my eyes,”

she said lightly.

“and at this point, I’m uncertain whether I owe you admonishment or admiration.”

“Nellie!”

“What, did you think I had never set so much as a toe beyond the bounds of propriety?”

Nellie gave a little scoff.

“I was young once, my dear. I might have created more than a fair few scandals in my time, had I not the good sense to exercise discretion. As you clearly have.”

Heat crept into Felicity’s cheeks.

“We parted on poor terms, Ian and I,”

she said.

“I never expected to speak with him again. But when the school was in jeopardy—when you were in jeopardy—he was the only one to whom I could turn. He agreed to aid me on the condition of marriage.”

Nellie gave a gasp of outrage.

“He manipulated you into marriage?”

she asked, laying one hand over her heart as she recoiled at the shock of it, her tea cup trembling in the lax grip of her fingers.

“And I had thought him so kind! So generous!”

The trouble of it was that Felicity could no longer say with any certainty that those things which Nellie had thought were untrue. He was kind. He had been generous. Far more so than he had ever had to be.

“I was so angry. I’ve been angry for years, really,”

she said. And bitter. And so, so very cold.

“I’m still angry to have been so manipulated. That he snatched the school away from you.”

But what remained wasn’t the sort of anger that it once had been. It wasn’t that long-nurtured grudge that had burnt her heart within her chest, the one she had mired herself in for so long that she had despaired of ever freeing herself of it. The shackles of the past had come loose at last. At some point they had rusted and cracked and weakened.

Until they could be snapped with only the quiet sincerity of an honest apology, so many years overdue. And it had soothed a part of her soul she’d long thought she’d locked away, unreachable. How different her life might have been had she been able to hear it earlier, had every critical lesson of her young life not taught her to guard her heart closely.

Only now…now there were the loose links of a new chain in her hands, built of fresh resentments. Ian’s Machiavellian scheming stood between them still.

“The trouble of it is,”

she said softly, almost to herself.

“I think I would most like…not to be so bloody angry.”

Did she truly wish, now, when it felt as though she might have a fresh start held in the palm of her hand, to cast it aside? Only to bind herself to a new grudge and drag the weight of it around with her for the remainder of her life?

“Oh, Felicity.”

Nellie’s chin trembled in sympathy.

“You don’t require my permission to forgive. You have just as much a right to your happiness as anyone else.”

“I don’t know that I know how to be,”

Felicity said.

“Happy, that is. I don’t suppose I know how to—to trust someone else implicitly. Can such a thing be learned?”

“Most anything can be learned, dear. But trust is the sort of thing that must grow.”

“Like a garden.”

One carefully-tended year after year. It didn’t hurt now, to think of it. Instead of the instinctive lash of ire, there was only…curiosity. What might it look like when the winter frost had gone and spring arrived? Possibly it would look like that sketch he had kept all these years, and which she had burned in the fireplace. But she thought it might also look like love laid out in neatly-manicured rows and woven into wisteria vines.

“Yes. Exactly like a garden.”

A soft sigh.

“You never had occasion to meet my husband. He left me a young widow; far younger than I would have preferred.”

Nellie gave a fragile smile.

“But we had ten years together and I wouldn’t trade those years for anything in the whole of the world.”

It was hard not to feel just the tiniest bit jealous of it.

“It must have been wonderful.”

“Oh, it was—most of the time. We had some dreadful rows, the two of us. There were times when we hurt one another’s feelings, out of stubbornness, or fear, or grief. Times when we nursed petty grudges or were altogether too willing to quibble over things which, in retrospect, were not nearly so important as they seemed.”

“And you reconciled?”

“Every time,”

Nellie said.

“Every one. Because even when I was angriest—when he was angriest—we never doubted our love for one another. Even when I found my feelings bruised, I knew he would never have hurt me by design. There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage, my dear. But perfect is the enemy of good, and had I insisted upon perfection, I might have foregone the best ten years of my life. What we had, he and I—it was more than good. It was glorious.”

And all it had taken to achieve it was the grace to forgive. To trust in that love they had shared to carry them through the difficult times.

“We all stumble from time to time,”

Nellie said softly, gently.

“I think the trick of it is to extend the grace you would hope to receive. To assume the best rather than the worst whenever possible. My husband never gave me a reason to regret it, God bless him. And I always knew—I always knew he did the same for me. Even when it was most difficult. Perhaps especially then.”

