An Unlikely Countess Read Free Page B

unfolded sheet of paper lying on the floor. “He sent it by a traveler. Thoughtful, perhaps, to spare me the pennies of the usual post, but it came late. Everything always seems worse at night.”
    “What does it say?”
    “That the responsibilities consequent to his upcoming marriage make it impossible for him to increase the amount he sends me for my support.”
    “That doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable.”
    “Does it not?” Her eyes met his over the knife. “He sends three guineas a month.”
    “That is very little,” he agreed.
    “While writing of the fine house he will soon have, and the carriage and pair for his future wife.”
    “Ah.”
    She slammed her glass down on the table so hard that brandy splashed. “He owes me a decent life. He owes it to me. And to my mother if she were still alive. Everything he is, everything he has, is because of our unstinting labor and sacrifice over ten long years. We’ve gone without every elegance and indulgence, and often without necessities as well.”
    Cate was almost breathless at her warlike intensity.
    She swept her hand around. “I live here . Once we had a lovely home, but . . . we’ve moved to poorer and poorer places in order to support him. My sweet mother died in poverty. All so my brother could be educated and establish himself in his profession. So that he could return Mother to a decent, comfortable life. So he could help me make a good marriage.”
    “And now?”
    “Now he throws money away and says I must wait.”
    “You went out tonight to visit him?”
    “He lives in Darlington.” She took another drink, seeming to savor it now. “When I read that letter I couldn’t believe what he was saying—wait, wait, wait. This place was supposed to be only for a little while. For my first mourning, and while Aaron completed his training. He’s practicing law. He’s soon to make a good marriage to a woman who brings money. What need is there to wait? I was shocked. Then angry. So very, very angry. It felt . . . it felt like this brandy makes me feel.” She stared at the knife as if envisioning a deadly purpose for it.
    Plague take it. Shock he could believe, tears he would expect, but her anger was of another order, especially when it drove a blade deep into wood. She might be headed for a madhouse, or even the gallows.
    “But why go out? What did you intend?”
    She blinked at him. “Intend? I simply couldn’t stay inside. I was suffocating in here, surrounded by darkness, dampness, and evidence of all our privations. Remembering the tender promises he made to my mother, his tears at her graveside because his prosperity had come too late. It was partly Mother’s fault. She always resolutely made the best of things, even when . . .”
    Cate poured a little more brandy into her glass, wishing she’d complete that sentence. This wasn’t a new tragedy. What were the roots?
    “He was always so grateful for the extra coins we’d scrimped,” she said, “but he never realized their cost. Mother would have us dress in our best and serve him tea from the few pieces of china. There was decent furniture then, but I had to sell it to pay for the funeral. Mother made me promise. Aaron mustn’t pay, not when he needed every penny to set up in business.”
    “Then perhaps he can’t bear all the blame.”
    “If he had an ounce of sense, if he ever looked beyond his own comforts . . . But I never imagined. I read that letter, and it was all too much. I was choking. I needed air. I simply walked the streets. . . .”
    “Until you were attacked.”
    “Until then.”
    Fire quenched, she put a thin finger into the spilled brandy to trace a pattern on the table. A work-worn finger with a broken nail. Three guineas a month. It would pay her rent, and buy fuel and food, but little more.
    “What do you think to do about your brother?”
    “Do?” She straightened. “I shall write to him again. I’m at fault for following my mother’s pattern and not