So Mary had scraped together all the money she could and sold her mother’s bits of jewelry, and as soon as Cosmo left on another of his trips, the girls had run away from Three Corners, taking their mother and father’s marriage certificate, the girls’ birth certificates, and a sealed letter from Flora to her father. Mary did not know what was in it, but she suspected that her mother had tearfully thrown herself on her strict father’s mercy, begging him to take in her children.
It galled Mary that her mother had had to beg for anything. She wished she herself did not have to face the man and ask him to take them in. But her mother had put her in charge of the girls, and Mary was determined to carry out her mother’s wishes.
“Approaching the earl is the only thing to do,” Mary reiterated now, casting a look around at her sisters. “You know as well as I do that we can’t stay together any other way. What could we do to earn money? None of us would qualify to be a governess; we haven’t enough education. We could sew, perhaps, or be servants somewhere, but we’d never all be hired in the same house.”#p#分页标题#e#
“Besides,” Rose put in quietly, “we promised Mama.”
There was a moment of silence after her words, all of them feeling again the pain of Flora’s passing.
Mary nodded. “Mama was certain that he would have come to regret his words. And he could not be so heartless as to throw out his own granddaughters.”
“I don’t know.” Lily shook her head. “How could anyone be so heartless as to cut someone like Mama out of his life just for going against his wishes?”
“He’s an old autocrat, obviously. But living with him would have to be an improvement over starving to death. Or being dependent on Cosmo Glass.”
“Or having to marry that odious Egerton Suttersby,” Rose added with a shudder. She glanced over at Mary a little worriedly. “We are well away from him, don’t you think? He wouldn’t follow us, would he?”
“No, don’t be silly. I don’t think even Mr. Suttersby would be so ardent as to cross the Atlantic in pursuit of a woman who doesn’t want him.”
“I would have thought any man would have taken the hint that she didn’t want him weeks ago,” Camellia put in, rolling her eyes. “He must have seen her slip out whenever he entered the tavern. Sometimes I thought I must be struck down for the absolute whoppers I told him about why she was not there.”
Lily snorted. “As if those were the worst lies you’ve told.” She turned to her oldest sister. “So what are we going to do now? How are we going to find our grandfather?”
“I don’t know,” Mary admitted. She sighed and flopped down in a chair. “I had not expected London to be so big . I mean, I knew it was a large city, but I thought it must be something like Philadelphia. But this …”
“That is why Sir Royce could have helped us,” Rose pointed out. “He might know where the earl lives.”
“Perhaps.” Mary grimaced. “But I have no desire for that—that rake to know our business.”
“Rake!” Rose looked at her sister with raised brows. “But I thought he acted the perfect gentleman.”
Mary felt a flush rising in her cheeks. She wasn’t about to tell her sisters about the incident in the hall. “Well, perhaps not a rake. But he certainly isn’t anyone we know. I have no desire to go about telling everyone our life story. I am sure that I will be able to find the earl’s address somehow or other.” She paused, then went on, “I think that I should go by myself tomorrow morning to find him. It will be easier than having all of us present ourselves on his doorstep.”
“But I want to meet the earl, too!” Lily protested.
“You will meet him. Don’t be silly. As soon as I explain everything to him, I am sure he will welcome us all into his home,” Mary told her with more conviction than she felt.
One reason she wished to see the man by herself first was that she feared his reaction to the news that he had four granddaughters he had never known existed. She did not want her sisters to hear what he might say when she told him.
“Mary is right,” Rose put in, backing up Mary, as she could be counted on to do. Several years older than Camellia and Lily, with only a year between them in age, Mary and Rose had always had a special bond. “It might overwhelm the poor man for all of us to show up at once.”
“But what are we to do while Mary’s gone?” Lily argued.
“It will be deadly dull,” Camellia agreed. “But no doubt it will be even duller to visit some old earl. At least here we can go down to the stables and see the horses.”#p#分页标题#e#