Page 39 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

May, 1832

Brighton, England

You’ll never guess what arrived today,”

Ian said as he came down the stairs.

“What?”

Felicity asked absently as she pawed through one of Grace’s trunks, which were laid out upon the floor of the foyer, waiting to be taken to the carriage.

A folded letter waved before her eyes, dangled in the pinch of Ian’s fingers. One which bore Charity’s elegant handwriting across the front.

“A letter?”

she asked as she reached for it.

“But she only just sent one.”

“This one,”

Ian said.

“is several months old. It was only recently discovered at the post office, where it had been lost for some time. The postmaster himself came to deliver it and to apologize in person for its lateness. He would have delivered it to the school as it was addressed, but—”

But all of Brighton knew, now, that Felicity Cabot had become Felicity Carlisle, and nobody wished to end up in Ian’s poor graces. Felicity snatched the letter from the clasp of his fingers, and picked at the wax seal to get at the letter.

A wedding invitation. Now months too late to be answered, of course. But it had been sent all the same, with love.

“How lovely,”

she said, her voice quavering over the words as she carefully folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket for safekeeping. A bit of maudlin sentimentality made her eyes sting—but she’d been maudlin rather a lot just lately.

“Don’t cry,”

Ian pleaded, his voice tinged with desperation.

“I really don’t know what to do with myself when you do.”

His fingers stroked her cheek and he asked, for what had to be the twentieth time today.

“You’re certain you’re well enough?”

Felicity laughed lightly as she closed the lid on the last of Grace’s trunks. “Yes,”

she said, dashing at her eyes.

“Quite well, but for the obvious.”

“Well, you sounded wretched earlier this morning.”

Of course she had sounded wretched earlier; she had had her head bent over a chamber pot casting up her accounts until at last the dry toast and tea she’d consumed had settled her queasy stomach.

Too many things produced that effect, now.

Eggs. Marmalade. Any sort of fish. And worse still, her beloved beef pasties, which was truly a pity. “Ian,”

she said.

“I’m well. I promise.”

“If you’re not—”

“If I’m not, rest assured that I shall come home at once.”

She latched the trunk with decisive clicks and rose to her feet.

“But I want to be there for Grace today. It’s important.”

Grace’s first day as a pupil at the school. In the past few months, beneath the instruction of a competent tutor and a wonderful governess both, she had come such a long way. Though her penmanship still left something to be desired, her reading had progressed at an incredible speed. Within a month, she’d run through every grammar primer her tutor had provided and had moved on to practically inhaling the books contained within Ian’s impressive library, devouring full volumes in mere hours.

“All right.”

Ian’s hand found the small of Felicity’s back.

“But if you change your mind, just send for the carriage. Otherwise, I’ll be there to retrieve you at four.”

“Four?”

Felicity turned, brows lifted.

“So early? Ian—”

“Four,”

he insisted.

“The daffodils are ready to be planted. I thought we’d do it this afternoon.”

Felicity wasn’t fooled.

Though the daffodils—which had been cultivated over the winter within the small greenhouse that Ian had had built, owing to the fact that the ground had been far too cold to plant the bulbs directly—were no doubt ready to be planted at last, there was no particularly pressing need to do so today.

But she’d been fretting rather a lot lately over Grace’s enrolment at the school beginning in the Trinity term.

Tonight would be Grace’s first night spent elsewhere since she’d arrived.

And though she would only be residing a few minutes away by carriage, Felicity was going to miss her.

Probably Ian would miss her, too, but then he bore it a little better than she did.

Enough, at least, to do his damnedest to ensure she did not linger overly in her melancholia, to pull her mind away from such things and endeavor to distract her with pleasant diversions when he thought she might be tempted toward moping.

“Four,”

she agreed with a sigh, turning her cheek against his shoulder.

“Though I had thought to stay for dinner.”

“Darling,”

he chided gently, sliding his fingers into her hair.

“You have got to give Grace time to settle in on her own. She’ll find her footing, but she’ll do it much better without you looming over her shoulder.”

“What! I’ve never loomed in my life,”

Felicity protested.

“You do loom,”

he accused.

“Had I not pried you from the doorway of the library the first day her tutor arrived, you’d have stood there all day.”

Perhaps she had been a little…apprehensive.

“Well, not all day, surely,” she said.

“I had to pry your hand from the door frame,”

he reminded her.

“I caught you there the first time just after breakfast. And you’d not moved by the time I next looked in on you at ten. By noon, I was starting to become concerned for you, since you seemed to have made something of a statute of yourself—”

“All right, all right. I loomed a little.”

She sighed as his fingers kneaded the tight muscles at the nape of her neck.

“Can you blame me, truly?”

“I wouldn’t say blame, exactly. But you have a tendency to worry where none is needed.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple.

