A Notorious Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  Her father remained slouched on the chair closest to the fire, feet stretched to the fender as if the room weren’t mortgaged twice over.

  “My dear. My dear.” He waved a hand at the ceiling. “Have you seen the invitation from the Glynns?”

  “Emily has it, I think. You may expect she has taken her reply to Mrs. Glynn herself.” Her chest pinched. Why, why, did pity overwhelm her when she needed to be strong? The answer was before her. She’d believed for years her father was impervious to the predations of time, and now, with resentment and anxiety near choking her, she could see he was not, and, my God, she did not want to live here with him. She wanted that cottage and a home that was her own.

  He’d always looked younger than his actual years. When he began to gray, the change made him the more distinguished. Now his hair was more gray than black, and though he remained a distinguished man, his shoulders stooped where they had not before, and the lines of his face cut deeper than she remembered. He was thicker around the waist, and the vitality about him that had made him more youthful than other men his age seemed lessened.

  He wriggled his fingers at her. “I’ve had a letter from Mary in the morning post. She and Aldreth will be here soon. A fortnight she says. She hopes you and Emily will stay with her at Rosefeld. We ought to plan a gala when she’s here. That would show those Glynns a thing or two about a party, I daresay.”

  She smoothed one of her sleeves. He mustn’t guess how he tugged at her. He had no tolerance for weakness. None at all. These moments, much as they tore at her sympathy and pity, did not balance out what he’d done. “You know we want to see Mary and the children.”

  “Not that I expected anything different.”

  She never knew any more what he intended nor what she would have to endure when he asked to speak with her in private. Without Anne’s mastery of the household to steady him, he was at sea. They all were. All the behaviors that had kept him less extravagant, less insensate with drink, less inclined to dark moods in which he struck without mercy; she could not manage as Anne had.

  Lucy’s failings in that regard were the more obvious because Anne had been so dreadfully capable. They hadn’t any of them realized how brilliantly she’d managed the house and their father, and that was so despite Lucy knowing how much Anne had endured. She continued smiling. What did he want? She did not believe he’d called her here to discuss parties and how long she and Emily would stay at Rosefeld once Aldreth and Mary arrived.

  He settled on his chair. “Thrale, Captain Niall, Mr. Glynn and I, and perhaps another fellow or two are to dine in town tonight. You and Emily will make do without us, I hope.”

  “We shall, Papa.” Was that all? Her anxiety eased. “Have you told the cook, or shall I?”

  “I leave that to you.” He waved in a peremptory manner and nearly overset the bottle of wine on the table beside his chair. “Sit down, my dear.”

  She did, though her foreboding redoubled.

  “We are obliged, I hope you know, to have a fête here as well.”

  “Why, Papa?” Her heart clenched. There was no money for such an event.

  “The Glynns. We can’t let them make all the noise. They mean to have the marquess to dinner. A grand affair as if they were the family related to a baron and a duke.” He snorted. “We Sinclairs can entertain, too.”

  “We are not obliged.” She spoke too sharply, for her tone turned him mulish. She’d done it. Made everything worse. Now he was set on this course.

  “We’ll have dancing, too.”

  “No, Papa.”

  “Find out who Mrs. Glynn hires to play and have them here. And that fellow who chalked the floors at Rosefeld last year. Mary will know his name.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “I’ve made a menu, for I won’t have it said Thomas Sinclair does not entertain as well as a Glynn.”

  “Papa. It’s not a competition.” She glanced at the menu and held back a groan. The wine list alone would cost more than she had on hand.

  “The deuce it isn’t. Write to Anne. She’ll tell you how it’s done. She always managed. There’s no reason you can’t as well.”

  “Yes, Papa.” There was so much for him to find fault with now that she had stepped into Anne’s place in running the household. She hadn’t her sister’s patience. Nor her gift for organization nor for financial improvisation. She had a mind for figures, but that was of no use when she looked over the household accounts and saw no way to balance monies owed, monies spent, and income received.

  “You’ve been a good daughter,” he said. “Never mind that you are not Anne.”

