Page 65 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
“Another sister?”
“Felicity. I haven’t—I haven’t met her just yet.” But she would. Eventually. At least, she intended to do so.
“It seems your mother had a proper theme going,” Thomas said wryly. “Virtue names, all.”
Mercy winced. “Perhaps she named us for those qualities she lacked,” she said, and took a deep breath. “They’re my elder half-sisters, Thomas. Charity by six years, and Felicity by three.”
She saw the moment the implication struck him. “Your mother was widowed?” he inquired almost hopefully.
“No,” she said, though the word scraped the inside of her throat as it emerged. “No, she wasn’t. In fact, her former husband is still living, and there was neither a divorce nor an annulment between them. It’s impossible to say even whether Charity and Felicity are legitimate with any particular certainty. And there could well be more of us, her bastard children. Mother had a habit of abandoning her families, it seems, when they had ceased to entertain.” She would never forget the blithe, careless manner with which her mother had exited her life, never to return. She would never forget Papa’s anguish, or her own. The feeling that half of herself had gone missing. “I will have to tell Papa as well,” she said. “I fear it will break his heart all over again, to learn the truth of it all. But I have got sisters, and I will not abandon them.” Not as Mother had.
She had made that decision years ago, when she had begun her search. To see it through, to find what she had lost. And shehad found so much more than she had expected. But she had found the inevitability of scandal, too. When it had been only her own reputation at risk—which had been of little consequence to her—she had not counted the loss so great.
But now it was Thomas. It was Juliet and Marina and the baroness. They wouldsacrificeto associate with her, should any of this become public knowledge. Twice already Thomas had warned her away from Charity; he could not deny the truth of it. And she could not ask them to weather the scandal with her.
“I am so very sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t expect any of this. Us, I mean to say. Whatever we have been to one another. It was so selfish of me to entertain it, but I just—I wanted you.” Shamed, she dropped her gaze. “I wanted you,” she repeated. “For however long I could have you. But I always knew I would have to tell you why—why we cannot marry.”
And now he knew it, as well.
∞∞∞
Mercy had curled in on herself, her hands busking her arms as if the room had grown too cold for comfort, but Thomas knew the posture for what it was. Defensive, protective. Arms crossed over her heart as if a single harsh word from him might wound it. As if it had already begun to bleed.
A secret sister.Twosisters—possibly more. Christ, he had been so damned blind. Mercy had practically confessed once before, that night they’d seen Charity on the street.She is someone’s daughter, Mercy had said.Someone’s sister.
That Charity had been someone’s daughter was simply a matter of fact. Everyone had parents. Not so with sisters. Mercycouldn’t have possibly surmised that much of a stranger on the street without due reason.
He was meant to say something, he knew. Probably she expected some manner of recrimination, accusation. She had deceived him. A lie of omission at the very least. But they had known one another—trulyknown one another—for so short a time. He could not hold her responsible for withholding honesty she had not owed him.
And yet she had revealed it to him at last, that closely-guarded secret. He was meant to say something to it, to acknowledge it. At the very least to confirm that he had both heard and understood its implications.
He said, “Pour me a drink, would you?”
Mercy startled, her mouth dropping open. “I beg your pardon?”
Thomas inclined his head toward the sideboard. “A drink. If you would be so kind.” She had had the benefit of a large glass of liquor, and he had had to take in all that she had to say sober as a judge, and while he did not begrudge her the liquid fortitude she had taken, if ever there had been a time to drink, it was here and now.
Like a sleepwalker in the grips of some remembered, repetitive action she turned for the sideboard, selected a glass, and poured from a crystal decanter. But her breath hitched halfway through the action, and her hand trembled as she struggled to replace the stopper. “Naturally, you will want to leave Papa’s house,” she said as she brought the glass to him. “Though I would advise waiting until morning. There will be less gossip that way. If you have not enough funds to secure other lodgings, I will—”
“I have the funds,” he said as he took the glass from her hand. “Your father was really quite generous.” But then he could afford to be, even if Thomas had always intended to repay him.
“I just wanted to be perfectly clear,” she said, and her hands fisted in the silk skirt of her ball gown. Fretfully, she began to pace. “You need feel no responsibility for me. I am quite capable of looking after myself. And it would be best”—another hitch of her breath, ending on a distressed gasp—“it would be best if you were to distance yourself from me as soon as possible.” She swallowed hard, and her voice warbled across an octave. “All of you.”
He took a bracing drink and let the brandy burn down his throat. “No,” he said.
“No?” Mercy paused in her pacing so abruptly she looked like nothing so much as a marionette jerked to a halt by an unseen puppeteer. “No? Thomas, have you not heard a word I have said?”
“Oh, I heard them. Every last one of them.” And they had lifted a film from his eyes. He doubted it had been her intent, but she had accomplished it all the same. The world had become simultaneously extremely complicated and very simple indeed. It was true enough that he could hardly imagine a less ideal set of circumstances.
It was also true that when she had finished speaking, when she had concluded that pretty little speech that she had imagined would spell out in perfect, fatalistic terms the end of their relationship, the killing of any possibility of a future between them, he hadn’tcared.
There was nothing more important to him than Mercy. Not social standing, not money, not respect, not reputation.Nothing. He would have sacrificed the whole of it, without even the tiniest hesitation, to keep her. Without her, he’d be half a man at best. Probably less. He needed her in a way he would never be able to fully articulate, in a way that went deeper than simple words could ever hope to convey. That was the simple bit—acceptance of that fact.
But she was correct in her own way. There would be repercussions, possibly inescapable ones, and not only for the two of them. Mercy loved his sisters and his mother every bit as much as he did. Of course she would not want her own scandals to blow back upon them, to affect their chances retaining their positions within society, or of making good matches.
Although…
Mercy chewed her lower lip, wringing her hands in misery. “Have you nothing to say?” she prompted. Still waiting for that reproach she thought it her duty to endure, he thought.
