Page 57 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
The woman gave an exasperated sigh, impatience scrawled across every line of her lovely face. And she asked at last, “Which one are you?”
Chapter Twenty Two
Her own mother did not recognize her. It shouldn’t have hurt so badly as it had, really. Felicity knew it in an intellectual sort of way, could acknowledge to herself that twenty-eight years had come and gone since last they’d encountered one another. That last day, she’d been only a puling child, just three years old, wrenching at her mother’s skirts and begging piteously for her to stay.
Don’t go, Mama.Please don’t go.
Her palms grew hot even now with the remembered burn of the fabric yanked from the clench of her small hands. Her eyes ached with the sting of tears. Somehow she had become a child again, just as small, just as helpless. There was a wail lodged there in her throat, and she thought—she thought it must have been the last remnants of the very same one she’d given decades ago, coming loose at last. It emerged in shards, in tiny, sharp sounds that felt as though they sliced her throat on the way up.
“Don’t make a scene; you’re far too old for such things now.” With a dismissive sniff Mama turned and brushed past Felicity in a sedate, unruffled stroll.
She couldn’t have cared less, Felicity realized, whether Felicity followed or not. Probably she would not even look back if Felicity declined to follow. Just as she had all those years ago, she would walk away without a care, without a thought. As if abandoning her children had been the easiest decision in the world to make.
Like a puppet pulled by invisible strings, Felicity wheeled about, forcing her shaky knees to support her—and she tottered after her mother like the child she had once been as she dashed the stinging tears from her eyes and swallowed back the painful, wracking sobs that wanted to tear from her lips. “Mama, I—”
“Lord, I do loathe that word.” A long sigh, followed by a sharper demand: “Well? Which?”
“Felicity.”
“I suppose I ought to have guessed. Charity was quite pretty, to my recollection, while you—” Mama turned her head just briefly to cast a cross look over her shoulder. “Well. I suppose we can’t all be great beauties.” The paper crinkled as she unwrapped the little package of chestnuts to pop one into her mouth. “And you did always have the propensity to whine and carry on so.Felicitymeans happiness, you know. I thought you’d have a more amiable temperament.”
Each word was a stab to the soul of that little girl who had been left behind. Even the bitter winter air was not so cold as Mama. “Didn’t you—miss us? Even a little?” Felicity’s voice tore upon the words, her heart aching in her chest.
“No; never.” Another chestnut popped into her mouth. “Children are the price a woman pays for the protection of a husband. My mistake was in not realizing what a sorry excuse for that your father was until it was far too late.” Mama paused upon the pavement, looking out toward the sea in the distance.
“You left us with him,” Felicity said in the pitiful tone of a lost child. “Youleftus. Just children, at the mercy of a man who had none. A man who hated us for being your daughters. Who hated Charity especially for having the audacity to resemble you so strongly. Who hated me only for existing.”
A shrug, offensive in its nonchalance. “Well, I could hardly go on to my next husband with two young children clinging to my skirts.”
“You abandoned Mercy, too,” Felicity said.
Another sigh, testy and faintly impatient. “I did my duty by you girls,” Mama said. “As much as I was capable. I suckled you at my breast as babies. I raised you—”
“Until you tired of us. Until we ceased to entertain.” God, it hurt so damned badly. A terrible question slipped through the wretched tightness of her throat. “Did youeverlove us?”
She oughtn’t to have asked. The answer was there, scrawled in Mama’s flat, unmoved expression. She hadn’t cared if Felicity had followed her because she had never cared about Felicity at all. She had never cared about any of the children she’d left behind. Probably she’d never spared any of them a thought once she had left. She’d never wondered how those children had fared, what sort of women they’d become across the years which had separated them.
She hadn’t treasured the memory of her daughters enough even to have made a reasonable guess as to which had approached her, hadn’t glanced atFelicity long enough in those first moments even to search for fragments of the childish face she had once known in the woman that child grown into.
She’d never cared about any of them. Perhaps she had never cared about anyone other than herself.
Too late, it occurred to Felicity that Mama had not at all been surprised by the mention of Mercy. But how could she have known that they had all found one another? It had taken decades for them to learn that Mama had married again, borne another daughter. And it wasn’t, to the best of Felicity’s understanding, common knowledge.
But how couldMamahave known, unless—unless she’d had reason to know. Unless she’d been watching from the shadows. Unless she’d slipped through the periphery of her daughters’ lives like a ghost, collecting bits of information. Determining which she could use, which might prove valuable.
Perhaps to the tune of five thousand pounds.
Felicity’s blood iced over in her veins. “It’s you,” she said. “It’s you. You sent me those notes. You’re extorting me.” Her stomach churned at the realization. The beautiful woman that Mr. Graves had become so swiftly enamored with—that woman had been hermother.
“I prefer to think of it as obtaining what is due to me,” Mama said with a mocking little moue. “And really, my dear, you’ve made me wait rather too long already. Weeks and weeks for you to be married and finally worth more than a school teacher’s wages. Longer still to ensure your husband could not easily set you aside with an annulment.”
Nausea churned in Felicity’s gut.
“You owe me for your very life, after all,” Mama said lightly—so carelessly that they might have been discussing the weather. “So I would suggest you wrest the money from your husband’s purse however you must.”
Felicity swallowed hard as she clenched her hands at her sides, the sour taste of bile coating her tongue. “I’ll—I’ll—”
“You’ll what, darling? Cause a very public scene in the center of the city?” Mama’s brows lifted in a patently false expression of innocence. “I wouldn’t recommend it. You’ll ruin your own reputation faster than I ever could. But if you insist, I’ll be certain to attract an audience for your theatrics.”
