Page 13 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

By return post, she had sent her sister five pounds for a new gown, finding that her past eagerness to spite her father had been replaced by a new eagerness to spite her husband. Lord Chesleigh had said her family must expect nothing from him, but surely, a lady might spend her pin money as she liked.

Then, the onslaught had begun.

The latest bills from Aunt Brent’s physician were unexpectedly large, but I’m sure it would be no trouble to you.…

Remember, your little brother is an Oxford man now—and an Oxford man must honor his vowels. A mere fifty guineas would put things right again.…

…and when he learned the charming details of my own dear niece’s establishment, Dr. Cardew quite concurred that a little sea bathing would set me up for life.…

I’ve heard that Lady Ainsley plans to summer in Brighton, and since you will surely move in the same circles, it will be no trouble for you to drop a word in her ear about the matter.…

…but the cards must sometime turn in my favor. Just another hundred, my sweet sister. A hundred fifty, if you could spare it…

Spare such shocking sums from her pin money? Occasionally she wondered whether her family—her father in particular, for as often as not, the notes revealed that he had suggested writing to her for help—had forgotten that her husband was not rumored to be a generous man.

Doubtless Mr. Sellers would have been willing to advise her on the matter. How little it would cost her to confess to him that she was nothing more to her own flesh and blood than a purse with loose strings. After all, the man already knew that she was nothing to her husband.

Nothing at all.

Perhaps that was precisely why she had instead chosen to cling to what remained of her dignity, determined to manage on her own.

She weighed Papa’s unopened letter against Mr. Sellers’s, wondering whether the contents of one could hope to meet the other’s demands. With a sigh, she broke the seal.

“My dear daughter,” she read and choked back a skeptical laugh. Dear, indeed.

I write to say we intend to settle in London this winter. Your mama and aunt cannot be expected to suffer the draftiness of Springhallow. The workmen came to repair the roof, but they refused to begin until I have paid them in advance, as well as the balance due on last year’s improvements. Outrageous to treat a gentleman so, is it not?

In any case, one hopes we will not still find the town ablaze with rumors about why Chesleigh left you. After six years, surely the flames of gossip have moved on to devour some other poor soul. Nevertheless, I fear it would be easy enough to fan them in your direction once more. I sincerely hope no one will be tempted to do anything of the sort. If Chesleigh ever returns, I should not like to see his expression if he were to hear—for instance—that you had been playing him false.

Now that I think on it, it would have been wise of you to set aside a little fund—two thousand should do it—to guard against such unscrupulousness. You always were a clever child, so I’m certain this advice will not fall on deaf ears.

The letter fluttered from Caro’s nerveless fingers and drifted down to the desktop. Two thousand pounds. Her family’s previous requests were nothing to this demand. Even if Chesleigh had left her with a cache of jewels to hock, she wouldn’t have known how to raise half that sum.

And her husband had entrusted her with nothing of the sort.

She wanted to laugh at her father’s outrageous demand. But never before had one of her family’s wheedling notes included a threat.

Not that she was afraid of her husband. She never had been, and she did not intend to start now, after so long and with such a distance between them. But she had scrupulously guarded her reputation, perhaps the last item of value she possessed.

Now to think she might lose even that?

In her mind she heard the echo of her mother’s trembling voice when they’d found her in Lord Earnshaw’s library, saw the relief in her eyes when Lord Chesleigh had made his astounding offer.

“Yes, indeed, Mama,” Caro whispered, crumpling her father’s note and preparing to toss it onto the empty hearth, “thank God I was not ruined.”

At a tap on the door, she hurriedly smoothed the letter, set it aside, and turned to see Mrs. Horn, wearing a curious expression.

“A Mrs. Drummond to see you, ma’am. She bade me give you this,” the housekeeper said, proffering a third letter.

Caro’s first thought was that her family had hit upon yet another way to distress her. Reluctantly, she took the note, broke the seal, and unfolded the square of hot-pressed paper, only to find it filled with the delightfully expressive scrawl of Helen Scott.

When General and Mrs. Zebadiah Scott had first arrived in Brighton more than a month ago, Caro’s heart had caught in her throat. The mere sight of the general had been enough to make her recall her wedding day.

A friend of yours?

In a manner of speaking.

Might that ostensible friend know what had become of her husband?