Charlotte stood in her father’s parlor, looking at the organized stacks of paperwork and feeling a bittersweet sense of accomplishment. She’d sorted through mountains of receipts, old newspaper articles, scraps of lists and letters, and correspondence with clients in his role as their solicitor. The sight of his familiar script had caused a lump to form in her throat, which hadn’t abated. At least the herculean task had been completed; she was grateful for that. But even after spending the bulk of the morning in his study, looking in every possible box and closet for something her father might have considered “evidence” of her mother’s murder, she had found nothing important. She was beginning to wonder if he’d not been in his right mind, after all.
She joined Sally and Dirk in the library, where Dirk was examining the books on her father’s shelves. “What did your father say in his letter to you? The one you received in New York?”
“The one that turned my whole world on its head?”
He smiled, and although she wouldn’t call it a “grin,” it was the biggest she’d seen so far. “That would be the one, lass.”
“What are you thinking of, specifically?”
“Something about reading to you in the library.”
She smiled. “There was a large book of fairy tales that I read so much it nearly came apart at the seams.”
He nodded and turned back to the shelves. Sally was sorting through a stack of papers she’d found beneath a side table.
Her eldest brother, Thomas, and his family were to take possession of the home and property, with monies and other assets having been divided evenly among the rest of the siblings. The money didn’t mean Charlotte was suddenly independently wealthy, but it was enough to provide security, peace of mind.
Joan, her sister-in-law, had briskly taken hold of the house and everything in it, and anything that would logically go to Charlotte was given with reluctant, tight fists. Holding a small hatbox, Joan entered the library. She surveyed the progress they’d made and nodded, once.
“This is a collection of the letters you sent to Father from America,” Joan said and held out the box to Charlotte. “I thought you might like to have them returned. Thomas said we should simply toss them out, but men don’t always appreciate sentiment, do they?”
The comment was the most pleasant Joan had ever offered, and Charlotte did her best to keep her mouth from falling open. She took the box with a smile, still feeling a bit raw from sorting through dozens of papers bearing her father’s script.
“Thank you, Joan.”
“There is a letter on top from your father to you. I believe he wrote it after you were already on your way home.”
Charlotte’s heart thudded as she opened the box and removed the envelope on top. “Oh, goodness,” she said, noting her name written in a shaky version of her father’s usual strong handwriting. “I’ll read it later this evening.” She turned it over, noting a clearly broken seal. She looked at Joan, puzzled. “Did you open the letter?”
Joan looked uncomfortable. She didn’t meet Charlotte’s eyes but examined the hatbox. Finally, lips pursed, she said, “He wasn’t fully in his right mind, you see.” She looked up at Charlotte. “But, no, you wouldn’t have seen because you weren’t here.”
Charlotte stared at the woman, her irritation rising. “You opened a letter my father had written to me?”
Joan folded her arms, lifting her chin a notch. “I wasn’t certain what was inside.”
Charlotte’s mouth slackened. “It was not your business what was inside!”
“It most certainly was!” She glanced at Sally and Dirk, who were studiously avoiding the conversation. Joan continued, lowering her voice as though she could keep them from overhearing. “We were here, looking after him while you were off chasing ridiculous notions instead of caring for him, and for all we knew he could have put . . . put money in there! Or a deed, or something that needed to be put in the bank or the safe!” Color rose high in the woman’s face, and she waved a hand in irritation. “I’ll thank you not to take a superior attitude with me!”
Charlotte saw spots in front of her eyes, and the box trembled in her hands. She set it down but clutched the letter tightly. “Joan, you had no right!” Her eyes burned, and tears threatened to fall as her temper climbed. “You had no right to read a letter Papa wrote to me.”
“Oh! You have no right to return like the prodigal son, believing you are owed the world!”
Charlotte’s voice rose with her outrage. “I don’t want the world! I want a letter from my father, intended for my eyes, to not have been opened by anyone else!”
Footsteps sounded in the hall, but Charlotte barely registered Thomas’s entrance.
“You have never liked me, Joan, although for the life of me I cannot determine what I have done to cause it!”
“You were born! Tell her, Thomas! Tell her how your father’s whole devotion shifted from you and your brothers—his sons—to his new wife and then their darling two children they had together. A whole new family, with no time or attention left for the ones who came first!”
Charlotte felt dizzy. Her hands were cold. Her brothers had barely tolerated her, had never seemed to care for her, and she had assumed that was the way of most siblings. She licked her dry lips as she looked at Thomas.
