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“If the love is not different, then how can he not see it?”
“Too headstrong,” the viscount mused. “Like your mother. Like you.”
He only needed you to notice him, Jo thought.To approve of him. Maybe now it’s too late. He has not stepped foot willingly in this house since he was twelve years old.
“I am going to meet your mother soon,” Papa said. “I hate to leave you, Josephine, but I cannot say that I am not filled with joy at the thought of our reunion.”
Jo clutched her father’s hand tighter, and tried not to cry.
“Don’t say such things, Papa,” she said. “You will feel better in the morning.”
It’s too soon, she thought.Too soon to lose you too.
“I wish you could have been my son, Josephine,” Papa said. “You are worth ten of him. Ten of any man.”
“I could have been anything you liked,” Jo whispered, her eyes flowing with tears, but her father was already drifting to sleep.
And to him, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, no matter what she said. She was a woman, and, as much as he loved her, she would never be anything more than that. Beloved daughter, sister, and some day, someone’s wife. And there was the end to her place in the world.
Papa made a distressed sound as he tried to find a comfortable position in which to sleep. He must be in too much pain again.
“Do you want me to read to you, Papa?” she asked, and he murmured his assent.
She opened a slim tome of poems she always carried in her pocket, and began to read. As she read, her voice grew steady, and her father’s breathing calmed.
He fell asleep to the sound of her voice.
Dear Beth,
I fear I shall come to hate everything I once loved. Christmas. Books. Riding.
I could never hate these things, of course, but doing everything alone feels empty. I miss my sisters. I miss my old self.
I miss Teddy.
I can’t stand being this way—I can’t stand myself. I don’t know what I am supposed to do. Writing is the only relief, the only light in the darkness. I can’t help but follow it.
Once, it was Teddy who was my light in the darkness. I know he thinks we saved him when he was a tiny boy with a title and no family, but the truth is that he saved us all back in return. He saved me. I was miserable after Justin left for school, and when you died.
And he saved me. And he is not here now.
Maybe staying stuck in the past was not the finest idea I have ever had. Apart from depriving me of any future, it is now robbing me of my past as well.
Eternally,
Your sister
thirteen
In the morning, she woke up to find her father dead in his bed. He had died peacefully, in his sleep.
By some miracle, she managed to get word to her brother before it spread across the country. He was not all the way to town yet; he had been staying with friends nearby. He came galloping down the lane, his cravat askew, his hair disheveled.
He looked pale as a corpse, and he stank of port.
Jo sighed. She would have to make the funeral arrangements herself—as well as every minor and major decision. Her brother was in no position to take care of anything, much less himself. And he was the viscount now.
God help us all.
