He’d raised his head enough to say, “Go away, Kelsey, you shouldn’t see me like this.”
“It’s all right, really,” she’d told him gently. “But perhaps I should fetch Aunt Elizabeth?”
“No!” had come out with enough force to make her start, then more calmly, if still quite agitated, he added, “She doesn’t approve of my drinking…and…and she doesn’t know.”
“Doesn’t know that you drink?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but she had already assumed that was what he meant. The family had always known that he would go to extremes to keep Elizabeth from unpleasantness, apparently even those of his own making.
Elliott was a large man with blunt features and hair that had gone mostly gray now that he was approaching fifty. He’d never been very handsome, even when he was younger, but Elizabeth, the prettier of the two sisters, and still beautiful today at forty-two, had married him anyway. As far as Kelsey knew she loved him still.
They’d never had any children of their own in the twenty-four years of their marriage, and that was possibly why Elizabeth loved her nieces so dearly. Mama had mentioned once to Father that it was through no fault of their not trying, that it simply was not meant to be.
Of course, Kelsey shouldn’t have heard that. Mama hadn’t realized that she had been within earshot at the time. And Kelsey had overheard other things over the years, of how confounded Mama was as to why Elizabeth had married Elliott, who was frankly homely and had had no money to speak of, when she’d had so many other handsome, wealthy suitors to choose from instead. And besides, Elliott was in trade.
But that was Elizabeth’s business, and the fact that she’d always been a champion of the less fortunate might have had a great deal to do with her choice—or not. Mama had also been known to say that there was no accounting for love and its strange workings, that it wasn’t, nor ever would be, governed by logic or even one’s own will.
“Doesn’t know that we’re ruined.”
Kelsey blinked, so much time had passed since she had asked her question. And that wasn’t the answer she’d anticipated. In fact, she could barely give it credit. His drinking could hardly be cause for social ruin, when so many gentlemen—and ladies, for that matter—drank to excess at the many gatherings they frequented. So she’d decided to humor him.
“So you’ve created a bit of a scandal, have you?” Kelsey had chided.
“A scandal?” He’d seemed confused then. “Oh, yes, it will be, indeed it will. And Elizabeth will never forgive me when they take this house away.”
Kelsey had gasped, but once again, she’d drawn the wrong conclusion. “You’ve gambled it away?”
“Now, why would I do a fool thing like that? Think I want to end up like your father? Or perhaps I should have. At least then there would have been a slim chance for salvation, when now there is none.”
She’d been utterly confused herself by that point, not to mention thoroughly embarrassed. Her father’s past sins, with the accompanying reminder of what those sins had wrought, shamed her.
So with high color in her cheeks that he probably didn’t notice, she’d said, “I don’t understand, Uncle Elliott. Who, then, is going to take this house away? And why?”
He’d dropped his head back onto his hands again, unable to face her in his shame, and mumbled out the story. She’d had to lean close to catch most of what he was saying, suffering the fumes of sour whiskey to do so. And by the time he’d finished she’d been shocked into silence.
It was much, much worse than she’d thought, and it really was so reminiscent of her own parents’ tragedy, though they’d handled the situation quite differently. But in Elliott’s case, he hadn’t had the strength of character to accept a failure, buckle up, and go on from there.
When Kelsey and Jean had come to live with Aunt Elizabeth eight months before, Kelsey had been too much in mourning over the deaths of her parents to notice anything amiss. She hadn’t even thought to wonder why Uncle Elliott was home more often than not.
She supposed it wasn’t something they thought it necessary to tell their nieces, that Elliott had lost his job of twenty-two years and was so distraught that he hadn’t been able to hold another position for very long since. And yet they had continued to live as if nothing had changed. They’d even taken in two more mouths to feed when they could hardly afford to feed themselves.
Kelsey wondered if Aunt Elizabeth even knew the extent of their debt. Elliott had been living on credit, which was a standard practice for the gentry, but it was also standard to pay those creditors before they took matters to the courts. But with no money coming in, Elliott had already borrowed all he could from his friends to keep the creditors at bay. He had no one left to turn to. And the situation was out of control.