“Quiet down, Oliver. Peter, please, put that down…” Evelyn said, her voice thick with exhaustion.
“Quite hungry, aren’t you, boys?” her father boomed, as though attempting to fill the air with something other than the cries of little boys.
“Terribly!” Oliver whined.
Rebecca stepped into the doorway. All four members of her family cranked their heads around to peer at her. Peter and Oliver wore immediate, frantic smiles. Her father dropped his completely, seemingly in shock to see her at the dinner table, whilst Evelyn seemed to grow haughty.
“I see you’ve decided to join us,” she said.
“I didn’t know you planned to visit today,” Rebecca said. She stepped into the dining room and took her usual place at the table, which hadn’t yet been set for dinner. On cue, Molly bustled in with a plate, silverware, and a linen napkin, which she orchestrated beautifully, swiftly, before Rebecca.
“Father said you’ve been in and out frequently,” Evelyn said. “He hasn’t a clue what your schedule is. I don’t suppose you’re courting anyone?”
“Without the watchful eye of a chaperone?” Rebecca replied. “Of course not.”
Evelyn’s cat-like eyes glittered. “You couldn’t stick it out, could you?”
“Must we dip into such lacklustre talk so soon before dinner?” Rebecca said. She arched her brow dangerously.
“I know you’ll find a way out of it whenever you can. As such, I wish to speak my mind here, before our father and my own children,” Evelyn said. “You’ve made a mockery of this family, Rebecca. Father made a delightful match for you, and you rebuked his wishes. Tell me, Rebecca. What do you suppose will come of you? Where do you see yourself, in the wake of yet another failed engagement?”
Molly, along with three other maids, entered with bowls of soup, which they placed on the grand table before each of the family members. Immediately, Peter shot forward, grabbed his spoon, and stabbed through to the bottom of the bowl, making a mighty clank.
“Calm down, Peter, or you’ll make a mess,” Evelyn said, without losing heavy eye contact with Rebecca.
“Make whatever mess you wish, Peter. It’s your life,” Rebecca returned.
Peter glanced towards his mother, then his aunt, his brow furrowed with confusion. In the midst of the silence, Oliver gripped both sides of his soup bowl and drew the bowl towards his lips, sucking down the broth.
“Oliver, if you wish to see your next birthday, you will stop that immediately,” Evelyn spat.
Mr. Frampton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Oliver dropped his bowl to the table, making it slosh side-to-side.
“Were you really so passionate about my marriage to the son of a raucous gambler?” Rebecca asked suddenly. “Did you envision my happiness above all else?”
Evelyn let out a heavy sigh. “You’re going to make this far more dramatic than it should be.”
“And yet you’re the one who bought it up,” Rebecca replied.
“I only want what’s best for you and for Father,” Evelyn said.
“Here he is, beside us. Why don’t you ask him what he wants?” Rebecca said.
“I know what he wants. He wants you out of the house.”
“And I suppose that should come far before my own happiness,” Rebecca retorted.
“Rebecca, you’ve always been the baby child. The little sister. The girl who assumed she could get whatever she wanted out of life. But it’s really not so simple.”
Rebecca felt scattered, strange. She couldn’t possibly describe to her sister how much she’d truly wanted to marry Owen – how he’d rebuked her. It made her to look a classic fool, a jilted fiancée. She’d never envisioned that role for herself, but it had prescribed itself to her.
“I’m so glad to receive such apt advice from my older sister – who seems entirely pleased about her own existence,” Rebecca said, her voice simmering with sarcasm.
“Life isn’t always about that. That’s entirely my point,” Evelyn shot back.
Rebecca flared her nostrils then cut her hands out around the bowl before her. With her eyes heavily towards her sister, she lifted the bowl to her lips and sucked it down, just the way Oliver had. Oliver broke into giggles, his stomach jumping up and down, and Peter leapt forward and grabbed his own bowl and performed the action as well. Evelyn cried out, “Stop it! This instant!” But at this point, even Mr. Frampton had burst into laughter. He dabbed the side of his eye with the dark blue napkin and gave Evelyn a sad smile.
“Darling, I don’t suppose it matters how we take in our soup, here at our private dinner table. Do you think it’s the end of the world?”
Evelyn seemed on the verge of growling like a dog. She shot up and stamped towards the doorway. There, she paused and glared at Rebecca. “I do hope you’re happy with yourself. You’ll teach my children wretched manners over the years, even as you make the switch, become an old maid. I won’t have any pity for you. I’ve spent it all.”
Rebecca felt the words cut through her skin. She hesitated as Evelyn stamped her way to the garden, grumbling to herself. When she placed her bowl back on the table, her father reached over and spread his hand over her wrist. The motion was so tender, such a surprise, that she jumped.