  “Thank you.” Her stomach ground down on itself. At least he wasn’t very drunk. This late in the day, it wasn’t unheard of for him to be worse off than he was. She knew better than to argue, though he was wrong. Once, she’d bent to his will, but in the days and months after her marriage she’d learned to resent her father for what he’d done—before and after.

  “The only obedient one.”

  When he did not dismiss her, she knew there was worse to come. “Is something the matter?”

  He took a long drink of his wine. “I’m in a bind.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Rebellion stirred her in ways that ate at her soul. He was her father, and she ought not resent him for his failings. She ought to be a better daughter than she was. Let her be better than she was. She had but to endure until she had saved enough for that cottage. She would have violets, pansies, and geraniums.

  “No more than I, my girl.” He laughed too heartily. Everything amused him when he was drunk, and he was drunk most of the time.

  She waited him out, stifling the urge to tell him she did not want to see him, nor speak to him, nor have anything to do with him. Her life had been upended once, and that was enough. Enough. He had no right to ask more of her.

  “Lucy. My girl.” He got that faraway look that came over him whenever he talked about their mother, and that made her heart constrict again. Every year on the anniversary of their wedding and again on the anniversary of her death, he visited her grave. “My dear sweet girl.” His words had a familiar maudlin ring. “You look so like your mama.”

  “I look like you.”

  “You’re dark like me. You and Mary.” He touched his head. “But you’ve your mother’s smile. If I close my eyes and listen to you speak, why, she could be here in this very room, you sound so much like her.” His mouth trembled, and Lucy battled tears at his heartbreak and hers. “God rest her, Lucy. God rest her.”

  She knew what it was to love someone like that, to face the rest of one’s life with that loss. Her bitterness eased, pushed aside by her father’s sorrow and the softness of his encroaching old age. “What do you need?”

  His eyes snapped open, and there was no fond gaze now, no lost love recalled. With Anne beyond his reach—Mary had been safe a few years now—he’d moved to her as the cause of all that inconvenienced him. “Delaney was a certain winner, you said. Miller is vulnerable to a right cross, you said.”

  She cocked her head, and her anxiety roared back, hidden behind an empty smile. She ought to have guessed. All the men, Captain Niall, Thrale, and her father, had been up with the dawn to arrive in town in time for this morning’s exhibitions at the Academy. The featured battle between Delaney and Miller had been much anticipated. “Nothing is certain, you know that. Delaney ought to have beaten Miller easily. Did he not?”

  “No. He did not.”

  Delaney had lost? A shocking result, if true. It meant she’d lost the ten pounds she’d put on him when she ought to have won four times that. “What happened?”

  “Miller landed punches to his face.” He mimed several strikes. “By the fifteenth round Delaney’s eyes were swollen shut. He had to forfeit.”

  “A forfeit?” Delaney was by far the better fighter, but perhaps Miller had found a weakness or merely been lucky. Such things happened. Johnson would tell her when next they met, but she wished s
he’d been there to see for herself.

  “Now I’m in difficulties.”

  Such an odd bifurcation of her mind went on between the danger of her father’s mood and the details of the match between those two men. “Delaney has better defense than Miller. Miller lacks art. It’s shocking he won.”

  “I’m not the only one to say Delaney was bribed.”

  “No, never.” She could not deny the possibility, even with her father in spirits and his mind sailing seas of faulty logic. “Delaney? Johnson trains him. He wouldn’t.”

  He poured more wine. “The bookmaker has my two-hundred pounds, so there’s the proof Delaney lost.”

  The announcement jerked her out of her thoughts of what had happened between Delaney and Miller. “Two hundred pounds?”

  He pointed at her. “On your say so.”

  She opened her mouth to protest then did not. What would be the point? He was rarely amenable to reason in the matter of wagers he ought not have made. “Oh, Papa. So much?”

  “I’ve another three hundred owed on the side.”