“Grace will be fine. She’s intelligent, capable, and well-mannered. Generally.”

Tactfully, he had omitted any mention of the struggle it had been to bring Grace’s education up to snuff in matters of deportment.

She had taken to reading so readily, and had been a delightfully agile student of dance, having parlayed the agility she had cultivated as a rather skilled little pickpocket into the elegance necessary to master dancing—but learning to move at a sedate walk rather than bobbing and weaving through a crowd had been a battle of its own.

She moved at a gallop so frequently that she rivaled a good horse for speed.

Felicity drew in a steadying breath.

It was fine.

It would be fine.

Grace was all of the things Ian had said…even if she was a little more, besides. She might register as a bit peculiar amongst her peers, but she would also be the headmistress’ sister, and that would lend her some degree of legitimacy.

For the rest of it, well—there would be plenty of further lessons in deportment.

“Just think,”

Ian said.

“by the time she’s left your school, she’ll be a proper lady. Perhaps Charity and Anthony will sponsor her for the Season, hmm?”

“Well, it would hardly be sporting to ask Mercy to do it. She loathes London.”

Still, the thought was comforting.

That Grace would have the best life they were all capable of giving her; a life of security and opportunity that would go some small way toward making up for the insecurity of her youth.

Even as a duchess, certain doors remained closed to Charity, owing to her past as a rather infamous courtesan, but she still held significant sway amongst a fraction of the Ton.

Only a fraction, but to Felicity’s mind, it was the best one.

And it contained a number of powerful and influential families.

Even if she could never gain entrée into the most select echelon of the Ton, still she called enough people friends to allow for quite a busy social season.

And Grace would certainly benefit from that.

“I’m just going to miss her,”

Felicity sighed.

Ian spluttered out a laugh.

“Felicity, you’re going to see her every day. Besides,”

he said.

“Nellie will be there when you’re not, and you know you couldn’t hope for better. She’ll look out for Grace, just as she looked out for you.”

“But she won’t be here,”

Felicity said.

“Putting her elbows on the table, or—or leaving books strewn about the house, or thundering down the stairs.”

“That I won’t miss,”

Ian admitted.

“It’s rather disconcerting, you know, to have one’s business interrupted by such a sound. More than once, I thought that the house had surely been invaded by elephants. I’m not certain how such a small girl manages to create such a large sound, but I’ve considered moving my office farther from the stairs a time or two.”

Felicity introduced the point of her elbow to his midsection, provoking a muted grunt.

“Besides,”

he said, his voice slightly strained.

“It won’t be too many more months until we’ll have someone else who will make every bit as much noise and will also be in dire need of lessons in deportment.”

And he laid one hand gently upon her stomach, where their first child rested inside her.

It was early days yet, but the signs were undeniable. There would be a new addition to their family come winter.

“Shall we tell Grace today?” he asked.

Felicity gave a small shake of her head.

“Let’s let today be just for her,”

she said.

“I want her to visit over the weekend. We’ll tell her then.”

And in the meantime, she would satisfy the aching need to share their news by writing to Charity and Mercy.

Grace thundered down the stairs at a rapid clip, the foyer collecting the sound of her shoes striking the steps and echoing it back in a maddening cacophony.

“I’m ready!”

she declared brightly as she arrived, bouncing on the balls of her feet in a surfeit of excitement.

“Do I look all right?”

she asked as she twirled about, the skirt of her blue gown belling out.

Felicity’s ears were still ringing from the last of Grace’s footfalls.

“You look lovely, Grace, truly. Are you certain you’re ready? Because if you’d prefer to delay a little longer—”

Ian squeezed her shoulder gently.

“She’s ready,”

he said softly in her ear.

“Just look at her. You’ve done your best for her. And the rest…well, the rest will fall into place on its own.”

He was right.

She knew he was right.

Grace was going to be just fine.

She would settle in at the school, make friends of some young ladies her own age, and have a grand time being the giddy young girl she was rather than the sneak-thief she had once had to be only to survive.

Rather bravely, in her own opinion, Felicity muffled a sniffle behind her hand.

Although not quite well enough, for Grace nudged Felicity’s shoulder with her own.

“Don’t go all watering pot now,”

she said.

“I’m coming home to visit on the weekend, remember? And then you can tell me about the baby.”

Felicity’s mouth dropped open.

“Grace! Were you spying on us before you came down?”

“Only for a little while.”

Thoroughly unrepentant, Grace sauntered toward the door.

“What? I had figured it out days ago, besides.”

Ian chuckled and said wryly.

“I ought to have known.”

Grace gave a little shrug, which sent her golden curls tumbling over one shoulder.

“You cast up your accounts quite a lot, lately,”

she said sweetly to Felicity.

“Mostly in the mornings. You’ve gone green about the gills at the breakfast table thrice this past week alone. And you’ve gained a bit of weight just about your middle.”

