Carla Kelly by The Ladys Companion Read Free Book Online Page A

year, plus my room and board,” she added, wanting to fill that enormous silence, even if it was only with puny words that sounded like chicken peeps.
    Papa spoke first, and this startled her. She glanced at Aunt Louisa, wondering if the news had rendered her speechless, and angry at her father for throwing her off balance.
    “I spent more than that on gloves last year,” he said, his tone oddly placating, which only brought her own anger to a high boil.
    “I know, Papa!” she said, her voice big in the room. It was almost a relief to shout at him, to cow him in his chair and watch him shrink before her eyes. “I am tired of your endless, silly promises and your spendthrift ways! They have quite ruined me!”
    He winced at her words as though she had lashed him with a whip. “Hamptons don’t behave like this, daughter . . .” he began, but she would not let him continue.
    “Oh, I know that,” she raged. “They smile and simper and look big-eyed at the world, and hope for charm to help them over life’s little trials! No, I am not like you,” she finished, each word a slap in his face. “And I thank God for that!”
    “That is quite enough, Susan.”
    Aunt Louisa was on her feet now, the fork with its bit of mutton still in her hand. “You will apologize to your father.”
    Susan leaped to her feet and flung down her napkin like a guantlet. “I will not! You cannot make me!”
    Aunt Louisa seemed to tower over her, a patient expression on her face that made Susan grit her teeth. “You will apologize to your father, and we will forget this conversation ever took place.”
    “I will not revoke a word of it,” Susan said with a calm now to match her aunt’s. “It is enough that I have to earn my bread and spend a lifetime living down my father’s sorry reputation.”
    Sir Rodney closed his eyes as if she had slapped him. Susan looked at him, suddenly aghast at herself because she felt nothing, no pity, no sorrow, no remorse. Pathetic man, she thought. Why should a body feel anything for you? She looked up from her contemplation of her father. Aunt Louisa was speaking again.
    “You will apologize or you will not return to this house, once having left it.”
    “If that is your choice, Aunt,” Susan said as she started from the dining room.
    “No, Susan. It is yours.”
    ***
    She lay awake long after her trunk was packed, corded, and downstairs waiting for the carter who would take it, and her, to the Hound and Hare to catch the morning coach. Don’t they understand what they have done to me? she asked herself over and over, until the words lost any sense or meaning. And when she had ground that subject down to hash, she thought about David Wiggins. Oh, I hope you are of a mind to be helpful, she thought. I am so weary of difficult men.
    Before sunrise, she let herself out of a quiet house, permitted the carter to hand her up onto the high seat, and congratulated herself on saving the cost of a hackney. The morning was bitter cold, the air still and heartless. This is a discouraging time of day, she thought as she settled her chin into her muffler. She thought she would turn around for a last look at the town house, but she did not. If someone is looking out a window, she told herself grimly, they will not have the pleasure of thinking that I cared enough to glance around.
    Muffled by snow, the streets were oddly silent. The further they drove toward the city, the more carts she saw, until there was the Hound and Hare, brightly lit, with a queue of passengers already waiting to scramble for the best seats.
    To her relief, Joel Steinman stood in the inn door, stamping his feet to keep the cold at bay. He nodded to her and indicated a bench in front of the inn where two mugs of tea waited for them. She took one gratefully, holding the cup to her cheek.
    “I won’t have you laboring under the fiction that the Steinman Employment Agency sees off all its clients,” he said as he took her ticket from her