And now Rebecca wouldn’t be going to London after all.
“I cannot abandon you after this,” Susan said at last, noting that Rebecca was finally beginning to get drowsy from the laudanum. “I shall write to Lady Walmsley and inform her of your accident, and I shall stay with you and keep you company and help nurse you back to health.” She leaned across the chaise longue in which Rebecca inclined, Rebecca’s splinted leg cushioned by pillows, and patted her sister’s hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you.”
“But you must!” Rebecca cried. “How else am I going to hear about anything that happens? You must go and write to me every day! You must attend the parades and the balls and, oh, everything! Why did this have to happen?” She dabbed at her eyes again. “My handkerchief is worthless; it’s just a sopping rag now.”
Susan felt in her pocket for her own handkerchief to give Rebecca, but she didn’t have one. She rarely thought about things likes handkerchiefs. “Here now, it’s time you rested. I won’t have you making yourself ill over this.”
“Nor will I,” Mama said as she entered the room with a tray holding a fresh pitcher of water. She set it down and poured a small amount into a cup. “Take a sip of water, dearest, and then you must sleep. Resting will help your leg heal faster.”
Rebecca handed her soaked handkerchief to Susan and obediently sipped from the cup Mama held to her lips, then she closed her eyes, and Mama set the cup back on the tray. “Come, Susan,” Mama whispered.
“Promise me,” Rebecca murmured, nearly asleep already. “Promise me, Susan. You must go, and you must tell me everything.”
Susan sighed. “Very well, my dear. For you, I will go.”
Rebecca gave a tiny nod and slept.
Mama slipped her arm around Susan’s shoulders as they walked down the corridor to the front parlor. “It’s a sorry state of affairs, to be sure, but she will get over the disappointment.”
“I know that,” Susan said. “She is a sweet girl with a reasonable temperament and understands that life has its disappointments. But I feel so guilty going to London without her when it is she who was so excited about the prospect. Aside from the historical circumstances, the only interest I had in going was to see the expression on her face as she took it all in for the first time.”
“You are too jaded by half, Susan,” Mama said, patting Susan’s hand.
“And I daresay Lady Walmsley will be disappointed when she discovers that she is playing hostess to the old spinster bluestocking and not the blooming debutante,” Susan said.
“Nonsense!” Mama exclaimed.
“I shall be thirty this fall, Mama. You know as well as I that I’ve been on the shelf for so long as to be completely covered in dust.”
“I wasn’t referring to your age, Susan, and I won’t have you making light of yourself. You are my beautiful, clever daughter, and Lady Walmsley will enjoy spending time with you—of that I have no doubt. When I spoke of nonsense, I was referring to your unmarried state. You know as well as I that it has been of your own choosing. You’ve had suitors—”
“You would like Lady Walmsley,” Susan said, cutting Mama off before she could go too far down that particular conversational path. “She has an abundance of vitality for a woman of her years that I find admirable. Much like yourself.”
“None of whom you gave the slightest encouragement,” Mama continued undeterred.
Susan sighed. How many times must they talk about this? “Mama, I know you mean well, and perhaps this invitation from Lady Walmsley has raised your hopes, but, as I have told you on countless occasions, there is nothing that sounds more unappealing to me at present than marriage merely for marriage’s sake.”
“Can you look upon your brothers’ and sisters’ happiness and not yearn for what they have?” Mama asked.
“I am exceedingly grateful that my married siblings have found love and happiness. We had the best examples of that growing up, you know,” Susan said, giving Mama a hug. Susan herself had yet to meet an honorable man who could hold her interest for longer than five minutes—certainly none of the suitors she’d had during the first years after her come-out had done so, except for—well, she wouldn’t think about that single near disaster that had been Lord Frome. How was she to tolerate a lifetime of being shackled to someone who was her intellectual inferior? The answer was simple: she wouldn’t. As an unmarried woman, she was still her own person, not some man’s property to do with as he pleased. “I cannot help it if all of the gentlemen I have met have left me cold.”
An image of fiery dark eyes flashed across her mind and then was gone.
“What’s the matter?” Mama asked, looking at her with concern.
Susan shook off her reaction to the image. “Nothing. I’m fine,” she said, smiling with what she hoped looked like reassurance. “Now, believe me when I tell you that I am perfectly content to live my life here with you and Papa and play the doting daughter, sister, and aunt.”
“I can still hope, for your sake, can’t I?” Mama said.
“I cannot stop you, but I’m afraid your bluestocking daughter is only enthusiastic about London because of the history being made. I doubt there is any gentleman in Town who will be able to compete with that.”
“I shall pray you are wrong,” Mama replied.
Susan chuckled. Mama was such an optimist.
Susan, however, was not.
***
A slight knock on his library door interrupted the work George was doing with his private secretary, Benjamin Henshaw. “Come,” George said, still perusing the documents Henshaw had placed before him.
The door opened. “Mr. Dutton is here to see you, Your Grace,” George’s butler, Talbot, said.
“Dutton?” George said, finally looking up. “I wasn’t expecting him. Did he give a reason for his visit?”
“No, Your Grace,” Talbot said.
As annoying as Dutton could be at times, the family solicitor didn’t normally show up on George’s doorstep willy-nilly like this. He glanced at his secretary. “That’ll be all for now, then, Henshaw.”
“Very well, Your Grace.” Henshaw scooped up the documents, bowed, and left the library.
“Show Dutton in, Talbot,” George said.
Talbot bowed and left.
George inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. The past several months had been trying ones, and Dutton’s showing up like this portended more of the same.
“Mr. Dutton, Your Grace,” Talbot announced, preceding the attorney into the room.