“Grace.”

Felicity narrowed her eyes.

“Also I might have listened outside your door a few nights past. After you abruptly left the table when the cook served salmon for supper.”

“Oh, you wretched little—”

“Felicity, kindly do not kill your sister on her very first day of school.”

Laughing, Ian wrapped one arm about her waist, anchoring her to his side. Striving to arrange his face into some manner of firm expression despite his amusement, he added.

“And Grace. Do endeavor not to be killed. That means no undertaking of activities which you know well enough are impolite. Such as spying upon people and listening at doors.”

“And remarking upon my waistline!”

Felicity added indignantly. Whether or not it happened to be true was of no consequence.

“It’s only going to grow,”

Ian said, in what Felicity assumed was meant to be a placating, reasonable tone of voice.

“Babies do tend to have that effect. And it will happen whether or not she remarks upon it.”

He leveled a stern look in Grace’s direction.

“Which she ought not to do, because it is not polite to make unflattering remarks upon someone else’s personal appearance.”

It was not the first time Ian had had to play the role of peacekeeper, nor was it likely to be the last.

For all that Felicity was pleased to have found another sister in Grace—and to all accounts, Grace just the same—they did have the remarkable tendency upon occasion to squabble like—

Well, more or less like sisters, Felicity supposed.

Grace, like most young girls of Felicity’s experience, had a predilection for mischief, and for placing her finger upon a raw nerve and pressing until she gained a reaction.

But she was also sweet and affectionate and kind.

Though the world she had found herself thrust into was very different from the one she had escaped and she did not always understand the rules of etiquette and deportment, she had come so far in only a few short months.

And tonight the dinner table would be so much emptier without her.

The house would be so much quieter.

She’d grown accustomed to Grace’s particular brand of chaos and devilry.

To the maddening questions and the elbows on the table and the screeches of excitement and glee.

To the constant chatter and the tell-tale sound of her sprinting from one area of the house to another.

“Oh, don’t cry,”

Grace pleaded as Felicity felt tears pricking at her eyes once again, and she rushed across the marble floor to fling her arms around Felicity’s waist.

“I promise, I will behave very poorly and have myself sent to you for a lecture every day.”

Felicity choked on a half-hearted laugh.

“Don’t you dare,”

she said.

“I should hate to have to take you to task.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You love a good lecture,”

Grace accused.

Ian cleared his throat in a transparent effort to head off another quarrel before it could begin. “Ladies,”

he said.

“The carriage is packed. We really must be going.”

Felicity lifted her head. “We?”

“Of course, we. I’m hardly inclined to give you two the opportunity to murder one another in the carriage, absent my supervision,”

he said.

“Come, then. We’re late enough as it is.”

“I suppose so,”

Felicity sighed.

“Grace, you may—Grace!”

Too late; Grace had danced away with an impish giggle, darting for the door.

“Good lord,”

Felicity said in exasperation.

“She really is going to be sent to me every day.”

“Quite possibly,”

Ian admitted as he headed for the door himself.

“Perhaps it won’t be all too bad. You could take tea.”

“That would be blatant favoritism,”

Felicity said dryly as she followed along behind him.

“What are sisters for, if not to be favorites? Besides, you were always Nellie’s favorite. Why shouldn’t Grace be yours?”

“To be honest, I’m a little afraid that Grace will become Nellie’s favorite, too,”

Felicity said.

“And only God knows what sort of mischief she’ll get into, then.”

Ian chuckled to himself as he crossed the threshold.

“It’s impossible to say,”

he said.

“But I’m certain we’ll find out.”

Yes, she thought.

Together, just as they did everything else.

Felicity stepped out into the early morning sunlight, and breathed in the fresh, faintly salt-scented air.

On the street the carriage waited, and within, Grace mashed her cheek against the window like an overexcited puppy, wiggling with eagerness.

A few stray wisteria petals floated past, torn free from their vines by the breeze which drifted them lazily about.

For a moment the scene struck her as almost surreal.

A sort of idyllic, wondrous thing she could not have conceived of only months ago, like a fairy story come to life.

Somehow, despite herself, she had arrived at a place of utter peace and contentment.

A place where every fragile dream she had once nurtured had come to life.

A place where happiness wove around her, so real, so tangible it was very nearly a thing she could hold in her hand.

No—it was something she could hold in her hand.

It was there in the hand Ian stretched out to her, waiting for the clasp of her fingers in his.

“We really will be late,”

he said, with a cant of his head. There was the tiniest evidence of a smile lingering about the corners of his lips, as if he sensed, in some fashion, the fanciful bent of her thoughts.

“Are you coming?”

“Yes,”

she said breathlessly as she placed her hand in his, and stepped out into the light, into her dream come true.