“Is this true, Thomas? Is this why you’ve had no use for me these long years? Robert was a boy like the rest of you, so I suppose you tolerated him well enough, but you never hid the fact that you had no use for a sister.” She swallowed as tears slipped free. “Did you hate me because I look so much like her?”
Thomas shook his head impatiently. “This is nonsense. Joan, go to the gardens and see what needs to be done to winterize.”
Joan glared at Charlotte and then her husband and spun on her heel. Thomas moved to follow her from the room.
“Tell me!” Charlotte cried out. “You ought to at least be man enough to tell me the truth!”
Thomas froze and turned around. His face was as calm and implacable as ever. At his age, he resembled their father, and for a moment her heart ached.
“Charlotte, we’ve already discussed this.” He looked uncomfortably at the other two in the room but continued. “I was a teenaged boy when Father married your mother. Everything changed, that much is true. What was worse, though, was the fighting that came after you were born.” His jaw clenched. “They spoke harsh words to each other behind closed doors, hurled accusations—unthinkable accusations—at each other.”
Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat.
Thomas’s face leeched of all color as he continued. “He had been happy, before, and then he was spent.” His shoulders slumped. “He had nothing left after her death. He was a different person. My father died with Katherine, and she was the cause.”
“How dare you?” Charlotte whispered.
“He was nothing but a shell all these years since. He moved through the motions of life like a ghost.” Thomas looked tired. “Of course it was her fault. Father knew it; we all knew it.”
Sally spoke into the silence that followed. “My sister was a mother to you from the first day, Thomas.” She spoke quietly, firmly. “She stepped into a home of five motherless boys and loved each of you as her own. She was young herself, yet she rose to the occasion. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
Thomas had the grace to look chagrined as he regarded Sally. “She was good to us. But she married my father because the man she loved married another. I do not know his identity, but I know he was in their social circle. That was the truth of it. I heard them fighting about it with my own ears.” He swallowed. “What sort of husband can be expected to live with such a thing, knowing his wife’s heart belongs to another?”
Charlotte sank onto a sofa, still clutching the letter from her father. Katherine’s journal had been true—and her father had known? She closed her eyes.
“Be that as it may,” Sally said quietly, “it does not change the love she felt for you. All of you, her children. And you’re wrong, Thomas, if you believe she did not love your father. She did. She loved him very much.”
Thomas’s smile was bitter. “He was as much her father as he was ours. She may have loved him, but it was not the sort of affection he had every right to expect from a wife.”
“I remember them together,” Charlotte protested. “I remember them laughing, I remember picnics . . . I—” The words caught in her throat. She wiped her eyes, frustrated. “Thomas, I remember!”
“You remember moments, Charlotte,” he said, sounding weary. “Toward the end, it was stilted. Awkward. And then it was over. He hadn’t wanted to go to London, but it was in celebration of James Carter’s engagement. Katherine took you and Robert, and he followed later.” He cleared his throat and straightened. “Whatever occurred that night, I do not blame Father.”
Her heart pounded. “What are you saying? What did happen that night, Thomas?”
“I do not know. I do not want to know. I never asked that he elaborate or explain. I only know he pulled her from the water, but she was gone. If you bear any love for his memory, perhaps you’ll leave the past where it belongs and allow him to rest in peace.” He paused, then nodded toward the letter in Charlotte’s hand. “I apologize for my wife’s interference in your correspondence. Please feel free to remain here at the house if you wish —your bedchamber is yours for two more months.”
He left the room, and the silence was deafening.
Sally moved some papers aside and sat down near Charlotte with a sigh. “They’re going to turn your room into a solarium,” she said drily.
Charlotte looked at her aunt and in spite of herself, laughed. She sniffled and said, “How, pray tell, are they going to accomplish that? Remove a portion of the third floor and put in glass?”
Sally chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Joan claims that since your room faces south, it consistently receives the best light and that your windows are the largest.”
Charlotte sat back and shook her head. “My windows are no larger than any of the other bedchambers.” She retrieved a handkerchief from her pocket. She dabbed her eyes and nose, feeling very much like the little girl who had sat in that very room for hours on end, reading stories, drawing pictures, sometimes hiding from her brothers who seemed to find entertainment in teasing her.
I suppose I should thank them for it. It made me resilient.
She opened the letter, but to her disappointment, it was little more than an apology for throwing her into the middle of his “mess.” He said nothing else that explained the mystery he’d given to her. She told Sally and Dirk, knowing they’d be curious.
Silence stretched, the only sounds the ticking clock and the crackling fire.
