Page 22 of The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen #4)

RAE FOUND THE books were badly kept, incomplete, sloppily added to when they had been added to at all.

On nearly every page was the amount of the debt her father had incurred to Fateux, and it kept getting larger. It would be written in strong black ink, practically carved into the page, underlined and circled, a reproach.

But it annoyed her.

Yes, she was positively surrounded by men who reproached themselves.

What good was that guilt in the end if it didn’t spur them to some action to reverse what they had done?

She supposed she could be sympathetic to her father, however.

Perhaps she had fallen victim to this same helpless worldview.

After all, for so long, until precisely the moment she had decided to leave London, she had been the same.

Just a sad, helpless leaf, blown this way and that, pitying herself and her situation, hoping that some rescue was on the horizon, some way out of the depths of the dark water where she was currently drowning.

She had said to the duchesses that she was no fool, and that she would be foolish to turn down their assistance.

But last night she had realized she didn’t want to be rescued.

Rescue meant that she was always and forever that sad, helpless victim. Rescue meant that she would always and forever rely on others to save her.

She was going to rescue herself.

It was only that, as of yet, she had no true idea how .

She knew only that she must get some idea of how bad the situation was.

She must see it accurately, but not from the view of helplessness.

No, instead, she must assess it all coldly and gather all the difficult facts.

And then, once she knew all the things that must be addressed, she could begin to formulate a plan.

The first step was to assess the money.

She would not be a wealthy countess. She would not take blood money to lie and style herself as someone she was not. She would be herself, the ruined daughter of a hapless and destroyed knight, and she would live in that truth and make the best of it.

It was all there was, she realized.

Living a pretty lie was always just that, in the end. A lie.

The good news was that the debt was wiped out. Fateux had forgiven it when he’d taken her as payment, after all. And anyway, Fateux was dead, and so were all the debts that had been owed him.

So, that amount of money no longer mattered.

Rents were due soon.

She had to search all through the books to get accurate numbers of what they might collect.

She did not wish to know what the rents should produce, after all.

She instead wanted to see what would be collected, for she knew that there were tenants who might not be able to pay or who might wish to negotiate something besides coin, perhaps they might give some of their harvest or a milk cow or something of that nature.

It took her the better part of the morning and into the afternoon, but she eventually had what she thought was a likely number.

It was a bit on the pitiful side. It certainly wouldn’t have put much of a dent in the debt that her father had owed.

But it would be enough to feed them through the fall and the winter, she thought.

There would be no money for repairs to the keep or for buying new furniture or new dresses for her.

There would be no luxuries, but they would survive.

This was the first bit of news she’d had in some time that cheered her.

She left the study to seek her father, and found he was drinking again. She stood over him, stern, and he cringed from her.

“I thought we agreed,” she said, lifting her chin.

Her father started to sob again.

She let him do that for a while, patting his shoulder here and there, murmuring comforting nonsense to him.

Eventually, he quieted. He wiped his eyes and got up from where he was sitting. “We should pour it all out,” he said in a grim voice.

“Indeed,” she said. “We should.”

They did. They stood behind the keep and emptied bottle after bottle. All the brandy, all the port, all the whisky, all the ale.

Then she went into the kitchens to inquire about what might be put together for their dinner. There was no meat, but the cook could make them a stew of beans and root vegetables.

It was hearty and filling. As they ate, she eyed her father and realized he looked frail and thin. He had not been eating well. She must restore him to some kind of strength.

He tried to apologize to her again, and she cut him off, telling him that it was all done now, no reason to dwell on it. She told him Fateux was dead, and he sat back in his chair and a light came on behind his eyes, a light she had not seen in him in some time.

“Good,” he said. “Good, then.”

“It will not be an easy time this year,” she said to him. “But I have looked at the books, and I think we shall survive it.”

He gave her the ghost of a smile. “My girl,” he said. “My Rae. You are a ray of sunshine, are you not? A ray of sunshine in this gray endlessness.”

She did not think that was what she was, but she found herself smiling back.

The next day was better, and the day after better still.

In two week’s time, she and her father began to go out together to collect rents. Most of the tenants were pleased to see her father dressed and clean, not a drunken mess, speaking to them of the future.

