Page 189 of Ten Lords for the Holidays

“Mama has news. And Papa. But they won’t tell us without you.”

“It’ll be another baby,” Tam said sotto voce to Helena. Wasn’t that always the serious news?

“Tam. Come in.” The grim look on her mother’s face appearing in the doorway didn’t bode well for a potential new child.

In the parlor, her father was even more stern faced. Her younger brothers, Thomas and Nigel, were sat nervously looking at the floor. Lionel, her elder brother, was pacing around.

Tam obediently took the space that had been left for her on a sofa next to Helena and breathed in the scent of pine from the decorations. Christmas. Nothing really bad happened at Christmas.

“As you know,” her father began with his usual pomposity, but not volume. “I believe railways will provide the optimum form of transport.”

Oh no. Not this lecture again. Tam sagged and put her chin in her hand. So tedious. How long until she could run away with the excuse she needed to change for the party? Her father was obsessed with railways, particularly the line he’d invested in.

“Both in this century and the one to come, railways—”

“We’ve heard this,” Lionel grumbled. “Get to the point.”

Her father’s lips tightened into a bloodless white line.

“My belief is sound. I know I will be proven right about their potential.” But there was a hesitation in his voice that grabbed all his children’s attention. Tam’s eyes slid to her mother’s face.

Grave. None of the indulgence she normally gave her husband in his enthusiasm about steam power.

Cold water drained down Tam’s back. This wasn’t her father’s normal speech.

“Because I believe in railways, I invested accordingly.”

The importance of this didn’t immediately strike Tam, or anyone other than her ashen-faced mother, who gripped her father’s hand tight.

“This is to do with that failure of the Western line railway, isn’t it?” Lionel asked.

“Yes,” her father answered.

“Shit!” Lionel exploded.

“Language!” her mother chastised, but without any heat.

Tam sought to catch up on what her brother had clearly already understood.

“It was an excellent opportunity to link up two of the foremost—”

And that was when the penny dropped.

“How much have we lost?” It was her mother’s lack of color. And Lionel too. Pale as though they were bleeding out, and her instinct was that her abrupt question might act as a tourniquet to the wound.

“What’s happened?” piped up Helena. “I don’t follow.”

“I know that this investment will pay off in the long-term,” her father struggled on with what was becoming obvious were prepared words. “And I still think it will. However, since all our money is tied up in this venture—”

“You put all our finances inoneventure?” Tam stared. This was like expecting a patient with a cold, arriving to find a fever, and touching their arm and it coming off in your hand, spontaneously amputated and bleeding on the carpet.

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?” Helena asked in a whisper. Sweet but not quick, her sister.

“We’ve lost everything,” her mother answered into the shocked silence.

“Nothing left?” Tam checked.

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