Chapter Two
Cat flattened her hand over the smooth surface of the letter, satisfied her temper didn’t translate to trembling fingers.
My deepest apologies, Baroness Worthington. I was unable to secure approval for reconstruction of the tenants’ roofs. The trustees determined the mills require modernization for increased efficiency and profit, and believe the roofs will withstand another winter.
Yr. Humblest Servant,
Matthew Sparks
“The mills.” Disappointment warred with fury. She had made a promise to the tenants, once last summer and again just this past February before she’d left for London. Now it seemed she would not be able to fulfill it.
The quiet rhythm of a lightly tapping foot stilled. Its owner looked up, her aging gaze unfocused for a moment as she switched it from her most recent needlework to Cat’s face. “Hm? Did you say something, Mary Elizabeth?”
“I was just talking to myself, Aunt Essie.” The darling woman wouldn’t be interested in roofs and mills, though she would listen if she knew they were important to Cat. But Cat would shortly be angering her guardian—who was also Aunt Essie’s brother—so perhaps it was best to keep the problem of the promised roofs to herself.
“I understand, dear. I sometimes do the same.” Essie’s brown eyes blinked behind the round lenses of her spectacles. “Though you do look a might put out. Is something troubling you?”
Cat looked down at the letter again as thunder roared beyond the townhouse walls. “It is nothing serious, aunt.” But she did not intend to let it pass. Pushing to her feet, she carefully folded the note. “If you will excuse me, I need to respond.”
“Yes, of course, dear.” Aunt Essie turned back to the pretty pale-blue linen spilling over her lap. The embroidery needle pierced the fabric, its trailing white thread slipping through the cloth.
“Thank you.” Cat strode to the door, already formulating strategies for dealing with the trustees and the mills. No doubt the mills could use modernization, but the roofs were more important. The well-being of the people under the roofs was more important. “I shall see you at luncheon, then, Aunt Essie?” Cat didn’t pause in the doorway to look back.
Essie’s words floated through the door and into the hall. “Do send Mr. Sparks my regards.”
Cat stiffened, pausing mid step to look behind her. “I beg your pardon?” She set her slipper on the parquet hall floor, leather shushing on wood.
“I recognize Mr. Spark’s handwriting, Mary Elizabeth, which means you have news from the Abbey.” Essie didn’t look up and the needle didn’t pause in its journey through the center of the embroidery hoop. “Don’t anger him too much, will you? Your uncle is not easily pacified.”
“Apparently, my face and my correspondence are easily read.” Cat turned in the doorway, narrowing her eyes on white curls piled high and the two simple gold combs holding them into place. “What do you want to know?”
“Nothing at all. What is between you and Wycomb regarding Ashdown Abbey will not be changed by my opinion.”
“But you have one.”
“An opinion? No, I would never presume. Only—” Now Aunt Essie’s hand paused as she looked up. “Mary Elizabeth, you cannot win. You are wedged between the trustees, your uncle, the estate, and the husband you will soon find. Whatever happens, you cannot win.”
Cat knew this. Every breath and every fiber of her being echoed this immutable fact. There was no victory and no freedom for her. “I’ve lived with that knowledge nearly every day of my life, Aunt Essie, since the day I realized being born female meant I couldn’t inherit both the earldom and the barony.”
She imagined her distant cousin was none too pleased with the higher-ranking title but lesser estates. Nor was she pleased that to ensure the barony’s estates remained in her family she had to marry and provide an heir. Still, she thanked all the fates and all the gods of every religion that the barony was the older title by writ and held the more profitable land.
Ashdown Abbey was still hers.
Cat clutched the letter from home in her fist, thinking of the mills and roofs and trustees. The paper gave way and crumpled in a satisfactory manner. “If I hadn’t known I was trapped before, I became quite aware after my father died.”
Essie let the embroidery hoop fall into her lap, abandoned. “I know, dear. I’m sorry your father put the barony into a trust. That’s typical—only, you seem to fight it so very hard.”
“I don’t know how to do anything else.” She wished she did. She had trained to be Mary Elizabeth Frances Catherine Ashdown, 13th Baroness of Worthington. Fought to prove she could carry on the legacy of the first Mary Elizabeth Frances Ashdown, who had been granted the barony five hundred years earlier.
Fought and lost, she thought fiercely.
“You are you father’s daughter in character.” Essie sighed, gaze flicking over the features of Cat’s face one by one. “I see it every day.”
“Yet my father did not believe in me enough to let me inherit the entail and lands outright.” Bitterness filled her throat even as she tried to swallow it. “A five-hundred-year-old peerage, one of the few allowing a woman to inherit by writ, and he put everything into a trust so I cannot touch it until I am thirty-five or married.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Essie murmured. Hollow words, echoing those she had spoken when they first learned of the trust.
Cat breathed deep and let out any betrayal with her exhale so only sadness remained behind. She could not change what her father had done. “What of my mother? Am I not her daughter?”
Essie smiled softly. “Oh yes. Yes, my dear. You are her very image, and you have her spirit, too.”
“Do you miss her?” Cat couldn’t bring herself to move back into the room. An ache grew just below her breastbone, making it difficult to draw breath. It was her mother who had called her Cat and taught her that Mary Elizabeth Frances Catherine Ashdown was her own woman, no matter what the barony required of her.
“Every day. I could not have asked for a more loving, joyful sister.” Essie searched Cat’s face again, for what exactly, Cat couldn’t say. There was a sort of pride shining in Essie’s eyes. “Go, then. Fight whatever battle you are fighting today.”
“I will.” Though she was afraid she was embarking on yet another crusade she could not win.
On the floor below, the door to the front hall opened. The ferocity of driving rain sounded briefly on the air before it closed again. Cat didn’t need to look over the banister to the ground floor see who had come in. The butler’s murmur of “welcome home, my lord” told her exactly who had arrived.
When footsteps began to ascend the staircase, Cat prepared to face the newcomer with a bland expression and polite smile.
It seemed the battle had come to her.