With each of these visits, even when the tenants were woefully behind on rents with little hope of paying, things seemed even better.

She had figured the books with blanket forgiveness of debts from tenants that were so very far behind as to be impossible to ever repay, and her father—having just benefited from his own debts being wiped out—approved this.

Tenants who had expected to be turned out were brightened by the idea that they could stay on, that they now had a whole future ahead of them.

Soon, it was September, and the breath of autumn air in the mornings made her wish to curl up in warm blankets and sip mulled cider—not that there was anything alcoholic in the keep anymore.

Still, she felt pleased and gratified.

There was even meat for dinner sometimes, the result of animals that had been taken in lieu of coin for the tenants’ payments. One of these evenings, as she and her father ate mutton and potatoes together, he brought up the future, and she wished he hadn’t.

“You can’t stay here with me forever,” he said to her. “It isn’t right, your having to give up everything for me. I shall be able to manage on my own soon. Do you have thoughts of what you’d like to do with yourself?”

She set down her knife and fork, her body feeling pinched. She was angry. “Of course not. I shall stay. That is all there is.”

He set down his own fork and regarded her, his expression going pained.

“Well, the situation is unfortunate, but it is not your fault, my dear, and I think, once that is known, I shall be in a position to do something to make up for it. I’m not saying there’s the kind of marriage that you deserve out there for you, but there’s something, darling, something respectable with a good and kind man.

Perhaps a vicar—” He winced. “All right, no, but perhaps a surgeon or a gentleman with some land. We would have to aim lower than we might have aimed before, but—”

“Who says I wish to get married?” She picked up her knife and fork and began attacking the mutton. She sawed with more vigor than was necessary.

Her father was quiet for some time.

She put a bite into her mouth that was too big. She chewed. And chewed. And chewed. She began to wish she could spit it out but to also become more determined than ever to chew it down so that she might swallow it. She chewed with greater force.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” said her father. “With men, I mean. Fateux was some sort of demon in the skin of a man, but there are good men—”

She cut him off with something akin to a growl. She was still chewing, however, and could not say any words.

“There are,” her father insisted. “What’s more, you are a young and lovely woman who must wish for a life for yourself.

You should have a family of your own. You should not be denied the hope of children or your own household because of my sins.

I shan’t allow that to happen, in fact. I shall do everything in my power to secure a better future for you. ”

She swallowed the meat. It was still too big.

It hurt. She gulped down some lemonade. (That was the last of the lemonade.

There would be no more lemons after this.

What they had were all rotted, even in a chilled cellar.

These lemons had been gotten from a greenhouse owned by a neighbor and she had only afforded the expense because they needed something to drink that was not tea and was not alcohol.) She swallowed again and took a deep breath. “No.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, I have a household here,” she said. “You have need of me. There is no other woman here—”

“Perhaps I may remarry,” said her father.

She dropped her utensils for a second time, with a clatter. “What?”

“Well, men do it,” said her father, laughing.

“I am but seven and fifty. Men marry at my age and have children besides. I could even have an heir. In the days after the death of your brother, I was lost to grief and I behaved badly. I did not see what I still had, this keep, you, my lands, my legacy. I now see it all again, and it is because of you, my darling, and—”

“And now you wish to marry?” She shot up from the table, the anger bubbling in her like a live thing. “I have not done all this for you .”

He surveyed her, blinking. “But… you…”

“I did it for myself,” she said. “But of course, why should I think I can have anything for myself? Why should I think anything in this godforsaken world would be mine? I have never owned my own body . It has always been the property of some man or other. And any labor I do is in service of one.” She stormed out of the room.

She was up late into the night, feeling that same cloud descend over her. No matter what she did, no matter how she tried, she could be nothing but that sad, little leaf blown here or there.

She was nothing but despair.

The next morning, she rose with the dawn.

She had grown accustomed to taking on some of the work in the house.

They did not have enough servants to do it all.

She would bring water from the well and milk the nanny goat and feed the chickens they had acquired in lieu of rents from one of the tenants.

She was out in the chicken coop, scattering the feed, when she saw him, galloping up on horseback, the wind in his long, dark hair. The Duke of Rutchester.

Her entire body went taut in a strange and lovely sensation she had thought she’d left far behind.

Longing.