Page 6 of The Tartan Trap

Things had only gotten worse once the familial fortune was gone.

Margaret didn’t like to think about those years much—William had been gone overseas, her eldest brother, Richard, locked within his study, or more often, not at home at all. He’d never come out and directly told his sisters the gravity of their situation.

They’d learned it by degrees—in the dismissal of household staff for slights the sisters never noticed, in the sale of their mother’s jewelry, then some of the finer furniture from unused bedrooms. But by the end, Margaret had come home to find her brother and a strange man pawing through the dresses in her bedroom wardrobe, haggling over the price of gently used silk.

Margaret supposed Richard had started with her dresses because of the sheer quantity of fabric.

She was forced to alternate between the three dresses the debtor hadn’t wanted—a mourning gown, a striped day dress that was too small and had a prominent stain on the bodice, and a heavy wool gown that Margaret hadn’t liked in the first place.

Claire had been the champion of keeping up appearances, at least at the start. After the collectors started in on the furniture, she’d relocated all their belongings to the hallway and the front parlor. As if the few visitors they still had would believe all was well when they were using an old dresser as a sideboard!

Unfortunately, Miss Daisy Knope had sat in their parlor on one of the last days Claire had still opened the house to visitors. She’d sat and sneered at each of them in turn, called their watered-down tea interesting, and then pointedly complimented Margaret’s gown.

On that fateful afternoon, Margaret had chosen to wear the too-small day dress, as she couldn’t bear the thought of sweating in the bombazine one more day. She’d covered the stain on the bodice with a wilting nosegay she’d picked from the park across the street. While still upstairs, Margaret had lifted her chin at her cracked reflection in the single mirror they all shared. She’d told herself she looked well enough, that no one would notice the dress was straining at the seams, and she’d almost believed it.

But then Daisy had visited. In the light of her judgemental stare, Margaret had felt like far too much sausage stuffed into a casing—that she might burst from her dress at any moment with a sharp ripping noise. She’d sat there while Daisy had inquired what the time was with her eyes wide with false innocence. Their mantel was conspicuously empty of any clock. In fact, the only one remaining in the residence was the tiny one pinned to their housekeeper’s waistcoat.

Claire had decided that the sisters were to be permanently not at home after that.

And then another tragedy visited upon their household—Richard found dead by a shrieking maid in his apartment across town. Days earlier, he’d told them he had a simple cold, nothing more, and that he wouldn’t bother the doctor for something so minor. But Margaret always wondered—if they’d been financially comfortable, would her brother still be alive? Would he have called for help if he thought they could afford the bill?

When William finally returned from India, it was to a manor house empty of furniture—the last of which had been sold to pay for Richard’s funeral. She and her seven sisters sat in the straight-backed chairs around the kitchen table—the only room not ravished by the debt collectors. They’d been wearing black cotton—all except for Lily, who’d found an old taffeta mourning gown in a forgotten cupboard—a frilly thing too ugly for even the moths to eat.

Margaret could still picture it—the single tallow candle spitting and guttering and trying to throw light in a house that had gone dark in every way possible.

William had strode in, dressed in his fine worsted wool, raised his eyebrows, and demanded, “What the devil has happened here?”

He’d spent the next month putting things to rights. The shopping had been a shock all on its own—to go from eating boiled potatoes one day, to eating whatever they desired the next. They’d gone from rifling through secondhand stores, praying no one from Mayfair would see, to being ushered into Madame Aubert’s as honored guests with no fiscal limits.

And what had William done to elevate himself so rapidly?

“Trade,” he’d announced crisply over a robust breakfast. He’d dabbed his mouth, wiped his fingers, and stared at them each in turn as if waiting for them to argue.

But he underestimated the effect that pots of strawberry jam and thick buttered toast could have on his sisters. Perhaps they might have been aghast, once—after all, trade was frowned upon. Nobility were supposed to be, well…noble. The man of title was supposed to manage the estate, devote himself to charity, things of that nature. Not be concerned with bills of loading and tradesmen and whether ships came in on time at port.

But Margaret and all her sisters had been softened by misfortune. They chased down whatever small misgivings they had with gulps of fine tea cooled by cream and sweetened with real sugar. They hadn’t looked back since.

Truthfully, Margaret had thought herself fully healed from that time of life. But the mere thought of Daisy Knope’s name had something inside her curling in on itself protectively. Margaret lifted her chin. It was a foregone conclusion that she and the dreadful lady would meet. Margaret consoled herself with the knowledge that she was no longer the same girl who’d been embarrassed by her outdated dress all those years ago.

“Ah, finally,” Beatrice said, dropping the curtain. “We’re home. I’m going to call for tea in the breakfast room.”

“I’ll join you,” Lily said.

Beatrice looked at Margaret expectantly as they waited for the steps to be let down and the door to be opened.

“I will, too, but I need to drop my packages in my room first.”

“Fine, but I’m not waiting if you dally.”

“That goes without saying,” Margaret said beneath her breath.

Once inside the grand townhome, the sisters scattered. Margaret headed upstairs with her stack of paper-wrapped packages. She might have let her maid or the footmen deliver them, but one of the items was especially precious to her—the aforementioned journal.

Beatrice had been right about one thing—Margaret had searched high and low for a worthy replacement. Though she’d already decided her writing companion would forevermore be called Ruth, she still felt it a momentous occasion to choose a new writing book.

She’d found precisely the right one in the fourth shop they’d visited. The book had a burgundy leather cover tooled with gold leaf at the edges. It was a far cry from the plain, sturdy book she’d written in daily for the past three years, but Margaret’s dressing had improved with their change of fortune; it was only right that Ruth had a new dress, too.

Margaret was also determined not to write so densely upon the page in this new journal as she had in the last. Of course, that had been from pure necessity—there certainly hadn’t been money for stationery when there’d barely been enough coin for food.