Chapter 13 - GEORGINA—HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Chapter 13

GEORGINA—HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

The drive back to 22 Ground Street was quiet.

Katherine said nothing.

My other two sisters were quiet too.

I wasn’t sure what they knew, but everyone understood that when Katherine was angry, silence was best.

With our mother always sick before her passing, she’d become like our mother—disciplinarian, counselor, cook. Our father also relied upon her as if she were the oldest son.

I glanced at her. With the veins on the sides of her neck bulging, my older sister would explode at any minute.

Passing the wharf, the warehouses, the brewery, I wondered if anyone would speak first.

No one.

The gig stopped and we all filed out. Katherine lagged behind, close to Mr. Thom and the carriage.

On the steps of our house, Scarlett raised a hand as if she sat with our tutor. Whatever it was she wanted to say, she swallowed it and started to open the door to the house.

Lydia bolted from her side and stepped in front of Katherine. “Why do you have to ruin everything, Katherine? The duke said he wouldn’t be stopping by for a while. It’s not fair. It’s not.”

I bent down to her and held her. Her frustrated little body shook. Worse. She felt warm. Her fever from last night had returned.

“Lydia,” I said as I released her, “we will be going over to Anya House for the next couple of weeks. We’ll see him. We’ll see plenty of the duke. I’m sure if you are nice to Katherine, she’ll make sure you always get to come.”

“Good. ’Cause he’s my friend.” She pointed a finger at Katherine. “Don’t take him from us.”

The eldest Wilcox had tears in her eyes. “You want to see him that badly?”

“Yes. He’s my friend, my bestus friend. I love him. He pays attention to me better than Tavis, even Papa. Today, he showed me his special book of maps. He said I could pick any place and be a princess where I wanted.” Lydia started to cry. “Anywhere. No one says that to us.”

Katherine scooped her up. “I’m sorry. I won’t take him from you. I understand. I understand.”

The little girl hugged her neck. “He’s mine. I need you all to understand. The duke’s mine.”

When Katherine set her down, the child twirled round and round. Her cream hem bobbed beneath her coat. “A princess. I can be a princess now. That’s better than anything.”

“You can’t love him. He’s a grown man.”

“Nooooo!” Lydia threw up her hands and ran inside.

Scarlett held the door for her but stayed on the steps, looking at me and Katherine. “Lydia is special to us. She loves the duke. We should keep him in our lives for her benefit alone.”

Katherine didn’t move or speak a word.

She looked hollow, empty.

Lydia was special to us all, but very special to Katherine. When the child was born, our little Lydia almost died. Her twin was stillborn.

Katherine and Mama sometimes acted as if Lydia had borrowed time.

The current Wilcox crisis wasn’t about health. It was about me. “Sis. I know you’re disappointed, but I think the duke’s plan will work.”

“Yes. Everything he does is better. He’s made my Lydia love him more.”

Katherine was almost never weak. She was solid and strong. Only death and dealings with her marriage to Tavis made her cry.

Right now, her face had become the Thames.

I wanted to close my eyes and run in the house. I couldn’t, but I didn’t know what else to do.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m not good enough. That nothing I’ve done is good enough. I was a disappointment to Mama. I let Papa down, now I can’t protect you.”

She turned and started walking, then running toward the Thames.

Mr. Thom pointed at me. “Go after her. Doesn’t matter what happened today. You broke her. Go fix her.”

He didn’t need to say that. I knew what I had to do. I waved Scarlett back to the house, and then started running. “Katherine, wait.”

My sister kept going. Soon, we both were at the banks.

The sun had begun to set. It glowed over the waves.

The timberyard building and the shipping warehouse were along the Thames.

The river.

Rough and turning.

Loud with ferryboats and commerce.

Side by side, my sister and I watched things move.

But we stayed still and silent.

The wharf Papa used to own was nearby. The brewery too. Tavis sold them all for gambling debts.

And we did nothing to stop him.

“Why did you kiss him, Georgina? You know how Mama stressed our reputations. You saw how I failed. My carrying on shamed the family. I put so much strain on her weak shoulders. No wonder she died a year after Lydia was born.”

“She lived long enough for you to wed. That’s something. But Mama was always in pain. She kept getting sick. You didn’t kill her. She wanted you happy. She consented to you marrying Tavis and made Papa come around.”

Katherine swiped at a tear. “You know our father didn’t want ‘no broke White man with a title’ taking advantage of the hard work his Black hands had done. But that’s exactly what I did.”

“But Mama thought Tavis was what you wanted. You loved him, and his title made us respectable.”

“Respectable to whom, Georgina? Tavis’s debts robbed our family of dowries and the marriage opportunities for you girls that his title was supposed to bring. We are less secure because of him . . . because of me.”

Her head dipped and she rubbed her wrist against her wet cheeks. “The duke has brought us new clients, but how long do you think he will keep the creditors at bay? We may still have to sell Wilcox Coal to pay off my husband’s debt and get dowries for you and the girls.”

“Don’t do that for me. Maybe the duke’s plan will work, and some wonderful person will find me at the ball and not require a bribe to marry me.”

“You want to be the coal Cinderella? Or as the duke would say, Vasilisa, the heroine of a Russian folktale about a disadvantaged girl who survives and wins.”

“I don’t look at us as disadvantaged. We’re having hard times. Everyone has hard times. Katherine, you know a lot of Russian for a man you can’t stand.”

She left me and went a little closer to the water’s edge as if she chased the sun. “Go back inside. I’ve lost to the Duke of Torrance. He knows what’s best.”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s—”

“What is it, then? Another scandal that would break Mama’s heart? I need to fix this and make up for all of Papa’s sacrifices. I will sell the business I love if that will make you girls acceptable brides for the uptight people across the river.”

