Her Sisters Were Presented to the Duke—But He Asked About the Daughter They Overlooked

Chapter 16

“My youngest daughter has managed the creditors of this estate for some time, and understands precisely how desperate our position has become. She must not be permitted to discuss the accounts with any prospective connection. If necessary, her correspondence should be represented as unauthorized efforts undertaken for her own advantage, and she should be understood to have acted without my knowledge or approval.”

Wren’s voice did not change as she read. She read it the way she read accounts — flat, precise, uninflected — and that was somehow worse than weeping would have been.

“Should any alliance fail, the fault may be placed at her door without injury to the family name, and the reputation of my other daughters preserved accordingly.”

She set the letter on the table.

The room went silent except for the small settling of coal in the grate.

Atticus held out his hand, and she gave him the page. His eyes moved quickly across the remaining lines — she watched them go — and then stopped.

“He planned this,” he said.

“He planned it six weeks ago.” Wren heard her own voice as though from another room. “Before he knew your name. Before he knew whether you existed. He only knew that a man would come, eventually, because a man had to come — there was no other way out. And he wrote down, in advance, exactly whose name he would use to pay for it.”

“He planned to blame you if the marriage scheme failed.”

“No.” Wren looked at him. “He planned to blame me either way. If the marriage succeeded, the settlement would bury the debt and nobody would look at the accounts again. If it failed—” She turned the letter over, where the second paragraph began. “Then a solicitor and two bankers would be told a story about a youngest daughter who had gone behind her father’s back and made promises in his name, and everyone would be very sorry, and the other three would marry safely somewhere else.”

Atticus’s jaw worked. She watched him read it twice.

“He wrote this before I ever came.”

“Yes.”

“He wrote it before he knew—” He stopped.

Wren closed the ledger. Strangely, she did not cry. She felt very tired, and very clear, like a window that has finally been washed.

“Then tomorrow changes nothing,” she said.

Atticus’s head came up. “It changes what I believe.”

Her hands paused on the bundle.

“That,” said Wren, “is no longer the most important thing.”

The words struck him visibly. She saw it land, and she saw him take it, and she did not soften them.

“I spent years,” she said, standing, “making myself useful enough that my family might eventually decide I deserved a place among them. I thought if I saved one more account, one more tenant, one more season — if I made myself necessary, my father might look at me and see a daughter instead of an instrument.”

She lifted the packet of evidence off the table.

“I was wrong. He saw an instrument. He wrote it down. He kept the letter in my own ledger, where he knew I would find it eventually, because it never once occurred to him that I would ever be anything but his.”

Atticus stepped toward her. “Wren—”

“No.”

The word stopped him.

Her voice remained gentle. That was the part that would stay with her, afterward — that she managed to be gentle.

“You do not get to rescue me from this before I rescue myself.”