The air in Mrs. Cornelia Finch’s grand parlor, usually thick with the scent of jasmine and propriety, now carried something sharp and unsettling. I sat with my teacup, listening to the polite chatter, feeling eyes glance my way then quickly away.
Mrs. Finch herself, a woman who usually greeted me with a peck on the cheek, offered only a stiff nod.
She shifted in her armchair, her gaze flicking to the other ladies present.
“Such a dreadful affair at the Lockhart ball,” she began, her voice a low purr. “One hears so many… conflicting reports.”
A younger woman beside her, Mrs. Albright, chimed in, “Some say it was quite the calculated performance.”
My spine stiffened. Performance?
“A deliberate incident, perhaps, designed to garner… sympathy,” Mrs. Finch continued, her eyes now firmly on a distant painting, but her words were clearly for me. “A relative, one might imagine, feeling neglected by a wealthy sibling, might resort to such lengths.”
My tea turned to ash in my mouth. They were suggesting I had used my son, Arthur, and his prosthetic leg, as a tool for public drama. To extort money from my own brother.
Mrs. Albright dabbed her lips with a lace handkerchief.
“One does hear whispers,” she added, “of a family long estranged, perhaps hoping for a convenient reconnection, or a share of the Lockhart fortune.”
The room grew quiet, save for the clinking of porcelain. No one spoke directly to me, but their averted gazes, their knowing half-smiles, were louder than any accusation.
This wasn’t just Silas’s anger. It was a carefully orchestrated campaign to ruin my name, to paint me as a conniving social climber, rather than a mother defending her son.
Silas truly intended to make my family pay.
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