“I don’t want uptight. I don’t even know if I want marriage. But you are not in competition with the duke. He wants to help. He’s been helping.”

Her chuckles sounded bitter. “Then you aren’t paying attention. The duke wants me humiliated.”

“Why, Katherine? The man has been nothing but nice to us. I asked him to help. He’s offered money, but I knew you’d never take it. So, he’s gotten us clients. That’s his way of doing something.”

“Behind my back. All the whispering and walks you two did with Scarlett and Lydia was to tell him how badly we needed his help to be saved.” She dropped to the ground and drew arms about her knees. “No one is loyal.”

“Loyal to what? Katherine, if you haven’t noticed, we’re destitute. Lydia might be learning math, but Scarlett and I can add and subtract quite well. Your husband stole money from the coal company. He put loans on our house. That’s why we tried to sell everything up to the moment he died. That’s why so many things that Mama decorated the halls of our house with are gone.”

“Tavis gambled all the time. He wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t get him to. I tried.”

“And you covered up his sins. You did everything for him and financially hurt us.”

Katherine put her face to her knees and wept harder. This desperate sound, it always came with a death. Maybe all the lies and secrets had finally been crucified.

Moving to her, I dropped to the ground. A night like this seven years ago, Katherine came home from her great adventure changed. We sat at this river, I put my arms about her. I repeated what I said then. “You’re good. Kitty, you’re good. A lady should try to leap for the moon and be allowed to fall and fail. But we are Wilcox women. We’re proud on this side of the Thames, as proud as the fashionable people on the other side.”

“I was a good wife. He saved me when I felt low and worthless.”

“And you loved Tavis? You loved him always?”

She didn’t answer. I guessed some secrets would never die.

“Well, you were proud he made you his viscountess, but you never forgot you’re a Wilcox. A proud Wilcox. You ran the business when Papa got sickly. If we hadn’t let Tavis run it, it would still be thriving.”

“But I did. I ruined us again.”

“We helped. When Papa died, you felt it right to defer to Tavis. No one objected. In two years, Tavis ran a hundred-thousand-pound empire into the ground.”

A boat moaned somewhere close. It stirred the waters like flowing tears.

Katherine sobbed and so did I.

We’d lost so much. A new scandal could take away our last bit of dignity. This time it would be the death of Wilcox Coal. “No one will do business with laughingstocks or a company run by Blackamoor women if they feel their sons are endangered of being ensnared by a Wilcox sister.”

Her arms tightened about me. “Don’t cry, Georgina. The duke is right. Everything will work. You’ll see.”

She swiped at her face. This version of Katherine, her being open, telling me what she thought, couldn’t go away until I asked the question that had burned until the day Tavis died. “Why did you let your husband control Wilcox Coal? You said he’d be good for business. You talked us into it. Why take such risks for a man you didn’t love?”

My sister pulled away. “How dare you? I loved Tavis. It might not have been the things you read in novels or the fantasies that made you kiss a stranger, but it was love. It wasn’t loud or crazy. It was calm. It was what I needed.”

“Needed after what? What happened on your grand adventure? You came back pregnant. What—”

“To the grave, Georgie. I can’t speak of it.” She started to breathe heavily.

I wrapped my arms about her again. “Keep your secrets, Katherine. I’m sorry that I’ve almost ruined us or that I reminded you of the worst time in your life. If Lord Mark Sebastian was another type of man, he could’ve hurt me. I realize how foolish I was.”

“You need to think. A gentleman won’t keep you safe because of a kiss.”

Honestly, safe wasn’t my first thought.

Shocking my sister was all I’d had in my head, but the second kiss with him was different. The way his hands felt on my back, the way he touched my hips wasn’t safe at all.

“You’re impulsive, Georgina. And your folly will affect Scarlett. She’s twenty. She might want to marry. No one will want a Wilcox if we are a scandalized family.”

“I was impulsive. But, Katherine, we have to see the duke’s plan through.”

She nodded. “I’ll sell the business if I must. I need to give you and Scarlett your inheritance. If I can get the business very profitable, I’ll be able to pay Tavis’s debts—”

“He’s gone. He can’t keep making us poor.”

Katherine gulped air, that sulphury smell of industry. “I must get dowries and husbands for you and Scarlett. I’ll not let the Duke of Torrance spend his money on us, not anymore.”

To tell Katherine that she didn’t know what I or our sister wanted would make this woman weep again. She’d cried too much. “Let’s focus on my faux engagement.”

“If no one writes about us, Georgie, we might be all right. No scandal. Then we won’t need the duke.”

“Well, Lydia has set her hopes on marrying him. In twenty years, if he’s still single, I doubt he’ll require a dowry.”

I said this as a joke. The man clearly loved Lydia, all of us, like sisters, but the flicker in Katherine’s eyes spoke of hate, like an angry bear wanting to tear at someone taunting her cub.

Then her jaw eased. “I know the Duke of Torrance waits for no one.”

She wiggled free and stood with her hands in the pockets of her coat. “We need to go see what you’ll wear for your lessons. The duke will make it a showy affair.”

She straightened my shoulders, pushing at the seams of my pelisse. “Perhaps Mama has something in a trunk.”

Katherine headed back.

My sister was still trying to hold on to a pretense. She wanted our family to be something it wasn’t.

Yet with the folly I’d brought to the Wilcoxes, I couldn’t dissuade her. I had no choice but to follow our leader and hope for the best.