“Darling, she just wants what’s best for all of us,” her father said. “And you know she’s never laughed at anything in her life.”
Peter and Oliver took this as the greatest joke of their young lives and nearly fell from their chairs with glee. Rebecca gave a slight smile and stirred her soup with a spoon, clanking the edges of the bowl.
“I couldn’t do it, Father,” she murmured. “I just couldn’t marry him. And I’m terribly sorry.” Her voice broke, a sign of her own weakness.
“I can’t imagine how terribly complex it is to be a woman of your age,” her father returned. “I would genuinely lose my mind.”
“I’ve already lost mine,” Rebecca said. “But thank you. And.” She paused, her mind racing with the delicacy of the issue. “I’m sorry I’ve avoided you the past weeks. I haven’t known quite what to do with myself.”
Her father nodded, all that was required to affirm that he understood.
In the silence, Peter and Oliver again lifted their bowls to their lips. Rebecca followed suit, as did her father. Together, they slurped up their soup, even as Evelyn re-appeared in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
“Ridiculous, all of you,” she said, although the sides of her lips did, in fact, tweak upwards, a sign of a glimmer of humour. “I cannot imagine how I was dropped into such an insane family.”
After dinner, Rebecca and Evelyn watched the boys play in the garden. Rebecca had expected Evelyn to depart immediately, but she seemed oddly softer, as though her rage had carved away her hard edges and left something else. The boys played harder than usual, tugging one another down into the grass and wrestling.
Evelyn clicked her tongue and said, “I daresay I’ll never truly understand what it means to have boys. We grew up in a girl-only family. This must be what father felt. Ulrich hardly knows what to do with them, either, although admittedly, he doesn’t seem to set aside much time.”
Evelyn turned slowly to Rebecca. She added a hand over Rebecca’s, then squeezed it. “I don’t know what happened. And I’m sorry to say that I assumed the worst of you.”
“It’s a valid thing to think,” Rebecca replied. “It’s not as though I don’t have that history. Although…”
She explained what had happened with Augustus in the garden, how she ached with the knowledge that she should probably just agree to marry Augustus – for all the reasons her sister had suggested.
“I don’t wish to be an old maid, alone and without family. I don’t wish to be left behind,” Rebecca whispered, embarrassed at her own thoughts and, even more, at her decision to share them with her sister. She bowed her head, stared down at her sister’s hand over hers. It had been a very long time since she’d felt she needed to hold her older
sister’s hand.
“You’ve always followed your heart,” Evelyn said. This time, notably, there seemed not a shred of snideness behind her words. “I know you’ll find a path to what you need. It’s in your blood. I will say, however, that you could grow in love for Augustus. It’s what’s happened to most of the women I know. They wake up one day and realised they’ve no idea how on earth they survived before knowing their husband.”
Rebecca hesitated. She knew she’d left out a great deal of the story, the fact that her love would remain with Owen Crauford forever.
“I feel he deserves so much better than this,” Rebecca murmured.
“Better than life with a woman he loves?” Evelyn asked.
“No. Better than life with a woman who cannot love him completely back. Although he’s revealed himself to be far more sinister than I ever could have dreamed, I don’t perceive him to be an entirely bad person. He’s been a remarkable friend over the years. I don’t wish to doom him to an existence with me. I’d never be truly grateful for him. And I can’t envision what you say. That I would one day wake up and think, ‘Thank goodness I married this man.’ I would always feel it in the back of my mind. That I’d made a mistake.”
Peter sprung up and landed, feet-first, atop Oliver’s stomach. Oliver screeched and dropped his head against the grass, in horrific pain. Evelyn swept towards them, her face taut with panic. Rebecca followed close behind. Peter fell to the side and peered down at his brother, whose face was contorted with pain.
“What on earth!” Evelyn cried. She folded herself on the other side of Oliver and placed a tender hand across his stomach. “Are you all right, darling?”
Oliver coughed twice, then nodded. Evelyn glared at Peter. “What on earth were you thinking?”
Peter gave a half-shrug. Evelyn drew her arms around Oliver’s frame and cradled him up into her, lifting him with more strength than Rebecca knew she had. Once standing, she grimaced towards Rebecca and said, “I think I had better get these boys home. They get so rowdy if their father isn’t around. Perhaps we can continue this conversation another time?”
Rebecca nodded. She tapped towards them, then wrapped one arm around Evelyn and Oliver, the other around Peter’s shoulders. Peter let out a low sob, perhaps coming into the reality of his own future punishment. Rebecca tapped her lips on his forehead and murmured, “Don’t worry, baby. It will be over before you know it.”
