Thomas flexed his hands impotently, and that sense of unease only grew as the butler admitted them, as Mercy strode across the foyer and began to ascend the stairs. One step at a time, steady and slow, but he could not help but feel as if her feet were pounding out the bass notes of a funeral dirge.
“Have I offended?” he asked as she proceeded ahead of him, up and up again, toward the billiards room. He thought he heard her draw a ragged breath, thought he heard a faint gasp for air. “Have I erred in some manner?” he asked again as she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the billiards room door, pushed it open, and darted within.
He followed, closed the door tight behind them, unsurprised to find her already at the sideboard. Her back was turned toward him, and she poured herself an overlarge glass of brandy with a hand that trembled. She cast the largest portion of it back in one long swallow, bracing herself for the burn, and her free hand—
Her free hand swiped across her face. The sort of gesture that was intended to wipe away tears. “You haven’t,” she said, in a croak of a voice, thick with emotion. “Erred. Offended. You haven’t. I have.”
Christ. “Mercy,” he said as she turned, and he took a steptoward her, reached out for her.
With the thrust of one hand out before her, she warned him away. “Don’t,” she said. “Please. I’ll never get it out if you do.” She was trying desperately—and failing—to school her features into some manner of calm, but those tears kept sneaking up upon her, one at a time. A hiccough briefly broke her composure, and her chin quivered. “I just wanted one more night,” she said in a broken whisper as she tossed back the last of her brandy and set the glass aside once more. “It was greedy of me. Selfish, I know. I am so very sorry, Thomas.”
One more night? “What do you mean?” he asked. But the bottom had dropped out of his stomach, and he thought—he thought he must know already.
“I mean that tomorrow, you will resume your search for your villainous solicitor,” she said. “And I have no doubt but that you will find him. And when you do—”
“I will ask you to marry me.”
“Do not, I beg of you. I will refuse.” Her lips tightened, trembled. Her fingers knitted before her, knuckles white with strain. “I would ask you to spare us both that hurt. I never intended to marry you, Thomas.”
His hand groped for the arm of the nearest chair, and he sank down into it, his stomach aching as if he had been punched in the gut. Hisheartaching. “You’re within your rights to refuse,” he said. “But I would like to know why.” Because she had led him to believe otherwise, and even now she was torn, agonized. He could not believe she had been toying with him. Or if she had, she had also been toying with herself. She could not now wear that stricken expression and notcare. Notlove.
As he did.
He ventured, “Does this have something to do with that woman you’ve been meeting? Charity?”
She jerked as if he’d struck out at her, and what little colorremained bleached from her face. “Did you—did you read my letters?”
“Just one,” he said. “The night I sent you off to Cheapside myself. You’d left your sketchbook behind, and the letter fell out. I didn’t mean to do it—” But that was hardly an excuse.
“You never told me.”
“It wasn’t my business,” he said. “I made you a promise not to pry into your affairs. That I would let you tell me in your own time.” And apparently that time had now arrived. “Mercy, you don’t know what sort of danger that woman presents to you,” he said. “She could ruin you simply through association. You cannot—”
“She’s my sister!” Mercy interjected in a raw little voice, wringing her hands in distress. “Charity is mysister.”
∞∞∞
She had stunned him. Utterly and completely. It was there in the shocked fall of his jaw, in the widening of his eyes behind the lenses of his spectacles, in the harsh breath he sucked in at the revelation.
“But you don’t have a sister,” he said inanely. And then, still in that dazed tone of voice, “I cannot believe your father has an illegitimate child.”
“Not my father,” Mercy said, turning her gaze to the floor. “My mother. Charity is my half-sister, through our mother.”
“But your mother’s dead. You’d lost her even before you and your father came to the countryside.”
A swift shake of her head. “We did lose her,” she said. “But not to death. She left the both of us. She simply…left.” Hershoulders moved in an awkward shrug.
Thomas swiped one hand down his jaw. “How?” he asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mercy said. “I was just a child. I only known that she came to the nursery one morning to tell me she was leaving. Of course, I asked her when she would return. She just—she smiled at me, patted my head, and told me she never would. And then she left, as if I was of no more concern to her than which gown to choose or which hat to wear. She left without even a backward glance.” Her throat was growing tighter with every word. “It was…easier, I suppose,” she said, “for Papa to let himself be assumed a widower. It’s acceptable to not wish to speak of the presumed deceased, for the grief of it. We chose our words carefully.Lost,” she said. “Neverpassed.”
“You didn’t come to London,” he said, “to deliver fabric patterns or to acquire silk for your hot air balloon as you told your father, did you?”
“No,” she said, with a jerky little shake of her head. She might just as easily have done those from the countryside. “No, I lied about my intentions. To everyone. I came because I had found Charity at last,” she said. “I had seen her, just once, during my last Season. Just through the window of a passing carriage, and I thought—I thought she was Mother, at first. She’s the very image of her. She was too young to be, of course, but still I thought she mustknowsomething of Mother, to resemble her so closely.” She braced herself against the side of the billiard table, unbearably weary already. “It took me years to uncover her identity,” she said. “I had little information with which to find her, and I am not particularly skilled with sketching the likenesses of people. But eventually I found a forgotten miniature of Mother buried in Papa’s things, and I sent it off to a Runner, and within weeks he had identified Charity. I wrote her a letter some months ago, and we’ve been corresponding eversince. I wanted to meet her, to know her. She is my family.” And she had had so little one it all these years. Just Papa and herself.
“And did you learn anything from her about your shared mother?”
“That she, too, had been abandoned.” She swallowed hard. “There’s more,” she said. “Mother married Charity’s father, and produced two daughters with him.”
