Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

“ F lora? Are you here?”

“Maisie?” Flora was roused out of her unhappy reverie—she had not even heard the bell ring, or the door latch open.

“Yes,” her sister answered as she made her uneven way through the library doorway. “And Archie, too.”

“Flora,” was all her brother-in-law said in greeting. Which was strange for such a ‘hail-fellow-well-met’ sort of man. Who, now that she took the time to notice, was giving Flora a strange, narrow-eyed stare.

“What goes on?” she asked. “It’s Raines’s half-day off, so I can’t even offer you—” Flora broke off when Maisie sat next to her on the divan and reached for her hand. “What is wrong?”

“I’m afraid it’s bad news, dearest.”

Flora felt herself go cold with dread and hot with fear in sickening succession. “What happened? No, don’t tell me!” The fear that had lived inside her like a live fox since her visit from Jack’s lawyer began to gnaw at her insides. “Is he dead?”

“Yes,” Maisie said simply and quietly. “I’m so sorry."

But before her sister had even finished her sentence, Flora had begun to weep—crying with great wracking sounds that felt purged from the depth of her being. Aching pain gripped her lungs and throat, and she could not draw breath.

“No,” she cried. And again, “No. I should have never let him go.”

“Let him go?” Maisie looked confused. “I thought we all agreed his departure was for the best?—”

“No.” Flora choked out between sobs. “It wasn’t for the best. He only went because of the debt.”

“What debt?” Archie asked, looking from Maisie to Flora and back again. “There is no indication of any outstanding debt.” He came close to Flora, as if to assure her. “Your home and livelihood are quite secure. You needn’t fear.”

It wasn’t fear that had her in its grips, but sorrow. Sorrow and hideous gnawing grief that opened up a hole where her heart used to be. The pain—the physical pain of not existing in the same world as him—was nearly intolerable.

“Forgive me, dearest.” Maisie wrapped her arms around Flora’s shoulders. “We should have broken it to you more gently.”

“No, please.” Flora was not ashamed of her own tears, but she would not let Maisie shoulder any blame. “There was nothing else you could do but give me the awful truth.”

“Perhaps.” Maisie was still frowning, but she held Flora’s hand tenderly. “I thought, or hoped, that distance would lessen the pain. That his prolonged absence would make it easier to bear in the end.”

“No,” Flora insisted. “Not easier to bear. Worse. Much worse. I never should have let him go.”

Maisie’s confusion began to give way to some small perturbation. “Please forgive my asking, but did you not suggest he return to plant finding for the company, yourself? I swear we stood right here in this very room?—”

Flora gulped to a stop. It was her turn to be utterly confused. “What are you talking about?”

Maisie stared at her. “Papa leaving Edinburgh in the wake of the debacle that was his time as the Lord Advocate.”

Flora felt has if her head were about to split in two. “What does that have to do with Jack?”

“Jack Balfour?” Archie queried. “Post Captain Balfour of the Royal Navy, Jack? Jack, the Earl of Kinloch?”

“Yes?” Flora looked from one to the other. “Who are you talking about?”

“Papa,” Maisie said, enunciating clearly, as if Flora had somehow misheard her.

Flora felt the tight band that had closed about her chest give way enough to breathe. A little. For a moment. “Do you mean to tell me Papa is dead?”

“Yes.” Maisie rubbed Flora’s hand this time, as if she could press the truth into it.

“Oh, no.” Her feelings were such a tumult that she began to laugh and cry all at the same time. “I thought you meant— Oh, thank God.” She hiccupped and swiped at her wet cheeks with the edge of her sleeve. “I mean, I am sorry. Oh, poor Papa. But I just thought it was far worse.” She took the handkerchief Archie so solicitously handed to her. “Forgive me, please. I’m all at sixes and sevens. I hardly know myself.”

“Yes,” Maisie agreed. “We hardly know you either.” She glanced back at Archie for a moment. “But there is more.”

“More? How much more? Good or bad more?”

“It depends on one’s perspective, I suppose,” Maisie said philosophically. “But the long and short of it is, that Papa, for all his faults and foibles?—”

“More faults than foibles, I would judge,” Flora countered. “Bless the poor man."

“Agreed.” Maisie nodded. “But for his sins, he seems to have left us, you and I, quite a tidy fortune.”

Flora was flummoxed—what on earth did that mean? “A tidy fortune?” she repeated.

“Yes,” Maisie confirmed. “I had no idea his finances were so…” She spread her hands. “That his fortune was…” She hesitated, as if she was looking for the right adjective.

“Enormous,” Archie supplied. “Shares of the East India Company. A vast number. Enough to make him, and now you two, nabobs .”

The word conjured up far away, opulent, colorful treasures. “We—” Flora gestured back and forth to Maisie and herself. “—are rich?”

“Yes,” Maisie said.

“How rich?”

“Again,” Archie said with a roguish tilt of his head, “enormously so. Never-have-to-work-a-day-in-your-life-again sort of rich. Could-eat-your-money-for-breakfast-and-supper-and-still-not-run-out-of-it rich.”

Flora was beyond amazement. “He never said a thing.” She gaped at her sister. “Did he say anything to you?”

“No.” Maisie said. “It makes me wonder about all the other things he never said.” She sighed. “But I suppose we’ll never know, now.”