***
After Evelyn, Peter and Oliver had gone, Rebecca returned to her bedroom and sat at her desk, her quill poised. Perhaps for the first time in her life, she’d come to some kind of conclusion whilst in conversation with her sister. She’d never envisioned such an event.
Now she felt she owed Augustus some sort of letter. It wasn’t an apology, per se, but an official answer. Her stomach still twitched with moments of rage for how he’d treated her. Although friendship was complex – a fact she now knew more than after her brief spats with Tabitha – she still couldn’t fully forgive what he’d done. Not yet, at least.
Augustus,
Your appearance at my home yesterday came as an immense surprise to me. The events that transpired directly afterwards both thrilled and shocked me, and I admit, I said things that I don’t believe I should have said – words that aroused an anger in you that I had never perceived before. We are all at the mercy of our own emotions, something I’ve discovered more and more as I’ve grown older. We were once teenagers together, and now, we inch towards our middle-twenties and onward, God willing. I pray you will remain my friend throughout.
This brings me to the topic of this letter.
Augustus, you are a kind and generous soul. You’ve offered your love to me, and I know this to be the truest thing in the world – the kind of love any woman should be grateful to receive.
But Augustus, I cannot return this love. It would be unfair to you – nay, cruel – to accept yours if I cannot fully give it back. Ours would be an unequal pairing, a romance without honour.
I want to live the sort of life I can be proud of. I want to look back in five years, ten years – twenty years down the line – and remember that I continually made decisions with my own happiness in mind. Perhaps this is selfish. In fact, I would say every single person in my life perceives it as such. But I cannot live truthfully unto myself if I do not orchestrate my life in this manner.
Augustus, thank you for your honesty. Thank you for your proposal. Our friendship has brought me a great deal of pleasure and joy over the years. Please, let me know if you’d like to continue. I pray for many more sunny days in gardens, gossiping about every creature across the county.
Forever Yours,
Rebecca Frampton
Once the ink was dry, Rebecca slipped the letter into an envelope. Outside, the night sky had drawn itself over the horizon and cast the house in darkness. She undressed and donned a nightgown and then puffed out the candle, feeling a peace she hadn’t known in many weeks. Perhaps she’d never see Owen again. Perhaps Augustus was forever gone from her life. It couldn’t matter. She’d made every choice with honesty, with earnestness. She couldn’t forfeit them. And she would have to press on.
Chapter 26
It had been a few weeks since the incident with Rebecca. Owen felt the time slipping through his fingers in a strange way, as though every minute that passed grew less and less meaningful, drawing a greater distance between him and Rebecca and whatever understanding they’d had together.
One evening, seated with his father at the kitchen table – all that was left, now that his father had sold the antique dining room table – his father grunted that he’d received a letter from Kenneth Frampton.
“That dastardly man,” he muttered. “I detest him.”
Owen splayed his half-eaten sandwich atop his plate, crossed his fingers beneath his chin, and said, “What did the letter say, Father?”
“A wretched man, truly. I can’t imagine a worse pairing. The Framptons and the Craufords? A ridiculous idea from the first.”
“Father.”
His father sighed. His cheeks seemed to sag along with him. “He’s told me that the engagement is off. He gave hardly a reason. I’m terribly sorry, son. I can’t imagine what went wrong. We’d orchestrated so many details. I thought – I truly thought – that this was our path to bettering our life. And now, we’re stretched so thin, that I haven’t even money to…”
Neil paused and drew a line from his ear to the base of his chin with his finger. He seemed hesitant to continue, although Owen felt sure he knew what he’d wanted to say. The man was an addict, in every way, and he hadn’t been able to sit, steadfast, at the gambling table in many weeks. Watching his father struggle in this manner felt akin to having a sword swept through his heart. He hated that such a wretched, evil craft had its claws around his father’s neck. Yet there was nothing he could do. The man was ill, and all he could do was wait, until maybe, just maybe, the itch passed.
“There must be a better way, Father,” Owen said. He thought once more to Theo’s proposition, then scrubbed his fingers through his wild black curls.
“If you think of something, my ears are open,” his father replied. He then grabbed the rest of his sandwich and tore through it, eating almost frantically, as though this small sandwich could possibly fill the gambling-sized hole in his heart. When he finished, he sucked at his thumb, then his other one, and said, “I’ve never been poor, son. I’ve never felt this level of shame before. I know your mother has thoughts to join her sister in London. The idea of that – the sin of separation – it fills me with dread. The Lord will take no pity on me, and I know that.”
Owen couldn’t finish his sandwich. He rose from the rickety kitchen chair, something that had been of little to no value, and wrapped up the rest of it to slip in his pocket. “I’m going to catch up with Theo,” he told his father. “The stables are finished for the day.”
A Wicked Duke's Prize: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 24