Page 74 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
“You need not apologize,” Charity said. “I’m well aware of it. My father also found it disquieting. Audacious, almost, as if I had somehow contrived to resemble Mother only to plague him.” She took a sip of her tea, her eyelids lowering. “You need not mince words,” she said. “She abandoned me, too. I am well aware of what she was.”
“Is,” Papa corrected. “The last information I received suggested she had married again and was living happily in France.”
Mercy startled. “Does—does she have any more children?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Papa said, his mouth turned down in faint apology. “I learned only of the two girls who had come before you. I know now that I ought to have told you,” he said. “But you are my only child. My daughter. I wanted only to protect you.”
Protect her. From the hurt of it, but also the potential scandal. He had not known, then, when last she had been in London. He hadn’t pushed her toward marriage, hadn’t made any particular effort to see her settled, much less sought to buy her a title. That course of actionhad not occurred to him until she had expressed an interest in returning to London. She supposed she had been safe enough in the countryside, segregated from polite society, such as it was. But probably the potential scandal had been lurking at the back of his mind for some time. Bad enough that Mother had abandoned them. But if she should ever return to England, should she bring her scandals back with her…
Guilty by association.What father wished to see his daughter brought to ruin through no fault of her own? He couldn’t possibly have hoped to protect her from the scandal of it. But he might have bought her a husband who could. “Is that why you told Thomas to find me a husband?” she inquired.
He stifled what had promised to be a magnificent glower ather use of Thomas’ given name. “He was meant to find you a husband with a name and a title powerful enough to protect you,” he said. “I’m not the man I once was, and I won’t be around forever. What sort of father would I be to leave you vulnerable? I cannot safeguard you from the consequences of your mother’s actions; I cannot legitimize you in the eyes of the law.”
Neither, Mercy suspected he meant to imply, could he insulate her from that judgment by association she might well receive on Charity’s account.
“I hoped to see you married,” he continued, “for your own sake. I’d have bought you a duke if there were one to be had, if only so that you would be safe should any of this come to light. No one maligns a duchess.”
But she didn’t want a duke. “Papa, I am going to marry Thomas,” she said. As soon as he asked her.
A deeper furrow of that craggy brow. “Sweetheart, he is only a baron, and the title isn’t particularly old or distinguished besides. I want better for you. I want—”
“It’s not your marriage,” Mercy interjected. “It’s mine. It is whatIwant. And this way,” she added, reaching across the space which separated them to take his hand in hers, “I won’t be far from you. In London, or at home in the countryside.”
Papa’s eyes glittered with a sudden sheen of tears. “I would like that,” he admitted at last, gruffly. “I suppose if I must lose you, to do it to a man who resides within riding distance would be preferable.”
“You aren’t going to lose me,” Mercy said. “Our family is expanding—not shrinking.” But it had been just the two of them for so long that she thought perhaps he was struggling with the concept. That she was not leaving his family to join another. That instead their families would merge and take a new shape. A profoundly unconventional one, but one that she had gone to quite a lot of effort to form. “Charity will be part of it, Papa. Andso will her sister.”
“Your sister as well,” Charity said.
“Oursister,” Mercy amended, and squeezed Papa’s hand. “We are all Mother’s daughters, and I know that it will be…difficult for you. But it would mean a great deal to me if you could find it in your heart to be kind. To be welcoming.” Most especially to the woman who would not expect it. Who Mercy suspected had experienced little genuine kindness in her life. A woman who presented herself to be as cold and hard as diamond, but who had opened her heart—and her home, however briefly—to a half-sister she’d not know she’d had until just recently.
At last Papa lifted his gaze to Charity, for once not flinching from that uncanny resemblance to the woman he’d once known as his wife. And he said, “She hurt all of us, your mother and Mercy’s. We have that in common. All I need to know of you is that you are my daughter’s sister. And if she would welcome you into our family, then so will I.”
And the moment might have retained its peculiar poignancy, but for the pounding upon the door that had come not ten seconds later, followed by Thomas’ voice shouting from below, “Open the damned door! I told you I would not be seduced and discarded!”
Chapter Twenty Seven
Thomas stared up at the stone façade of the house from which he had been unceremoniously ejected some hours ago with both determination and trepidation.
Mostly trepidation.
In retrospect, it had been a poor plan to come pounding upon Miss Nightingale’s door without so much as an ounce of circumspection or decorum. In fact it hadn’t been much of a plan at all, per se, except that he had been in an all-consuming hurry to retrieve Mercy and, with any luck at all, ease her mind about the future.Theirfuture. The one they were going to share, just as soon as he could ask her and convince her to accept his suit.
He’d tied up every loose end—or so he’d thought. Unfortunately he’d forgotten the letter he’d sent to Mr. Fletcher, the one which had not garnered a written response. It had been an unpleasant surprise to find him there, tucked away in Charity’s flat with Mercy, and learn that he’d overheard every word Thomas had said whilst he’d been pounding upon the door awaiting admittance.
And he’d said rather a lot. Too much, in fact. Enough to have the door opened only briefly just so that it might be slammed in his face with clattering force. And then there had been rather a lot of shouting from within, in which he had not been invited to contribute. And then—once he’d worked up the nerve to makehis way back to Mr. Fletcher’s house—he’d arrived to find his trunk already packed and to be summarily ejected straight upon the steps.
He’d been forced to take up residence in ahotel, though Mr. Fletcher had at least been good enough to allow Mother and the girls to remain.
It had been a relatively easy task to slip into the garden unseen after the household had retired, though the waiting itself had been agony. The trellis, however, was daunting. He would never be half so adventurous as was Mercy. And yet it seemed somehow fitting, now, to be faced with this obstacle which had given him so much concern. His turn to risk it, in the service of something he wanted more than life.
Which was in itself fitting, for if he fell—if he fell, he might just sacrifice his own.
Batting away clinging strands of ivy as he wound his fingers round the highest handholds he could reach, he carefully braced the toes of his boots upon it, held his breath, and—nothing. Miraculously, it held. He was perhaps six inches off the ground at most, but his journey up had not ended before it had truly begun. Craning his neck upward, he peered toward that distant window, where a faint light glowed behind the curtains.
Mercy was still awake, then, well past the time she ought to be asleep. But, then, she had often kept odd hours—and her mind was no doubt working through a great deal of information at present. Thomas had only four floors to ascend until he would see her once more. He repositioned his feet, grabbed for the next wooden handhold, and began to climb. The rough wood had been made for the creep of ivy and not the grasp of hands, and he found himself thankful for his gloves as he continued up, hand over hand.
The creak of the wood beneath his feet as he ascended resounded in his ears as if each strained sound might as wellhave been a gunshot. His heart pounding, Thomas hastened his climb, tried to control the frantic pant of his breaths.