Eventually, Sally clapped her hands once. “Charlotte, I know you have a few days’ leave from the hospital, and I know Eva is taking Sammy, Henry, and a constable to visit her mother this weekend. It’s been ever so long since I visited my sister. We’ll finish our business here and join them for a lovely Hampton ladies’ reunion. Mr. Dirk?”
Dirk cleared his throat. “That does sound lovely.”
Charlotte looked at Sally in surprise. “Visit Aunt Esther?”
“I propose we enjoy some very pleasant company and reminisce about time spent at the Hampton country estate when your mother was young and her friends were frequent visitors. Esther was closer in age to Katherine; she may have perspective that I lack.”
Charlotte nodded, feeling raw.
“Unless you’d rather we not speak of those times and entertain ourselves instead with other conversation.” Sally paused. “There is certainly no shame in postponing your quest in order to gain some distance from it. Well,” she paused, acknowledging the large Scotsman in the room, “perhaps time is not on your side. Your irritating assailant seems determined to continue the ruckus.”
“I still want to know the truth, now more than ever. Perhaps then I can let it rest.” She looked at Sally, her closest link to her mother. “Papa loved me, was good to me as I grew older. He was distant, but I—” Her voice broke. “I do not think he resented me. Even looking like her, I think he still loved me.”
“Dearest girl, of course he did. Of course, he did. I visited you in those years, and I saw it with my own eyes.” She paused and smiled gently. “You resemble Katherine, but you are not Katherine. Your father knew that. I think he felt guilty that he could not offer the same presence for you that a mother would.”
And that, Charlotte thought, was the problem. “What was the source of that guilt?” she whispered and looked at Sally, stricken.
Sally exhaled, watching Charlotte. “Do you truly want answers? What if you learn things you wish you hadn’t?”
“It will be better than wondering.”
“Then we shall keep asking.”
“I’ve found something,” Dirk announced.
Charlotte looked over her shoulder at him. “What is it?”
He held up a large book, and she smiled. “The fairy tales!” She felt a lump in her throat as he approached. She moved a pile of books off the sofa so he could sit down next to her.
“I believe it contains more than just fairy tales.” He handed the book to her, encouraging her to open the cover.
When she did, she saw a lovely inscription from her mother that she’d completely forgotten: “For my dearest princess. Love eternally, Mama.” Tears gathered again, hot in her eyes, and she shook her head. “I do grow weary of so many emotions,” she muttered.
Dirk handed her his handkerchief. “It is not only that, lass. Flip through the pages.”
She did as he suggested, and her mouth dropped open. Sandwiched between the pages of the book were separate pieces of paper: newspaper articles—one detailing the accident and another of Katherine’s funeral—notes her father had scrawled, invitations to events, a list of those questioned by police after the death, and eventually, a small, crumpled letter written in a feminine hand.
Curious, she lifted it.
Katherine, you would do well to leave James alone. Your continued advances toward him only engender false hopes. We’ve talked, and the ladies all agree it is time to restructure our social circle. I do hope you’ve integrity enough to gracefully remove yourself. The Carters’ engagement celebration is meant to include you and David, but perhaps it would be easier for all involved if you tastefully make your apologies and remain in the country.
—Anastacia Worthingstone
Cold spread through Charlotte’s limbs. She read the letter aloud to Sally and Dirk, the latter of whom whistled low when she finished.
“Perhaps not damning evidence,” Dirk said, “but certainly doesn’t cast the lady in a good light.”
“Which lady?” Charlotte asked, bitter. “My mother and her ‘advances’ or the supercilious Mrs. Worthingstone?”
“I did not mean your mother,” he said quietly.
“Charlotte,” Sally said firmly. “Kat did not ever have to seek for attention or approval. If not her morals, her pride alone would have prevented her from pursuing a married man.” She shook her head. “Do not ever doubt her integrity. Kat had loads of it with plenty to spare.”
Charlotte nodded. She tucked the paper back in the book and returned to the first page. She ran her fingertip over her mother’s words, frustrated at the inequity, the unfairness of it all.
“Are there large items to be shipped away or perhaps packed in the carriage?” Dirk asked Charlotte. “We needn’t remain here any longer, unless you wish it.”
Charlotte nodded and closed the book. “I’ll show you which boxes.”
Sally spoke up. “Mr. Dirk, one might assume you are looking forward to our Hampton ladies’ tea party.”
“I am looking forward to getting away from that woman.”
“Joan?” Charlotte said.
“Yes. I find her face offensive.”