Chapter 2: Reckoning at the Convent
The slam of Teresa’s palm against the oak echoed in the scriptorium like a gunshot. A nun across the room jumped, her quill skidding a line of ink across a pristine vellum page.
“You did what?”
Stanley flinched, the carefully prepared speeches he’d rehearsed on the ride home crumbling to nothing under the force of her rage. The beeswax candles guttered, sending frantic shadows dancing over the stacks of books and her furious face. “Teresa, please, lower your voice—”
“Lower my voice? You sold me to a ghost and you want me to whisper?” Her voice was a low, venomous scrape. The unshed tears in her eyes didn’t soften her; they made the green of them brilliant and hard, like broken glass. “A companion. A paid position. Do you hear yourself? You bartered my freedom for a year to settle a debt I didn’t incur, to a man whose reputation is a collection of dreadful rumours. For Thomas and James.”
Annabeth stood frozen by a bookshelf, a heavy volume forgotten in her hands. Her knuckles were white around the leather binding. She watched her uncle’s face—the shame, the desperation—and felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. This was the threat they’d all felt looming, given flesh and a contract.
“It’s not a sale,” Stanley insisted, the nobility in his posture a hollow shell. “It’s employment. With a salary. He was… specific. You are to curate his library, manage the household. You can continue your teaching. He knew about that.”
“Oh, he knew, did he?” Teresa gave a sharp, humourless laugh. “He took a full inventory of the goods, then. And you just stood there and answered his questions. Did you tell him about my fondness for yellow roses, too? Or did he deduce that from the state of our accounts?”
Stanley looked at the floor. The scent of ink and old paper, usually a comfort, now felt suffocating.
“He’s rich, Teresa. Obscenely so. The debt is gone. Thomas is being sent to manage an estate in the north—out of trouble, out of reach of his creditors. James is off to London. This saves us. It saves you from having to watch the last of the silver go to pay for their whoring and drinking.”
“And what does it save you from, Stanley?” she asked, her voice suddenly quiet and dangerous. “From having to make the hard choice to let Thomas and James face the consequences of their own lives? From admitting we’re bankrupt? You’ve swapped one form of cowardice for another and painted me as the currency.”
He winced as if struck. “I am trying to keep this family from crumbling into the dirt.”
“By handing me over to a stranger! A man who hides in a manor full of ghosts because his own life ended years ago. What do you think happens in that house, Stanley? What does a broken man want with a ‘companion’?”
Annabeth finally moved, setting the book down with a soft thud. “Uncle,” she said, and her voice, though young, held a clear, steady note that cut through the tension. “What are the terms of the agreement? Precisely.”
Stanley turned, grateful for the pragmatic question. “One year. She lives at Blackwood Manor, performs the duties outlined. She is free to leave the grounds, to teach in the village as she does here. She receives a generous quarterly allowance. In return, Jane assumes the debt and provides for James and Thomas’s… relocation. If she leaves before the year is out, or if we attempt to interfere, the debt reverts with interest, and our brothers face the courts.”
“A gilded cage is still a cage,” Teresa whispered. She walked to the narrow window, looking out at the twilight settling over the convent gardens. Her reflection in the glass was pale, a portrait of contained fury. “And I am the pet bird to make it feel less empty.”
“He said he was curious,” Stanley offered, the words sounding feeble even to him.
Teresa barked another laugh. “Marvellous. I am to be an intriguing specimen for a bored, grieving rich man. A puzzle to distract him from his ghosts.” She turned from the window, her decision made, etched in the new hardness of her mouth. “Fine.”
“Teresa—”
“I said fine, Stanley.” She walked back to the desk, carefully gathering the scattered quills she had knocked over. Her movements were precise, controlled. “You’ve backed yourself, and by extension me, into a corner with your good intentions. I won’t see James and Thomas hanged. And I won’t see you and Annabeth turned out of your home because of their stupidity and your pride. But understand this: you have not saved me. You have recruited me. I go to Blackwood as a soldier goes to a post. Not a bride. Not a companion. A prisoner of war on parole.”
She looked at Annabeth, and some of the fierce anger softened into sorrow. “Look after him. He means well, which is almost worse.”
Annabeth crossed the room and took her aunt’s hands. They were ice-cold. “A year isn’t forever,” she said, but the words felt like a lie.
“No,” Teresa agreed, squeezing her fingers. “But it’s long enough.” She released Annabeth and faced Stanley fully. “I’ll be ready at the end of the week. Tell your Mr. Jane he shall have his living distraction. And tell him I argue. You did mention that, I assume?”
Stanley could only nod, the victory ash in his mouth.
Later, in the small cell-like room Teresa occupied, Annabeth helped her pack. The task was solemn, silent except for the rustle of linen and wool.
“You don’t have to go,” Annabeth said finally, folding a plain grey dress with unnecessary force.
“Yes, I do.” Teresa placed a small, leather-bound journal into her valise. “Stanley is drowning, and he just handed me the only rope. If I refuse, the guilt would drown him faster than the debt ever could. This way, he can tell himself he’s done something noble. He can sleep at night.”
“And what about you? Who cares if you sleep?”
Teresa paused, holding a shawl to her face. It smelled of lavender from the convent gardens. “I survived your grandfather, Annabeth. I can survive one lonely, rich man’s curiosity. It’s a job. I’ve had worse.”
But they both knew it wasn’t just a job. It was an exile into a story with an unknown ending. Annabeth watched her aunt’s profile, the stubborn set of her jaw, the intelligence in her eyes already calculating, assessing, preparing for the new battlefield.
“I’ll find out everything about him,” Annabeth vowed quietly. “Patrick Jane. What really happened. What he wants.”