A small smile wreathed her lips, as if she were recalling with fondness some private, treasured memory.

“I could always trust in him,”

she said.

“to lift me up when I had fallen, even if only from his good graces. So you must ask yourself…can you trust your husband to do the same for you?”

Felicity stared down into her tea cup, and thought, with an odd little skirl of shame, of all the times just recently she had lashed out at Ian, hurt him…and meant to do it. “Yes,”

she said, in a hoarse little croak.

That hand which he had never stopped extending to her—it had always been extended along with forgiveness. Unasked for, unappreciated, and yet offered without hesitation every time. Yes. She could trust him to assume the best of her, even when she had not earned that privilege.

Perhaps he deserved the same of her. At least an opportunity to address these new grievances he’d given to her. It felt a significant realization, the extension of that trust to him. But trust was a commodity she had never had in much supply.

She hadn’t even extended it in full to Nellie. It shamed her, just now, given that Nellie had championed her at every opportunity.

“I always expect people to leave me,”

Felicity admitted in a whisper.

“I always expect to be abandoned, to be left behind—even by those closest to me. I don’t think I’ve ever truly trusted anyone in the whole of my life.”

“Oh, my dear,”

Nellie said.

“That is such a lonely way to live, don’t you think?”

Yes, it was. She’d spent most of her life lonely, in one fashion or another.

“I don’t know anything different,”

she said, scrubbing at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.

“And I have got so many secrets,”

she confessed.

“I’m so afraid that you’ll leave me, too.”

“Sweet girl. That will never happen.”

Nellie rose from her chair and rounded the low table set between them to perch lightly upon the couch beside her.

“I wish I had told you so much earlier,”

she said on a gusty sigh.

“what a hash I’d made of my finances. I was so afraid you’d think poorly of me, so afraid to lose your good opinion, when all along…all along I ought to have known that my secrets would be safe with you.”

She placed her hand gently over Felicity’s.

“Just as yours will always be safe with me.”

“I never wanted to burden you with such things,”

Felicity said.

“But you deserve to know them, and I—”

A choked sob shredded her throat.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“There, there.”

Nellie’s thin arm slid around her shoulders.

“You were never a burden. You have always only been a blessing. Whatever your secrets, dear girl, they cannot change the fact that I’ve known you half your life. I know you really are, and that is every bit as much a daughter to me as if I’d given birth to you myself.”

I know who you really are. Ian had said those very same words to her, and he—

He hadn’t flinched from it. From any of it. She had laid into his hands a weapon forged of her past, given him a perfect excuse to turn away, to leave her once again. And he’d stayed. Not reluctantly, not against his better judgment. But freely and without reservation.

She should have given Nellie that same chance ages ago. Now, at last, the reward seemed worth the risk.

“It’s quite a long story,”

she said.

“Have you got the time?”

“For you?”

Nellie gave a light laugh, pressed Felicity’s head to her shoulder.

“For you, my dear girl, I have got all the time in the world.”

∞∞∞

“Felicity.”

A warm hand curled over her shoulder beneath the rumpled fabric of the counterpane, squeezing gently.

“Wake up, darling.”

Felicity struggled upward through heavy veils of sleep, startling awake with a jerk. “What?”

she asked groggily, squinting through the darkness, disoriented.

“What time is it?”

“Late. Past two. But you’ve got to get up.”

Ian sat at the very edge of the bed, only the faintest traces of his outline visible in the dark.

“My men arrived not five minutes ago,”

he said grimly.

“I came to wake you immediately. They’ve caught her.”

“They—they have?”

She jolted awake immediately, her stiff muscles aching. A remnant, she supposed, of the tight, uncomfortable little ball she had curled into while asleep. She’d heard nothing. Had she been so deeply asleep as to have missed it? She cast off the counterpane, and—her toes were cold. The fire had not yet been replenished with fresh coals.

“You’ve not yet been to bed,”

she said. She’d fallen asleep waiting for him. But he hadn’t come.

“No.”

he said.

“I’ve been in my office with Graves most of the evening, putting him through his paces.”

“So late?”

“He’s not through atoning.”

It struck her as an oddly evasive reply, meant to avoid further inquiry. There was the rustle of his clothing, and the mattress shifted as he stood once more.

