Page 67 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“We all are,” Mercy said softly.
“All three of us,” Charity added. “We’re all Mama’s daughters. We’re all your sisters.”
Grace choked on a sob and swiped desperately at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.” A flicker of fear slid over her face, her complexion paling. “Mama is going to slap me if I’m not back soon,” she said.
“No one is ever going to slap you again,” Felicity said. “Grace, Mama is in a great deal of trouble. In the morning, she is going to be apprehended. She’ll be taken before a magistrate herself.Sheis going to be the one headed to jail this time. It’s likely she’ll even be transported.” And they would all be rid of her for good.
Grace’s face crumpled in grief, and she clasped one hand over her mouth, a thin wail squeaking through her fingers. Felicity’s heart wrenched for her. Better, she thought, the devil she knew rather the uncertainty that would afflict her life without even a negligent, uncaring mother. Better even the absence of any affection than to be set adrift in the world. “But where will I go?” Grace asked mournfully. “What will I do? I don’t have anyone else.”
Well, there went the niggling fear that the nasty brute of a man who’d attacked her might be Grace’s father. “Youhavegot family, Grace,” Felicity said as she rose from her spot on the couch. “You have got three sisters, andbrothers-in-law, and even a little niece.” She rounded the small table, knelt by the side of Grace’s couch and placed one hand upon her knee, so small and thin beneath the dirty skirt of her dress. “Here, there is always enough food to eat. No one will make you steal to feed yourself. And no one ever slaps anyone.”
An unbearably fragile expression flitted across the girl’s face. Just the smallest stirring of hope, there and gone in an instant, as if she were all too familiar with having it crushed before it had the audacity to bloom. “And you’ll—you’ll let me stay? Even after what I did?” she asked in a whisper.
“Yes. Oh, yes, Grace, of course you can stay,” Felicity said. A rustle of skirts somewhere behind her, and then the pressure of Charity’s gentle hand upon her shoulder. And there was Mercy, too, settling onto the couch at Grace’s side, dabbing a few stray tears from her cheeks.
With a wild little sob, Grace pitched forward, falling into Felicity’s arms. She threaded her arms about Felicity’s neck and buried her head against her shoulder, crying her heart out there upon the floor of the drawing room.
Surrounded, finally, by the family she had never known she had. “It’s all right, now. You’re safe,” Felicity soothed as Mercy drew the blanket up once more about the girl’s shoulders, and Charity stroked the disheveled hair away from the dirty little face. “You’re home. At last, you’re home.”
∞∞∞
Felicity roused to the sound of the bed chamber door opening, squinting in the cold winter sunlight that poured through the windows. She’d slept, but not nearly enough. Dawn had already been climbing over the horizon before she’d retired for the evening; perhaps a few hours had passed since.
She thrust her elbows beneath her, struggling to sit up. “Ian?”
“Here. I’ve only just returned.” There was the clattering sound of coals layered upon the fire, and Felicity shifted, bracing her back upon the mound of pillows as she watched him tug at the rumpled linen of his cravat, working free the elaborate knot. Every bit of him was rumpled, actually, from his dark hair to the fresh wrinkles pressed into the clothing he’d worn since yesterday and had never had much of a chance to change out of. A new growth of beard shadowed his jaw; dark circles scored beneath his eyes attesting to his own lack of sleep. Tucked beneath his arm was a leather folio.
“Nobody woke me,” she said. “Mary usually—”
“I asked her to let you sleep. It’s been a long night all around.” A heavy sigh as he shrugged out of his coat, tossing the folio to land upon a chair before the fire. “Grace is still asleep as well, from what I’m given to understand. I thought you’d prefer to be here when she wakes.” He looked dead on his feet, entirely run through. But instead of crawling into bed as she was sure he would have preferred, he collapsed upon a chair, stretching out his legs and casting his head back.
Gingerly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. There ought to have been some sort of conflict within her, some dread over the coming revelation of what she had missed while she’d been asleep. But the anxiety which had shadowed every moment since she had received Mama’s very first note did not come.
“I don’t think she’s had a decent night’s sleep in ages,” Felicity said as she padded across the floor. “And she was ravenous, poor girl.” And cold, and dirty. It had been an effort of hours just to scrub the filth from her skin. Four changes of the bathwater before it had at last run clean.
“Probably,” Ian said as he scrubbed at his face and closed his eyes. “I don’t imagine your mother ever saw her as anything more than a pet. And not one especially well-liked.”
“Not a pet. A tool,” Felicity corrected as she settled upon the arm of his chair. “I think—I think that’s how she saw all of us. Not her daughters. Not evenpeople. But things to be used.” She smoothed at the folds of her nightgown, reached out to pluck a bit of lint from the front of his shirt. “Probably she would have abandoned Grace, too, had she not shown an early talent for thievery, for burglary. Mama kept her—” She gave a soft, shuddering sigh. “Mama kept her because she wasuseful. A ready scapegoat to be sacrificed if she had need of one.”
“Did you learn how she found you?” Ian asked.
Felicity nodded. “Grace said they were first in London,” she said. “Charity was notorious; it wasn’t difficult for Mama to locate her flat. Grace didn’t know who Charity was, then, of course—but she knew better than to argue with Mama. She picked the lock one evening while Charity was out.”
“To steal from her?”
“No; she didn’t dare.” Ian’s hand found the small of her back, rubbing in soft, circular motions. “Charity’s former protector is…quite a dangerous man. It’s well-known that they are still friendly with one another. Even Mama quailed at the thought of invoking his wrath. No,” she said, “she was there in anattempt to find me. And she found Charity’s letters. My letters to her. Mercy’s letters to her.”
“Ah,” he said. “I had wondered.”
So had she. Being Felicity Cabot had not protected her there; not from someone with reason enough to know better. “So she knew we had all found one another,” she said.
“And then she met Graves,” Ian said. “And by chance, he told her all she needed to know to make you her target in truth.”
“Yes. Grace didn’t know the significance of any of it. She knew only that Mama intended to extract a great deal of money from me.” And she had expected Felicity to be such an easy mark. Without the protection of a noble title or friends well-positioned within the seedy underworld. Reliant upon her good reputation, one which could so easily have been sullied.
“More fool, her.” There was a sliver of malevolence in the words. That warm hand at her back instead curled over her hip; a possessive gesture she doubted he was much aware of in the moment.
“Was…everything else as Grace said?” Felicity asked tentatively. After that fraught scene in the drawing room had concluded and amidst the consumption of what was probably the first proper meal the girl had had in days, Grace had talked endlessly. Of everything. Where they’d been, how they’d arrived here in Brighton, what had happened since. As if a great weight had lifted from her chest, she had surrendered every secret she had been forced to keep. She hadn’t understood what it had all meant, what Mama’s intentions had been, precisely—but she had understood enough to give the deciphering of them over to someone else.