  “Three hundred.” Now she did feel sick. Three hundred pounds? How was that to be repaid? She wracked her brain for bills that might be left unsettled and, of those, singly or together, that might come close to that amount. The arithmetic did not give a satisfactory result. “Papa. No. Three hundred?”

  He scowled. “You’re not deaf, my girl.”

  “So much?”

  The lines on either side of his mouth deepened. “I meant to put money on Miller, but you dissuaded me. I should have made a tidy sum if you’d not steered me wrong.”

  Mightn’t she be at fault? He had asked her opinion. And she had given it. “Papa, no.”

  “It’s a debt of honor.” He wiped a hand across his face, and he looked so tired, so emphatically old, that she thought with a flash of guilt and dread, one day, he will leave this earth. “The debt must be paid. Honor, you understand. I’m a gentleman. I’ve never not paid my debts. But this one? This one is beyond my reach just now.”

  She handed back the menu he’d scrawled out. “There will be no party.”

  “Damn my soul if I’ll let the Glynns put us to shame again. We will have a party if I have to write every damned invitation myself.”

  She fought for composure. They’d always found a way, hadn’t they? Anne had. Anne had always managed. For years, her sister had worked miracles running the household on almost nothing. Lucy and her sisters had spent most of their lives never knowing if there would be money to pay the bills or whether their father would come home with pockets of cash and presents. Lucy hadn’t known, not really, how Anne had coped in the face of their father’s porous pockets. She just had, and no one had ever wondered about the cost to Anne.

  Wine sloshed in the glass as he lifted it to his mouth. “There’s appearances to keep up. We must. We shall, and besides, when Aldreth arrives, all this will come right.”

  “We cannot spend money we do not have.”

  He waved her off to take another drink.

  “I’m sorry.” Her stomach hurt, but her smile did not waver. Five hundred pounds in new debt, and she’d no idea where the money would come from. “So sorry you find yourself caught short.”

  “Anne always found the money. She always saw us through.”

  Protest choked her. She wanted to shout, to scold. I am not Anne. I cannot work miracles. More than anything, she wanted to remind him that he’d begged her to marry a stranger because there was no other way to recoup his ruinous losses. And she had done so. Had she not paid and repaid him more than enough? On that day, she’d given up every expectation of happiness to keep him and her sisters from penury.

  She’d paid enough. Too much. She’d paid with her happiness. Her future and her security. All that to see him back in debt as deeply as ever before she became a widow. She had done her best by her husband. Her best, and she thanked God he’d proved a decent man, but she had lived a life bereft of all the people and places she loved best; her sisters, friends left behind in Bartley Green, the life she’d once imagined for herself.

  He gave his wine a swirl and drank what was left in one long draught. “A hundred pounds would do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can get the money.” He made a dismissive gesture.

  “I cannot.”

  “I’d have had the money to pay the debt if you’d not said Delaney was sure to win.”

  She closed her eyes. She’d not said Delaney was a certain win. A probable one, yes. But not certain. Never that. “I don’t know where you think the money will come from. I’ve not got a hundred pounds, let alone five hundred.” It was a lie. She had the money, but giving her father that much would leave her with almost nothing left of her savings and depleted of hope.

  “You’re not as clever as Anne, but you’re a sight more beautiful. All you need do is smile.”

  She hid her fists in her skirts and came as close as she’d ever dared to laying blame at his feet. “I don’t know why you think I’ve that much money to hand. I haven’t.”

  Not even a blink of recognition. No shame. No remorse. “A hundred will barely do until you get the money from Aldreth. Or the duke.”

  “I do not understand.” Marriage had given her backbone she’d not had as a girl. “The debt is yours. Not mine.”

  “It’s your fault and only fair that you help me recover. I won’t abase myself to them again. I can’t. Not for the world.” He sat forward, eyes alight with passion. “I’ve my pride, you know.”

  “Again? What do you mean, again?”

  He stood and walked to the fireplace, bottle and glass in hand. Unsteady. “I came up short once or twice these past months. I can’t ask again. They’ll think I’ve been imprudent when it’s really you to blame.”

