Page 1 of Leap of Faith
CHAPTER1
“What are we going to do?” Hope asked, twisting her black worsted wool skirt in her hands. The question had been asked a hundred times in the past day since they had received the solicitor’s message that he was to call today.
Faith watched wearily as her sister made another frantic circuit across the Aubusson carpet in her oppressive black crêpe.
“We will be thrown out. I know we will!” She fretted.
Faith suspected the very same thing, but it would do no good to panic, she reminded herself.
“Let us see what he has to say. I have been saving as much as I can, and hopefully he will at least assist us in finding respectable positions.” The four eldest sisters had been doing what they could to make money in genteel ways—teaching music, sewing, sitting with some of the elderly in the afternoons.
Joy, the youngest, began to cry, clinging to Faith’s skirts.
“Hush, Joy. Crying will not help anything!” Patience scolded.
“Leave her be,” Hope defended.
Grace stood quietly in the shadows of the thick, puce velvet curtains, looking out over the park as if it held the answers.
“I don’t want us to be separated,” Joy wailed.
“I know, dearest, but we must wait and see what Lady Halbury wished for us. Perhaps we will be allowed to remain here.”
Patience scoffed.
“If not, then I will soon be of age. We will find a way,” Faith said with an assurance she did not feel.
“What if we are sent to the workhouse?”
“Lady Halbury saved us from such a fate before. I cannot see that she would allow that to happen from the grave.” Who knew what members of the aristocracy would do? By all accounts, everyone considered their guardian an eccentric for taking five girls in and raising them as her own. She had been their mother’s old school friend. But none of them were related by blood to the new owner of Halbury Hall, and they had no family that would take them.
“How much longer?”
“It has only been five minutes since you last asked,” Patience, the least patient of them all, remarked.
“I see a carriage.” Grace did not turn around but watched the vehicle’s progress. When they heard it stop, she finally turned to join the others. They sat soberly in their Queen Anne chairs from another generation placed in a half-circle facing the wall of windows overlooking Bath with its golden-stoned terraces and the abbey’s pinnacled tower presiding over the valley.
When the door to the drawing room finally opened and Parkhurst announced the solicitor, all of them were at rigid attention in their unrelieved black.
“Mr. Browning to see you, Miss Whitford.”
Faith indicated a chair for the thin, wiry, older man to sit in, then sat herself.
He looked a bit disconcerted by the lot of them, which was a common response to the uncommon appearance of five dark-haired, blue-eyed beauties of almost identical appearance. He cleared his throat. “Are you certain you wish everyone to be present, Miss Whitford?”
“Since what you say affects all of us, yes.”
“Very well.” He pulled open his leather satchel and extracted a sheaf of documents. He proceeded to flip through several pages before coming to the one he wanted. “Only a certain portion of the will pertains to you. I shall read only that.”
Faith inclined her head.
He skimmed through some pages, muttering words as he read, then cleared his throat. “With regards to my wards, children of my heart: Faith, Hope, Patience, Grace, and Joy, I bequeath each 5000 pounds, to be kept invested until the time of their majority or marriage, whichever may come first.”
A loud gasp resounded between them.
“That is very generous of her.” Faith knew that was a gross understatement, but felt she had to say something. She had not expected anything so large. In fact, she had not known Lady Halbury to have such a vast fortune. “Since I will soon be of age, does this mean I am to receive the money then?”
“Indeed. But that is still some months away, and your guardian has the care of it until then. I suggest you discuss the matter with him.”