Teresa smiled, a real one this time, though it was tired at the edges. “Be careful. Men who live in shadows don’t like the light turned on them.” She closed the valise with a definitive click. “Now. Let’s go and have one last decent supper. And for God’s sake, let’s steal a bottle of the Abbess’s blackberry wine. If I’m to be a paid companion to a spectre, I’m going to need a drink.”
The blackberry wine was sharp and sweet on her tongue, a temporary comfort that did nothing to warm the cold knot in her stomach. Teresa and Annabeth shared the bottle in the quiet of her cell, passing it back and forth without glasses, a final act of rebellion. The candle between them burned low, pooling wax on the rough wooden table.
“You’ll write,” Annabeth stated, not asked.
“Every week,” Teresa promised, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “And you’ll tell me everything that happens here. Especially if Stanley does anything else phenomenally stupid.”
Annabeth managed a weak smile. “That’s a guarantee.”
They finished the bottle in contemplative silence, the weight of the coming separation settling over them. When the last drop was gone, Teresa rose, her movements deliberate. “Time for sleep. Tomorrow, the war begins.”
By the middle of the week, Teresa had made her way to her brother’s estate. They were to set out the next day for Blackwood Manor. The journey from the convent was short, but every mile felt like a march toward a prison whose walls she couldn’t yet see. She had never had any desire to marry, and believed that all men were like her father, except her brothers because she had raised them to do better. She had helped too many abused wives and stared down to many abusive husbands at the abbey to think any different.
It did not matter to her what this arrangement looked like to men on the marriage market. She was past that age anyway. What did bother her was the harm this would do to her reputation. She prided herself on being an upstanding woman without reproach. As she climbed the steps to her family’s manor, a place still shadowed by her father’s violence, she straightened her posture and hid her fears. She had faced down drunk men twice her size and had built a solid reputation from under the shadow of her father. She could do it again.
She rang the doorbell. The sound was swallowed by the too-quiet house.
Her sister-in-law, Lady Karen, swung the door open, surrounded by her nephews. The chaos was a stark contrast to the convent’s silence. The oldest clung to her skirts, hiding his face. The middle one peeked around the open door, wide-eyed. The youngest was wrapped in her arms, fussing. Karen looked exhausted, her fair hair escaping its bun, dark smudges under her gentle eyes.
The woman gave Teresa a watery smile. She looked like she had opened her mouth to say hello, but the words I am so sorry tumbled out instead.
Teresa stepped over the threshold and took the fussing baby from Karen’s arms without a word. He quieted almost immediately, snuffling against her shoulder. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” Teresa said, her voice firm. “This is Stanley’s doing. Not yours. Is he here?”
“In his study,” Karen whispered, her relief at the baby’s calm momentary. “He’s been in there since he returned. He won’t speak to me. He just drinks and stares at the accounts.” She touched Teresa’s arm. “He is eaten alive by it, Teresa. Truly.”
“Good,” Teresa said flatly, bouncing the baby gently. “He should be.” She handed the child back. “I’ll talk to him. You feed these ravenous beasts. They look half-wild.”
She found Stanley exactly as described, slumped behind the desk, a glass of amber liquid sitting untouched beside an open ledger filled with columns of red ink. The room smelled of dust and desperation. He looked up as she entered, his eyes bloodshot.
“I’ve come for the night,” she announced, not waiting for a greeting. “As requested. Though I’d have preferred a direct coach to my new gilded cage and skipped this particular farewell.”
“Teresa—”
“Save your apologies, Stanley. They’re useless to me.” She walked to the window, looking out at the unkempt gardens. “I want the agreement. In writing. I want to read exactly what you signed on my behalf.”
He fumbled in a drawer, pulling out a heavy parchment sheet. She took it, her eyes scanning the formal language. Companionate and managerial services… room and board provided at Blackwood Manor… a quarterly stipend of… freedom of mobility within reason… It was, on paper, shockingly fair. Ordinary. It was the context that poisoned it.
“He knew about the yellow roses,” Stanley murmured, watching her. “He instructed his man to prepare a room that has them outside the window.”
A cold finger traced Teresa’s spine. That detail, so personal, felt more intrusive than any legal clause. This Patrick Jane wasn’t just buying a service; he was conducting a study. She folded the paper. “He’s thorough. I’ll give him that.”
“He’s… not what I expected,” Stanley offered weakly.
“What did you expect? A monster with horns?” She turned on him. “The dangerous ones never look it, Stanley. That’s what makes them dangerous. Our father was a respected lord in public. Remember?” She tossed the agreement back on his desk. “I’ll see you at dawn. Try to be sober enough to say goodbye.”
She spent the evening on the nursery floor, telling her nephews outrageous stories about brave princesses who slayed their own dragons. Their laughter was a bittersweet salve. Karen brought her a tray of food, her gratitude silent and profound.
Later, in a guest room that still smelled of her childhood, Teresa packed her final things. She included the small, sharp embroidery scissors she used for her work. They weren’t much, but the weight of them in her hand was a comfort. She wasn’t going as a lamb to the slaughter. She was going as a woman who knew how to cut her way out of a trap.
Morning came grey and damp. A simple coach, paid for by Jane’s coin, waited at the door. Stanley helped her in, his touch hesitant. “Teresa, if at any point… if it’s unbearable…”
“Then the debt returns, and Thomas swings,” she finished for him, pulling her cloak tighter. “I know the stakes. I read them myself.” She looked at him through the coach window. “Goodbye, Stanley. Try to be better.”
He stepped back as if slapped. The driver clicked to the horses. As the coach pulled away, Teresa did not look back at the house. She looked ahead, at the long road winding into the mist-shrouded trees, toward the ghost-filled manor and the man who had bought a year of her life out of sheer, unsettling curiosity. The scissors pressed against her leg in her bag, a small, secret promise of resistance.