Yes, your suspicions were correct, I am the author of the satires. But it was not greed that led me to betray the Darlingtons. The satire enclosed here will be my last. And it is my parting gift to you. I believe its contents will explain why I have done what I have. If you take it to them, the Sussex Courier will pay fifty pounds for it. The series has become so popular that if you insist on sixty pounds there is an excellent chance you will get your price.

Good luck to you, my friend. I hope that someday I might return to London and enjoy a cup of tea and a scone at your lovely teahouse.

Therese


So Therese was the author of those scathing satires all the while! Why did she do it? What could possibly have made her despise the Darlingtons so much that she would want to hurt them like that?

It had to have been for the money. But for that, she could have twisted Wesley around her little finger; he was clearly so enamored of her. Yet she hadn’t given him the least encouragement. Strange.

Filing the front page to the back, Nora began to read Therese’s last satire. As she scanned the handwritten piece, her eyes widened and her jaw went slack with surprise.

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF…
THE WORTHLESS SAGA
The Last Rib-Tickling Installment of our Popular New Series “What Does Another Heir Matter When There’s Nothing Left to Inherit?”

Anyone who has visited Faded Glory Manor lately has seen the depths to which the Worthless family has tumbled.


Just recently Lady Worthless was seen with her hair disheveled, her collar torn, rocking a bawling baby in her arms. “I’m too old for this!” she shouted as a door fell off its hinges. “I thought I could raise this baby as my own, but I’m simply too antiquated.” She pointed to a gilt-framed portrait of one of the Worthless ancestors—a soldier in a doublet and velvet tights—on the wall, dating back to the 1600s. “I’m almost as old as he is,” she said with a sigh. “At least I feel that way since this baby came along.”


Snobby came running in. “How is my little cutesie-bootsie today?” she asks, tickling the baby under the chin.


Lady Worthless shooed Snobby away. “Don’t even look at this baby. Someone might notice his resemblance to you and to a certain someone.”


Snobby looked away from her mother. “I can’t imagine what you might mean by that, Mother,” she said with mock sincerity.


“You understand full well what I mean,” Lady Worthless insisted.


“I assure you, I do not,” Snobby replied.


“Can I remind you of a few months back when your belly looked as if you’d swallowed a melon whole,” Lady Worthless retorted.


Snobby stuck a finger in either ear. “I can’t hear you!” she sung out.


Lady Worthless stamped her foot in frustration. “Oh! You make me so mad! You are just like your father!”


“My father?” Snobby gasped. “In what manner could I possibly resemble that blustering old coot?”


“Well, you both have a child that you won’t admit to!”


“Shh!!!!” Snobby hissed sharply. “What child won’t father admit is his? Doodles?”


Doodles rushed in. “I’m not father’s child?” she asked, aghast.


“Shh!” Lady Worthless and Snobby shushed her at once. “No, not you, Doodles, silly girl,” said Lady Worthless. “The nanny.”


“The nanny?!” Doodles and Snobby cried in one voice. “The nanny is a Worthless?”


“I’m afraid it’s true,” Lady Worthless admitted as she continued to bounce the baby. “Years ago Lord Worthless dallied with Nanny’s mother, who was a very young maid in the household. They sent her off to France and paid her never to return.”


“But she did return?” Doodles asked.


“The child grew up to be Nanny and she came back to claim her inheritance. She fooled us all by pretending to be poor.”


“But she is poor,” Snobby reminded her mother. “Everyone who works for us is poor because we pay them hardly anything.”


“I suppose that’s so,” Lady Worthless agreed as a slab of ceiling crashes to the floor at her feet.


“Are you telling us we have a poor relative?” Doodles asked in horror.


“Shh!” Lady Worthless said again. She lowers her voice. “That’s why your father wouldn’t admit to having a child by a maid. It’s so embarrassing to know poor people, let alone be so… familiar… with one.”


“But Mother, aren’t we poor now?” Snobby asked.


“Shh!” said Lady Worthless. “We are not poor. We’re impecunious.”


“What does that mean?” Doodles asked.


“Poor,” Snobby filled her in.


“No! No!” Lady Worthless objected. “We’re penniless but not poor. We still have the Worthless name, which is worth its weight in gold.”


“A name weighs nothing,” Doodles said.


“Exactly!” said Lady Worthless.


Snobby scratched her head in bewilderment. “So how does that make me like Father?”


“You dolt!” Lady Worthless cried. “You both have a child you won’t admit is yours.”


“Snobby has a child?!” Doodles cried.


“Shh!” hissed Snobby.


At that moment Jon Handsome, the stable boy, stomps in, leaving muddy boot prints on the floor. He snaps the straps of his overalls and lifts the baby out of Lady Worthless’s arms, letting his feet dangle in the air. “There’s my darling son,” he said proudly. “He looks just like me, don’t you think?”


“Hush!” said Snobby. “He most certainly does not!”


“Sure he does,” Jon insisted. “He’s lucky. I’m a good-looking fellow. At least that’s what you told me that night in the stable. Don’t you remember?”


“You must be thinking of someone else,” Snobby insisted.


“No, I’m not. It was you all right!”


“You win! He is our baby. Now the whole county will know,” Snobby said. “If we raise him as a Worthless, though, he will inherit the Worthless fortune.”


“You don’t have to worry about that,” said Lady Worthless. “Here in this safe is our fortune.” She went to the portrait of her ancestor in the velvet tights and lifts it off the wall. Behind it is a safe, which she opens.


Everyone said “Ahh” as a single brown moth flew out of the empty safe.


Nora stopped reading and shook her head, stunned by the information revealed in the satire. She knew, of course, about Maggie and Michael. But that Therese was Lord Darlington’s daughter!

What luck for the Darlingtons that this never got published! Therese must have been so furious with her father for the way he denied her that she lashed out at the family any way she could.

Nora ran her eyes along the page once more. It was cruel and unfair to the girls and Lady Darlington, as well as Michael and the baby. What kind of mind could judge good people so harshly, though she had to admit that Lord Darlington probably deserved everything he got. How ironic that the daughter he wouldn’t acknowledge was the one who had turned out to be most like him.

Fifty pounds was a lot of money. It would take her years of sewing to earn as much. With a deep sigh of regret, Nora tore the pages in half and then in half again before tossing them in the trash basket. “Fifty pounds down the drain,” she murmured, shaking her head woefully.

Nora hurried down the stairs to the kitchen. “Have you seen Michael?” she asked Rose, the cook.

“Not in the last hour,” Rose responded. “Why are you looking for him?”

“I just need to speak to him,” Nora brushed her off as she headed for the back door. She crossed to the stable and entered. “Michael? Are you in here?”

A horse nickered in response to Nora’s voice.

“Michael?” Nora tried again.

He wasn’t there, but he always worked at this time. Where could he have gone?

A great silence welled up just behind the soft shuffling of hoofs and occasional sputter of a horse. “Michael?” Nora tried again more softly, now suspecting that Michael might never respond.

Everything was changing. She could feel it and it gave her a chill. But another emotion ran through her. A deep instinct told her that the end of Wentworth Hall had somehow begun. The life of being a serving person on this once great estate—the colorless life she had, deep down, always assumed would be hers—would never be the same. This life was ending and a new one was opening up before her.

Everything was changing. Nora could feel it. And she was glad.

Maggie pushed her windblown hair from her eyes and gazed out across the glistening ocean. She could hardly believe she was on a ship bound for America. Reaching out, she gripped Michael’s warm, strong hand and smiled up at James, peacefully asleep on his shoulder.