“No going back, now. No regrets,” Archie advised his wife. “Only going forward.”

“Yes, we must go forward,” Maisie said with some firmness.

There was something equally stunned and determined on Maisie’s face that could not come from her grief about Papa—she had suffered too much neglect under his care to really mourn his passing.

“What is it?” Flora pulled herself out of her own swirl of emotions to have a care for Maisie’s. “You needn’t feel guilty, dearest heart, you know, if you’re not particularly unhappy?—”

“No.” Maisie shook her head. “Certainly not. But…”

“But what?”

“After everything ”—Maisie alluded to Flora’s former pledge not to marry until she had seen her sister happy—“I am just so very glad for your sake that you are finally free to do as you please.” Maisie spread her hands in front of her as if to say all things were now possible. “From now on, you need not please anyone but yourself.”

“And society.” Money was certainly a great leveler of obstacles. But there were expectations of women that held sway no matter if one were rich or poor.

“No!” Maisie was adamant. She reached again for Flora’s hand, as if she would press her urgency upon her sister. “No, certainly not. Not if you don’t want to. I know that the lawyers will eventually tell you that Archie and I—but mostly Archie—are to be your trustees, but you are of age, and neither Archie nor I intend to give you anything more than advice when asked, and our blessing, no matter if we are asked or not.”

“What are you not saying?”

“That finally, you may do as you like.”

“As I like?” Flora hardly knew where to begin. “Could we sell this house? Might I take a house for myself somewhere more to my taste and inclination?”

“Yes. There is more than enough money. He was a canny investor, your wily old Papa,” Archie commented.

“Yes, although I might want to buy this house just for the attic studio,” Maisie sent a warm smile toward her husband. “I rather miss the quality of the light there.”

“I might take a place in the New Town, I suppose,” Flora conceded. Somewhere near King’s Circus. Somewhere exactly like King’s Circus—the property directly in front of the mews at number twenty-six.

“You may buy yourself half of the Highlands, and still have money left over. Or you could go back to Richmond—I know you loved it there. Just as you choose,” Maisie confirmed. “I mean it, Flora—you may, truly and finally, do what you like for yourself. You may make yourself happy.”

Hardly. Money might buy her a house, or a Highland estate, but it could not buy happiness. She could not bring the only man she feared she was ever going to love, let alone like enough to marry, back to her.

“For example, we should like to set up a charity, Archie and I,” Maisie was saying. “And we would very much like you to be a partner in that venture, if you like.”

“Yes,” Flora agreed, for one’s good fortune ought to be shared. “Of course. We’ll do what is right and useful. Do all the good we can.” This perhaps, could be her purpose.

“Yes!” Maisie warmed to her favorite topic. “I’m so glad you agree. We’ll join forces with Quince, Lady Cairn—endow her charity with a working fund, don’t you think? Best not to reinvent the wheel. But I should like to also help cottagers with debts, so they might keep their land and cottages, instead of trying to help them after they’ve lost everything. As well as those?—”

Flora was already standing bolt upright by the time her brain caught up with her body. “Debts?”

“Yes.” Maisie was back to her fierce frowning. “So many people get trapped in a cycle of poverty by excessive debt, often that they inherit?—”

“My God.” Flora was the one who grappled for Maisie’s hand this time. Within her chest, her heart began to beat a staccato rhythm as the idea began to take hold of her. “I could pay off the debt.”

“Yes,” Archie agreed cautiously. “But as I told you, there is no debt on the house, or attached to your name. Your father was negligent in some areas, but he seems to have been quite meticulous with his finances. There are no debts.”

“I was rather thinking of someone else’s debts. A…” Did she dare say it out loud? Did she dare give name to her dream? “A friend—or a husband’s debt,” she amended.

Maisie stared at her. “I thought you had gone off the idea of a husband?”

“I did. I mean, I …” Flora looked back to Archie. “But an enormous sum? One that might buy a Highland estate like…”

“Kinloch?” Archie looked at Maisie, and then back at Flora. “Like Jack Balfour’s debts?” He asked quietly.

“Yes.” Flora was too relieved to be embarrassed. “Exactly like. How did you know?”

“A discreet visit from a certain solicitor, a Mr. McQueen,” Archie stated.

“And we have eyes, my dearest,” Maisie’s tone was more than kind—it was patient and loving. “You with your spun-gold fineness and he with his brooding dark? Our world is a curious place where opposites inevitably attract.”

“But he is not my opposite,” Flora asserted. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They were so alike. “He is my soulmate.”

“Ah, then.” Maisie smiled even as her eyes went suspiciously misty. “Then we had best do all that we can to get you two together. But then his debts really are as bad as rumored?”

“Worse, I’m sure,” Flora said, “for I have only Jack’s offhand comments about the ‘bankrupt earldom.’ But I refuse to think of them as Jack’s debts—as he so pithily once said, he didn’t even have the pleasure of accruing them.”

“Just so,” Maisie said quietly. “Flora, dearest, why don’t we all go down to the kitchen to get a nice cup of tea, which we will absolutely lash with whisky—or brandy, just as you choose—and you can tell us all about your friend, Captain Jack Balfour.”

“Yes.” Flora felt her mood begin to brighten. “Why don’t we do just that. And you two extraordinarily devious plotters can help me come up with a plan to win him back.”