“My men brought her here,” he said.

“Here?”

Felicity swallowed as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, casting off the last vestiges of sleep as she wobbled upon her feet.

“For what purpose?”

“Interrogation,”

Ian said.

“And to decide what’s to be done with her. Here, now.”

He slung a wrapper over her shoulders, and helped her to shove her arms into the sleeves.

“I’ve sent the staff to wake your sisters,”

he said.

“You all deserve the opportunity to confront her. To make your own determination of what ought to be done about her.”

Her heart lurched into a frantic race, her stomach churning.

“Will you…stay with me?”

“Yes, of course. You don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to do anything alone.”

He brushed her tangled hair back from her face.

“It’s too late to take her before a magistrate at the moment,”

he said.

“But she’ll be closely-guarded until we have got the answers we desire of her, and I’ll make certain she is held until her trial.”

“That could be weeks,”

she said dully. “Months.”

“A great deal of money produces a great deal of haste.”

He paused, set his hands upon her shoulders.

“This is not for you to worry over,”

he said firmly.

“If you never spare another thought for her after today, it is only what she deserves. You need never concern yourself with her again.”

Because he would do it for her, she knew. She took a breath, let it out slowly. Her churning stomach settled. The pounding of her heart slowed and steadied. “Yes,”

she said and reached for his hand, which he gave to her immediately.

“I’m ready.”

“Good. You can leave at any time,”

he said as he led her toward the door.

“But just know—this time, she cannot walk away from you. She is well and truly caught.”

“Where?”

Ian had turned toward the servants’ stairs, but further down the hall, Felicity heard the telltale sounds of movement, some faint grumbling. Her sisters, she supposed, less than pleased to have been woken at such an hour.

“I gave instructions that she should be taken downstairs,”

he said.

“To the basement. There are a few rooms meant for storage that are presently empty. I thought it best to have her kept in a room without windows.”

“You think she’d try to escape?”

Felicity asked as she grabbed for the banister, carefully navigating the narrow staircase in the darkness.

“I think she’d be a fool not to have considered it. And,”

he added.

“it is best if we do not give her the opportunity to attract undue attention. Sound will not carry so far from the basement.”

The basement was colder than she had expected, the chill of the air sliding straight through her wrapper as they descended the last set of stairs into the depths of the house. There were voices below, and light—much more than she had expected.

At least half a dozen men, in addition to a number of the staff. Butler was present, in a serviceable dark banyan robe rather than his crisp uniform attire, overseeing the staff in offering refreshments to the men present.

“Several were once Runners,”

Ian said, with an inclination of his head toward the men gathered about.

“But all are proficient thief-takers in their own right, under private commission. They’ll stay through the night and remove her to stand before the magistrate in the morning.”

At last Butler wended his way toward them, tray in hand.

“Do forgive my dress,”

he said apologetically.

“I thought it best not to waste time when I might put my services to use with all haste.”

He lifted the tray in Felicity’s direction.

“Cider, madam? It’s dreadfully cold down here.”

Ian plucked a mug from the tray and shoved it into her hand before she could reply.

“And some brandy, too, Butler, if you don’t mind. We’re all a bit tense this evening. Which room?”

“That one.”

Butler gave a jerk of his chin toward a door in the distance.

“The gentleman closest to the door there has got the key. You’ll want a lamp; I’m given to understand the men thought it best that she wasn’t provided any sort of flame, not even for light.”

“Thank you. Send Mrs. Carlisle’s family in when they arrive, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

He gave a nod.

“I’ll have that brandy for you in a trice.”

Ian snatched up a lamp from a nearby table, and the light flickered in dizzying patterns across the walls. As he paused to collect the key from the man standing in stalwart silence beside the indicated door, Felicity lifted her mug to her lips and took a long drink of her cider, easing a bit of the chill—and a throat that had gone rather too parched in only the few seconds in which Ian had released her hand.

And then he caught it up again, and she relaxed once more, even as he fitted the key to the lock and swung the door open.

The lamplight spilled into the room, filling the small space and illuminating the figure huddled in the far corner. Too small, too young, too blond to be the woman they had both thought she must have been. Just a girl, shaking with fear, doing her damnedest to make herself small.

