Mr Fairclough's Inherited Bride. Georgie Lee

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      An interesting idea, Mary mused silently while she stood in the shadows outside the study, listening to the men. This wasn’t the first time she’d hovered out of sight in the darkness while others discussed her future. It was becoming quite the regular habit where her life was concerned. At least this time the proposed plan was kindly meant and to her benefit because Richard genuinely cared about her. It was more than her parents could ever have said about their actions. Their love of reputation and standing had been more valuable to them than their daughter.

      She touched the small watch hanging from a ribbon on her dress bodice, a gift from Ruth, Richard’s sister, during Mary’s first Christmas with her. She ran her fingers over the fine filigree, feeling the few strands of the fraying ribbon on which it hung. The watch was one of the many kindnesses Ruth had shown her during the years that Mary had spent with her. She missed Ruth, but she was ashamed to say she didn’t miss the isolation of the country.

      Quiet spread over the room, broken by the pop and crackle of the fire and Richard’s occasional cough, one that cut through Mary as sharply as his sister’s final illness had. Richard knew Mary’s secret and, like his sister, he’d given her a chance to reclaim some of the life and future that Preston Graham had stolen from her. It was everything she’d sought when she’d staggered off the ship still green with seasickness and breathed in the salty Baltimore air tinged with smoke. All the training to be a lady and chatelaine of a large house that her mother had drilled into her as a child—how to host a table, draw up menus, guide conversation, the skills she should have used as the wife of a titled man—was finally being put to use in Richard’s house. She’d been awkward and reserved, hesitant and unsure when Richard had initially encouraged her to meet with the housekeeper about dinner or sit at the head of his table. Tonight, it’d all come back to her as the food had been well received and served, and the conversation had run smooth enough to ease Richard and Mr Fairclough’s negotiations. She’d left the dining room with a new confidence and for the first time in many years the belief that her future would finally shake free of her past.

      Death was threatening to steal it away from her for the second time. What would she do without Richard to guide her through Baltimore society? She’d be left on her own once again to make her way in a world that was even more foreign to her than the wilds of Devon and an aged spinster’s humble but welcoming cottage.

      Mr Fairclough’s deep voice, his accent a touch less refined than her father and brother’s, but far from the roughness of the London streets or fields, cut through the quiet with some matter of business. The tone of his voice held her interest, the notes of it deep and sure the way Preston’s had been during those darks nights in the stable or his carriage, until it’d turned callous and cold like the road to Gretna Green.

      Mary slipped away from the door and through the narrow entrance hall of the brick row house with its marble floors and tall ceilings, and up the polished wood staircase to her room. She sat at her dressing table, leaving the bell to summon Mrs Parker, her lady’s maid, untouched. Despite having grown up with a nurse to feed and care for her, a governess to teach her and, when she’d finally come out in society, a lady’s maid to see to her beautiful ball gowns and carriage dresses, the last four years of attending to herself made her hesitant to ring the bell.

       No, not any more.

      She was no longer a companion but a lady and she would never be anything less ever again. She picked up the bell and shook it, the tinny noise cutting through the still of the room.

      ‘You’re upstairs early tonight, Lady Mary.’ Mrs Parker beamed as she came in from the adjacent room. Mary smiled at the older woman’s American frankness. If a lady’s maid had ever addressed her mother in so informal a manner she would have been dismissed without a reference. That strict distance between servants and employers had seemed so right and proper to Mary back then. It didn’t any more.

      ‘It was a successful, if not tiring one.’ It’d taken a great deal of organising prior to the dinner to make everything during it seem effortless and serene, and Mary was eager to sleep. She would need all the rest she could gather to get through the difficulties she was sure to face in the coming months if Richard’s health declined as quickly as his sister’s had. She’d seen the bloody handkerchiefs and heard the rattle in his chest, the same one that had claimed Ruth in the end. Mary clutched the watch on the ribbon, her eyes misting with tears. She was tired of losing people she cared about and who genuinely cared about her.

      ‘There, there, Lady Mary, what’s the matter?’ Mrs Parker laid a comforting hand on Mary’s shoulder and she didn’t shrug it off the way her mother had when her old housekeeper had tried to comfort her after the death of Mary’s grandmother. Instead, Mary welcomed the kind gesture. It reminded her of Ruth.

      ‘Nothing, only I’m a little tired from tonight’s excitement.’ There was no point ruining her evening, too. She would learn the truth about Richard soon enough assuming she didn’t already know.