  “You can’t mean that.” He did. She could see that he did.

  “Ask them, Lucy.” He put an elbow on the mantel, but his arm slipped off the edge. “Give them a smile, the way you do, you know it strikes men dumb. They’ll open their pockets to you and thank you for it, too.”

  “How am I to explain the need for five-hundred pounds?” She couldn’t. She couldn’t ask anyone for such a sum.

  “A new season. New gowns. You’ve a reputation for a love of fripperies and other such useless things. Tell them you’ve overspent.” He gripped the mantel with one hand to steady himself. “Shed a tear or two. They’ll see you the money if only to stop the heartbreak. There’s not a man alive can resist your tears.”

  “Papa.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll have to defend my honor when the debt is called in, and it will be. It will be.” His hand shook as he refilled his glass. “I don’t see as well as I used to.” He drank three-quarters of his wine. “Ask the duke, Lucy. Tell him you need new gowns and such. He’ll give you the money.”

  “He’ll wonder why I have nothing new.”

  “Ask for more, dear girl. Enough to buy yourself a new frock or slippers or a bonnet or two. Remake some of your gowns. No one will know the difference, and in the event, the duke won’t miss the money. A thousand pounds is pocket money to him. Ask him. If you love your dear Papa, you will.” He winked. “I daresay we’ll both come out ahead.”

  Lucy’s ability to speak vanished, and that was for the best. She would have regretted whatever words she’d trapped inside her. She stood, counting a silent ten, and he took that as her agreement.

  “You’re a good daughter. The best of the lot.”

  She wasn’t. She wasn’t at all. No longer.

  “You don’t scold like Anne.” He drank more wine. “Write to the duke. Call on Aldreth when he’s home. You’ll have money from them both.”

  “I can manage fifty.”

  “Fifty.” He made a face. “That’s not enough. Not near enough.”

  “That’s all I have.”

  He poured the last of the wine into his glass. “Borrow the rest. Aldreth will give more than you ask for. Or Cynssyr. The
re’s a good girl, Lucy. You’ll have new gowns and all the useless things you like so well.” He winked again. “Hell, you could ask Captain Niall, and he’d give you enough to make me whole. Or Thrale, for that matter.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “All you have to do is smile. There’s no man can resist you then.”

  “Is that all that matters? How pretty my smile is?”

  He snorted. “What else would they care about?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Though he heard rapid footsteps in the corridor, Thrale remained in the chair where he’d been reading while he waited for Niall to join him. The Cooperage was a house of cozy rooms, each one decorated and furnished with comfort in mind. Whoever was heading toward the parlor where he sat couldn’t be Sinclair. The cadence of the steps was all wrong. A woman. Moving quickly. Running.

  The door opened with a bang.

  In the time it took him to realize he ought to stand and his actually doing so, Mrs. Wilcott whirled to the door and slammed it shut. With both hands.

  He stood, but, she, as yet unaware of his presence, pressed her palms flat to the door and hung her head. Her shoulders shook as she whispered, “Bloody, bloody, bloody horrible—”

  Thrale cleared his throat.

  Without turning, she went motionless for a count of five. She straightened and faced him, perhaps not composed but with a smile of impenetrable cheer that made him want to weep. Or gnash his teeth. She gazed at him as if she had swept into the parlor expecting to find him here so that she might entertain him with weak tea and anecdotes of mind-numbing dullness.

  Even he, who considered himself indifferent to her, could not help his visceral reaction to her. She was, arguably, though not by much, the most beautiful woman in England. Some men swore her younger sister outshone her. In his opinion, no.

  Thrale bowed. “Madam.”

  One could count on Mrs. Wilcott to take command of a conversation and strip it of any particle of interest. He did not doubt that she would do so now. And, indeed, she began with a sugary smile and empty eyes. It was a talent she’d honed to deadly sharpness. She pressed her back to the door, that vacuous smile in place. Her wasted intellect was one of the great tragedies of the age. If it was true. If not, then this was farce, and he did not care to be the butt of her joke.