Felicity let the mug fall from her fingers, the last of her cider spilling across the floor as she stifled a disappointed little sound. Ian uttered a foul word, turning his head to snarl at the closest of his men.

“You told me that you had apprehended a woman! This is a child!”

Not a child; not exactly. But still some years away from adulthood, if Felicity had to guess. Sixteen, perhaps seventeen at most. There was something familiar about her, something that tugged at her memory.

“I didn’t know,”

Ian said to her, his voice rife with apology, his fingers clasping hers.

“I gave the order to bring her down and came directly to you. I never saw her.”

“Beg pardon, Mr. Carlisle, but she was caught at the school well past a reasonable hour,”

one of the men said.

“She had the note on her. See; I’ve got it here.”

He dug his hand into his pocket and produced a scrap of paper.

“Knocked straight upon the door, bold as brass.”

She had knocked on the door? Felicity shook her hand free of Ian’s, snatched the lamp away from him as he unfolded the note and squinted down at it. With a trembling hand she lifted the lamp higher and sidled further into the small room. The girl cowered from the light, shrinking in on herself. But the room was small and there was nowhere to flee, nor even the smallest stick of furniture left within to hide behind.

“I know you,”

Felicity accused, her voice quivering across an octave.

“You—you stole my reticule.”

A crinkle of paper. “What?”

Ian asked, his voice hard.

“She stole my reticule. The night at the theatre.”

Felicity took a sharp breath.

“She’s why I did not hire out a hack. I hadn’t the funds—after she lifted my reticule.”

That quick jolt of a shoulder against her own had not seemed so out of place at the time. Pickpockets were nothing unusual. Every town of any size had more than a few.

“You never told me.”

“I never thought to. It was hardly the first time I’ve been pickpocketed, and it wasn’t remotely the worst thing to come of that evening.”

They hadn’t known, then, of her mother’s involvement. She had had no more reason to be suspicious of what had appeared to be a random pickpocketing than she otherwise would have been.

Ian’s hand found hers again, threading their fingers together, and she clutched at it like a lifeline.

“There’s no question that she’s involved,”

he said.

“We’ve got a time, now, and a place—eight o’clock in the morning at the Old Ship. There’s a post coach to Portsmouth that departs then.”

He tucked the note away again in his pocket, lifted his head once more. Went still at her side.

The note had been meant to be delivered in the dead of night, intended for discovery the next morning. Hardly more than a half-hour left between when Felicity usually arrived and when she was expected to deliver the payment. Not nearly enough time to summon reinforcements, to stake out the location, to prepare in advance.

Only time enough to hand over five thousand pounds and to watch Mama disappear on the next coach out of the city. It hadn’t worked, thank God. But it might’ve done, had Ian not had the foresight to plant hired men in the shadows.

A fresh surge of anger caught her unawares.

“Were you paid?”

Felicity demanded of the girl who trembled in the corner.

“To watch me? To follow me? To pickpocket me?”

The girl wrapped her arms protectively around herself as if the lash of Felicity’s anger had struck her like a physical blow.

“Felicity,”

Ian soothed, an odd note in his voice as his fingers squeezed hers.

“Do you know what you have been made party to?”

Felicity persisted.

“Or were you only an errand girl?”

The girl cringed, folding in on herself, muffling a frightened sob beneath her fingers, her thin shoulders shaking.

“Felicity,”

Ian said again.

“I know you’re angry. You’ve a right to be. But hold a moment. Breathe.”

A fractured breath tore from her lungs, ripped free by the splintering shards of what little composure she had remaining.

“There’s three of them,”

she said plaintively. “Ian—”

“I know,”

he said quietly, in little more than a whisper. Words meant for her ears alone.

“I know. Time is now on our side. We’ll have them yet. But this girl”—he blew out a slow breath—“this girl has got your eyes.”

What? Felicity startled to the statement, the lamp in her hands wobbling. And for just a moment, through the tousled blond hair that obscured the girl’s face, she saw—green. Green eyes, glassy and vivid, the same shade of her own. The same tilted corners, the same feline slant.

Ian caught the handle of the lamp, wrenching it from her fingers before she could let it, too, fall to the floor. He wrapped his free arm about her waist as her knees trembled, as she sagged back against him in shock.

Another of Mama’s daughters, she realized, as Ian made soft, soothing, crooning sounds somewhere near her ear.

Another sister.