The Gent’s eyes shuttered and his mouth tightened. “He declared the boy illegitimate, provided apparent proof of the lady’s indiscretion, and thus negated the terms of the will. The house was mortgaged over to the creditors as part of his debt.”
Colin put his head into his hands with a hiss. Then he looked over at the Gent as he replayed the words. “Part?”
The Gent nodded slowly. “A mere percentage of what was owed. And somehow, Susannah managed to set aside some meager amounts to send to her family.”
Colin shook his head quickly. “But there must be some way to prove that Freddie was his son, that he can inherit…?”
“No,” the Gent overrode with a shake of his head, “there isn’t. It is as irreversible as it is false. Sir Martin went a step further and declared himself to be impotent, which no one would dare refute, as such a thing would never be admitted by any man of sense and title. But the claim was complete nonsense, as he had fathered several illegitimates over his lifetime.”
Colin groaned and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall. Never had he imagined it could be so bad, that anyone could be forced to live in such circumstances, that Susannah had endured such a life.
“The debts piled up continually during the course of Sir Martin’s life,” the Gent continued, “and when he died, courtesy of a violent fever, justice came to claim them. And the widow of Sir Martin had no idea how extensive they were. The house was seized, and all has been sold for a pittance of its value to Sir Martin’s cousin, who wanted to claim the inheritance that is not his. Nothing was left to satisfy the creditors, and though Susannah was liked in Milfield for her service in the village, and with the nuns, and at the hospital, there was no one to help her. She gave over the funds she had, and began to work in the village she was once the lady of. And when that did not satisfy the demand, she took her son and fled rather than face the poorhouse or debtor’s prison.”
“To London,” Colin rasped, running shaking hands through his hair.
The Gent nodded, waving aside the barmaid who was coming to ask after him. “She changed her name often, worked as she could along the journey here, and arrived in the heart of the city, where she worked for their boarding. And even now, she pays amounts to the solicitor for her husband, and to the one she hired for her family, who are now almost completely destitute and have no way to alter their circumstances without her.”
“I had no idea,” Colin whispered. He shook his head, attempting to swallow multiple times before he succeeded. “No idea.” His eyes began to sting suspiciously and he pinched at the bridge of his nose.
The Gent said nothing for a long moment, then he sighed heavily. “There is more.”
“How much more could there be?” Colin asked, his voice croaking.
“I have only spoken of money and situation.” There was another long hesitation, and then, “I have not said anything at all about what life was like for Susannah. What horrors she endured.”
Slowly Colin lowered his hand, his eyes fixed on the Gent in dismay. “What else?” he asked, his words scraping against his throat.
The Gent looked down at his hands on the table. “Anyone who ever went to Pavel House was going into a den of the foulest, most unspeakable sort of place. Ruination was commonplace. Nothing respectable ever entered or came out. There was no secrecy or discretion about it, rather it was on grand display. Reckless extravagance and wildness fueled behaviors that would scandalize even the darkest parts of London. Greed, deception, and lust were all that ruled there, and there was not any member of the house that was spared in the undertakings. Saving for one small child, whose father hated him with such ferocity that he was never mentioned and never allowed any sort of privilege.” There was a very faint shadow of a smile. “But his mother found ways around that as well. He was remarkably sheltered for the hellhole in which he was raised.”
“And Susannah?” He could barely get the words out, could hardly manage to speak her name.
The Gent looked at him now, expression and eyes hard and cold. “She was forced into whatever her husband saw fit. Commands and edicts were obeyed or she was punished, sometimes brutally. She was continually and publicly mocked, derided, and humiliated, and she had to bear it all with silence, for anything else was punishable. Abuse in every form was her daily promise, and every bawdy, disgusting event Sir Martin hosted she was forced to attend. To host alongside him. But never as his lady, he would never raise her to his level. She was less than a servant to him, and to all that attended there. Never a participant in what took place there, but she was forced to be witness to it, and refusal was impossible. She had to obey. She always had to obey.”
Colin stared at the Gent without seeing him, his eyes unfocused as his body roiled with the revelations. His head swam and his fingers shook, and suddenly he was ill. He latched onto the table, and retched on the far side, emptying his stomach again and again.
Shame poured over him in unending waves, and still he felt sick. Why could he not see it? He had been so intent on what he wanted, what he could see, what his injuries had been, that he had missed what had been right before him. He knew that she had suffered, had seen it from the beginning, but never could he have imagined that it would have been so horrific, so beyond words.
And he had wanted to force her to tell him all?
He could barely stand to hear it from someone completely unattached, he would never have survived hearing it directly from her lips. And how could he have expected her to relive such horrors?
He’d thought it all about money. Such a simple, childish assumption. It might have been the cause of her desperation now, but it was hardly relevant by comparison.
He righted himself and set his elbows on the table, covering his face. How he had misjudged her. How he had betrayed her with his anger and his mistrust. He was hardly worthy of a woman who could endure so much and still find the autumn beautiful. Who could still hope. Who could love so tenderly.
“I trust you have all that you need to proceed as you will,” the Gent murmured, getting to his feet. “If I can be of any further assistance, you know how to contact me.”
