Good. Both of her parents in one place was exactly what she needed.
She approached the study but stopped short when her mother began shouting. Bella pressed her ear to the wood.
“You must speak to her, Edmund. Tell her the truth.”
“Bah,” her father grumbled. “Perhaps she’ll take a fancy to one of the gentlemen you’ve invited for the fortnight. Then everything will fall into place, just as we hope.”
“My dear.” Her mother used the long-suffering tone Bella had become very used to. “Our daughter has stubbornly refused every offer put to her. Shouldn’t we tell her what you must give up if she continues to do so?”
“She might opt to accompany us,” her father said, his voice pitched high and hopeful.
“Bella wishes to publish her book. She won’t want to be away from England so long and I won’t leave her unchaperoned. Unmarried.”
“My sister Iona—”
“Is ailing in Scotland and must look after her health rather than our daughter.”
Bella couldn’t stand it anymore. She turned the latch, pushed inside the room, and faced her startled parents. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Her father heaved a long sigh and settled into his desk chair, then popped up again and removed two books he’d apparently deposited there and forgotten about. For a moment, he struggled to find an empty space where he could rest the two volumes. As usual, his desk was covered with maps and sketches of ancient Greece. He’d tutored others in the language for years, but his true passion was Hellenistic art and architecture.
“Mama?” Bella turned to her mother. Of the two of them, she was the most effusive. As a poet, she understood the value of words more than most. But today she was uncharacteristically quiet. Pressing her lips together as if forcing herself not to speak, she turned her gaze toward Bella’s father. Whatever they were hiding, it seemed he would have to be the one to tell it.
“I didn’t wish it to come out in this manner, my girl.” He flattened the edge of a sketch and placed the books on top before sinking into his chair. “I’ve been offered an opportunity,” he said softly.
“In Athens,” her mother blurted.
“That’s . . .” So far away was Bella’s first thought, but it was a selfish one. Her father longed to visit the lands he’d been studying for decades. “Wonderful news.”
“It’s a teaching role.” He gave her that searching gaze of his with jade green eyes the same shade as her own. “The offer is for three years.”
Years? Bella had never been parted from her family for more than a few months when she’d gone away to a finishing school in the north, loathed it, and returned home early. And they’d never traveled farther than London or the seaside at Brighton. Travel had never been her passion, but she had no wish to keep her father from his. Her mother, she suspected, would find much inspiration for her writing among ancient ruins too.
“I wish you to go, Papa. Both of you. But I can’t accompany you, and I don’t think the marriage plot house party will work.”
“Hardly a plot, Arabella.” Using her given name meant her mother’s patience was wearing thin. “We invited a few gentlemen to round out the numbers.”
“Far more gentlemen than ladies.”
Her mother sighed and rubbed her fingers against the fob watch on a chain around her neck. “They’re decent gentlemen,” she said with a hopeful lilt. “Well-bred. Well educated. We thought in lieu of another Season—”
“I never want another Season, Mama.” The words were out too quickly and too loudly. “You know my plans. My hopes. I’ve done my round of Seasons.” Bella let out a sigh that was more sadness than frustration. “Do you truly expect me to do it all again?”
“My girl,” her father spoke up, his voice soft, almost pleading. “We wish to see you settled before we would ever consider leaving England. Neither of us can bear to think of you here alone.” He glanced across the room, his eyes meeting her mother’s. “I assure you marriage is not a terrible fate.”
“Not for some, but I’ve accepted that it won’t be my fate.” Once she’d longed for marriage as much as any debutante, but she’d discovered a flaw in the whole nonsense of Seasons and balls and matchmaking. Her heart was stubborn and she’d pinned her hopes on the one man who would never fulfill them.
“It still could be.” Her father gripped the edge of one of his books so tight his knuckles whitened.
Bella moved close and laid her hand on his. “Are you all right, Papa?”
“I’m well.” He nodded once, but Bella didn’t like how pale he looked. He’d taken ill the previous year and had not yet recovered his usual vigor for study and teaching.
Bella looked toward her mother. “Is there more you’re not telling me?”
“Dr. Bell did comment that a bit of Greece’s sun may do your father well.”
Every emotion Bella had entered the room with—guilt, frustration, determination—turned to fear. She didn’t want her family to go, and yet she wanted her father to be well. She couldn’t lose him.
“The house party is a hope that you might finally find the happiness we wish for you. And you must forgive us for not telling you of your father’s news. We wanted to find the right moment.”
“You know I do.” Bella had learned the danger of holding on to hurt.
“If I’d said anything you would have commandeered a pony cart and ridden off to some distant village where no one knew your name.”
“I still might.” Bella quite liked that idea.
“Bella, please.”
“We must give her at least one good reason not to,” her father said playfully.
Hearing lightness in his tone eased the worry weighing on her heart.
Her mother let out a half-hearted chuckle. “Because we have house guests arriving who expect to be entertained for a fortnight?”
And just when I have a book to finish. Dozens of slips of paper decorated the wall in her sitting room. Some were riddles, others contained word problems or logic conundrums. Every time she thought of a new one, she added it to the collection and then to the pages of her manuscript. She was so close to adding finishing touches.
“You needn’t choose any of them,” her father told her in his rumbling baritone.
“Edmund, we’ve discussed this.” Mama’s quelling glance would have given other men pause, but her parents had been married for two decades and her father wasn’t a man to be put off easily.
“They’re all fine young men, of course,” he conceded. “Your mother chose with care.”
“But without consulting me,” Bella couldn’t stop from blurting.
Her mother strode forward. “What would you have said, dear girl? Would you have agreed to meet them? We do not wish to force your hand.”
“And yet four men are descending on Hillcrest and I had no choice at all.” Her voice had taken on a reedy quality she hated. Petulance didn’t suit her.
“The choice shall always be yours to make.” Her father’s firm unwavering manner always made her believe him. “We only long to see you happy.”