Catherine -
Father returned just as the sun was setting, but he might as well have been a different man entirely. Gone was the defeated figure who'd ridden out that morning, shoulders bowed under the weight of our family's shame. In his place sat someone who looked almost... triumphant.
The saddlebags bulging with packages should have been my first warning. The second should have been the way he whistled—actually whistled—as he dismounted Chester in the courtyard. Father hadn't whistled in months, not since the creditors had started circling like vultures.
"Catherine! Jamie! Eleanor!" His voice boomed through the house with an energy I hadn't heard since before everything fell apart. "Come see what fortune has brought us!"
Jamie bounded into the entrance hall like a puppy, his eight-ye