Colin did not respond, his face in his hands, faint convulsions racking him.
A coin landed on the table near his elbow.
“Get yourself a hack and get home,” the Gent suggested firmly. “You are in no condition to walk there, and this is not the place for you.”
Colin heard the rustle of his clothes and the fading footfalls. “Gent?” he called.
The footsteps stopped. “Yes?”
He rubbed at his eyes. “How much?”
There was a pause, and then he heard the boots shift against the wood floor. “How much what?”
Colin dropped his hands, met his friend’s eyes steadily, and swallowed hard. “How much money, exactly, remains to be paid?”
Chapter Twenty
Susannah did not even attempt to play at haughty airs with the assistant this time, or change her dress, or care at all about what anybody thought of her. She had run almost the entire way there, and her hair was a fright, her face and brow and back dripping with perspiration, and the shock on the assistant’s face registered somewhere in the back of her mind, but not with any significance.
She was immediately shown into Mr. Goulding’s office and he rose with a kind smile, but she ignored that as well as she set all of the money she had managed to scrape together, most of it rather frantically over the last three days, on his desk. The moment she had picked herself off of the floor of that gazebo, she’d had the sole focus of getting all the money she could, however she could, in the hopes that it would hold off the creditors and their threat of prison.
Susannah had not shed another tear since then, not for herself or Colin or her fears. She had worked her fingers to the bone for Mrs. Randall, hardly sleeping at all and almost completely neglecting her son, and Tibby had graciously given her an advance on her salary without any questions or raised brows. T
hree days and nights of emotionless, mind-numbing work and desperation, all for this.
All told, it was not the grand amount she had hoped to achieve for all her efforts, but it ought to have been enough to settle the feathers of those who hunted her now.
“There,” she said with satisfaction as she pushed the money towards him. “Will that satisfy them, do you suppose?”
Mr. Goulding looked down at the money, then back up at her. “I don’t understand,” he finally said.
She gave him a look, her hands setting at her hips. “What is there to understand?” she asked. “They wanted more money, I have brought more money. Do you need further explanation?”
Mr. Goulding did not react to her sudden rudeness. He wet his lips, slowly drew his spectacles off of their perch on his nose, and exhaled. “Lady Hawkins-Dean, I thought you knew…”
Susannah was suddenly very uneasy. “Knew what?”
His expression remained placid. “The debts are paid. In full.”
She must have been more sleep deprived than she thought, for the words she had just heard were complete and utter nonsense. She staggered to the side a little and caught the chair nearest her. “I beg your pardon?”
His eyes were curious, but kind, and his mouth curved into a small smile. “They are paid, my lady. All of them. Every bit. The creditors are all satisfied, no one is hunting you, and no one is going to a debtor’s prison. You do not owe anything to anybody anymore. Not a farthing.”
Her hold on the chair trembled and her head was suddenly swimming. “How?” she managed. “When?”
He picked up her money and brought it over to her, taking her arm and helping her into the seat she clung to. “It was all settled about an hour ago. I don’t know how, or who; I was working with other solicitors and bankers. I just assumed it was your friends we have been speaking of, though I hardly expect that any one person could pay so much at once. Could they have done this in secret out of kindness for you?”
“I never told them,” she whispered, finally admitting the truth of it. “I never told anyone how much it was, how bad it had gotten there at the end…” She shook her head. “No one knew. And I took great care not to be followed or accompanied when I came here. You understand why.”
He nodded at once, seeming more comfortable now that she was speaking sense. “I do. And all I can say, my lady, is that someone very powerful, or several of them, must be looking out for you. It is the only explanation I can come up with for this miraculous turn of events.”
Susannah would not contradict him, considering what had occurred, but there was no such person in her life. No one knew the truth, especially not her friends, and no one had those funds. Well, perhaps Tibby, but she had taken great care to completely avoid any hint of possibility that she would ever know.
“No more debts,” she murmured softly, the reality sinking in. She ought to cry, she felt as though she should be crying, but there were no tears to be had. She was almost numb, in fact.
One thought found its way through the murky melee of her thoughts: what of her other debt that Mr. Goulding knew nothing about? Not a debt as structured or demanding as what was now apparently settled, but it was no less pressing in her life.
She rose quickly, and stammered out some sort of excuse that nobody in their right mind would have believed, forcing the money back into her reticule.
Mr. Goulding bowed as he took her hand. “It has been my honor to be of service to you, my lady, though the circumstances were abominable. If there is anything I can do for you in the future, please do let me know.”
She nodded, thanked him, and swept from the office far more grandly than she had entered.
At which point, she ran, full tilt, for Mr. Jacobs’ office. She had no reason to suspect that anything should have been done on that end, even fewer people knew of her family’s destitution than knew of her husband and his ruin. But she had to know, had to be sure.
Mr. Jacobs did not look at all surprised to see her. And he gave her the second blow of the day.
“They are all taken care of, Mrs. Clarke,” he said with a smile, using the alias she’d provided. “Your cousin explained that he had come into some money and thought he could help the family. They will not be well off, but it will be sufficient for their means. And he was particular to set up an annual sum for them. You don’t have to supply them any more funds.”
