Page 57 of Courting Trouble
Felicity put her hand on Nora’s knee. “Is that why you came back, Nora? To fix our reputations?”
Choking on another sob, Nora clapped a hand over her mouth.
Mercy sighed and regained her seat at Nora’s side, her curls spilling over her riotous magenta bodice. This time, she seized Nora’s hand, and then thought better of it, gripping her beneath the chin like a recalcitrant child. “Stop it,” she ordered with much more confidence and command than her tender years should have afforded her. “You stop martyring yourself for us or for anyone else. I’ll not have it. Neither of us gives a fig if the house of Goode is sullied, and—regardless of what Father says—it’s certainly no fault of yours.”
“Go be happy, Nora. Please,” Felicity admonished. “We’ll be all right. We’ll be better than that. The worst has already happened, the damage has been done. Not by you but your terrible husband.”
Mercy released her so she could look over to Felicity, an identical face, if softer and more earnest. “You needn’t endure any longer. You never should have done. Father is dreaming if he thinks this marriage will save everything. But one thing isn’t a dream… Titus Conleith loves you. He has always loved you. And you love him, I think.”
Nora shook her head, her heart bursting with love for her sisters and pain for her loss.
Of course she loved Titus. All she’d ever done was because she’d loved him.
“He hates me now, I’m certain of it,” she sniffled, wiping away tears that refused to stop falling. “I left with Father when he all but begged me not to. I betrayed him again.”
Felicity took off her spectacles and rubbed some fog away on her sleeve before replacing them. “According to the novels I read, if his feelings for you are powerful in either direction… that means there’s hope for a happy ending yet.”
“I don’t know if he’ll ever trust me,” she lamented. “I’ve been so unspeakably cruel.”
Mercy perked up. “Whatdothey do in your novels, Felicity, when it seems all hope is lost?”
Nora plucked at a stray thread in the handkerchief. “It doesn’t matter, it never ends well for the villain.”
Felicity shook her head forcefully. “No, you’re not the villain. You’re the hero, and Titus—regardless of his apparent virility and… impressive musculature—is the heroine.”
Nora looked at her askance. “How do you figure?”
“Well, you’ve the reputation of a rake, I gather.” Felicity blushed as she said this, pressing a hand to her cheek. “And have wounds from a dark and painful past.”
Mercy held her finger up to mark an idea. “You were shot at least once and stalked by diabolical fiends of the underworld.”
“That’s right!” agreed Felicity. “That makes you the dashing—if somewhat imperfect—hero.”
Even Nora couldn’t fight the tug of a smile at their antics. Bless the souls of bookworms everywhere. “So, what does the hero do to win back his heroine?”
Felicity tapped her chin. “Usually a grand gesture of some kind. The hero realizes he was utterly wrong and dreadful—sorry Nora—and he does something to make himself ridiculous for his heroine. Or he fixes all her problems and restores her honor and good name. He saves her from the villain—”
“Titus doesn’t need saving from anyone except for me… that hasn’t changed.”
“Tosh,” Mercy shoved that idea aside with a wave of her glove. “I’m sure he needssomething; we only have to figure out what that is. What is the conflict? What would keep you two apart?”
Nora cast about for ideas, feeling too cynical to be this idealistic. And yet…
“I suppose Titus needs funding to expand his new clinics, and for that he needs financiers, investors, and wealthy patrons to his surgery. He wants to open one in every borough, so even the poor can be treated in time without having to solely rely on the underfunded and overwhelmed city hospitals.”
“So, it’s just a question of money.” Mercy shrugged as if that were no insuperable impediment. “If you can figure out how to replace what he might lose through… well through scandalous association with a benighted—if beautiful—widow, then what’s to keep you from being together?”
Nora stood, suddenly agitated by a relentless pinprick of hope in a dark abysmal sky. “It’s notmerelymoney, it’s everything. I’m still possibly a mark for this Sauvageau person because William is haunting me with misfortune from beyond the grave.”
“If only we could find that gold William took,” Felicity mused. “Surely that would be enough to finance any manner of medical marvels.”
Nora put a hand to her forehead and squeezed, hoping to bring forward any idea, any helpful memory. “Before he died, William was looking in shipping containers at the Southwark warehouse because it is largely unused in Father’s business. The rest of the London warehouses were subsequently searched by Morley.”
“What about the one in Sheerness?”
Nora turned to Mercy very slowly, her blood suddenly pulsing through her. “Say that again.”
Mercy’s eyes shifted restlessly or—one could say—guiltily. “Well one time, when Prudence and I were snooping through Papa’s papers, I thought… I would like to figure out just how rich Father is.”