Susannah clamped her lips together to keep from letting a hoarse cry escape. Then she found her way through the shock and managed to say, “Cousin?”
Mr. Jacobs grinned. “Yes, he said you might be startled by it. Wanted it to be a surprise, I gather.”
“Which cousin?” Susannah asked carefully, knowing full well she did not have any cousins living.
Mr. Jacobs thought for a moment. “Do you know, I don’t believe he said? We only finally worked things out with him and his solicitor this morning, and with all of that, I did not get a name. I apologize.”
She forced a smile she did not feel. “What did he look like, Mr. Jacobs?” she asked, hoping to at least get an idea of who might be setting out such money for her.
“Average height,” he said, measuring with his hand. “Blonde hair, dark eyes, very finely dressed, stocky fellow, bit of an Irish lilt. Do you have Irish blood?”
“By marriage,” she lied easily, feeling even more bewildered. She didn’t know anyone matching that description. And if Mr. Jacobs didn’t know who it was, or question the supposed relationship, she could hardly press the matter.
And at this moment, she didn’t want to ask any questions at all.
Mr. Jacobs laughed at her expression. “It’s over, Mrs. Clarke. Get on with your life.”
She nodded, her chest tightening and her head feeling so light she thought it would fly off of her body with the slightest breeze. Somehow she made her way from the solicitor’s office, and the business district, and eventually wandering back into Mayfair.
She walked towards Tibby’s house, her thoughts awhirl, unaware of her surroundings. How could her debts be so easily paid? She refused to believe it, and yet her solicitors had said so. She was free. And yet her freedom did not sit well. Would the men who had been so ruthlessly pursuing her be so easily appeased? They wanted far more than the settlement, they wanted complete ruination. She was not ruined, only destitute.
She could not trust this.
Her desperation might be gone, but her situation was not much different. Her past was still her past, and the ties remained.
They could still come for her.
She did not owe money to anyone, which meant she could settle for less wages. More discretion. Less pain. London was perfect place to hide, and now she had more reason to. Or… there could be something more.
She heard her name called and thought for a moment that her fears had been right. Her heart, having leapt to her throat, now crashed to her stomach as she saw Colin and a very pretty young woman headed in her direction. Colin’s expression was blank, but the girl on his arm was beaming.
Her name escaped Susannah at the moment, but that seemed inconsequential.
Colin was obviously close with her, and it was the final straw.
She tried for a smile, though the effort nearly killed her.
“Miss Hart!” his companion exclaimed with a genuine delight and too-perfect smile. “What a most pleasant surprise!”
Susannah licked her lips quickly and curtseyed. “Miss Arden,” she murmured, relieved to have recalled the name at last. “I wonder if you might lend me Mr. Gerrard for a moment. Only a brief one,” she added, seeing Colin stiffen a bit.
Colin shook his head, his jaw tightening further still. “I am sorry, Miss Hart, but I really must see Miss Arden returned to her aunt. She is late, and must not go unescorted.”
Miss Arden looked confused, but said nothing.
Susannah tried for a swallow. “Very well. Perhaps another time then.” But she doubted there would be another time. She needed to leave, and
he obviously took no pleasure in seeing her. She had not forgotten their last encounter, and there was nothing in this version of Colin to recommend him.
“Indeed,” he said with a nod, shifting closer to Miss Arden. He started to move, then stopped and gave her a too-polite look that she did not believe. “Is it of importance?”
“No,” she heard herself say in a tremulous voice. “No, it is only the topics we have discussed before. I have… been giving them thought.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but were cold. “I see. I have been doing the same.”
“Have you?” she asked, almost holding her breath.
He nodded once. “You were right.” He gave her a tight smile that could have been a grimace. “Geese and swans and all that.”
She could only blink as the air in her lungs was suddenly gone. “I… I see,” she finally replied, her tongue and throat feeling parched and coarse on the words.
“Do you?” he asked, peering more closely at her.
She gave a brief nod. “Yes. Far better than you can imagine. I…”
I did not think you would feel that way. I thought I could… I thought… I thought…
Lord, what a fool she was.
She cleared her throat and somehow managed to force a smile. “I apologize for taking up your time, Mr. Gerrard. Miss Arden. Good day.”
He inclined his head. “Miss Hart.”
But she had already turned from him, nearly stumbling in her haste to be away from him. From them. From feelings. From memories.
She couldn’t breathe, her lungs simply refused to take in air at all, and her knees quivered in their attempts to work properly.
She had spent so long dreaming of heaven, thinking she could never have it, keeping herself from touching it. And now that a way had been opened, heaven within her reach, she had found herself forbidden after all.
And consequently found herself in hell.
Scattered, panicked breaths eventually emerged from her and she clutched at her chest in agony, pain searing her. He didn’t want her. He finally saw what she had been telling him, that he was too far above her for such a connection, despite their feelings. She had forced his feelings from him, turned him into a memory after all. He found her unworthy, lacking, perhaps even tainted.
The Burdens of a Bachelor (Arrangements, Book 5) Page 25