Farewell to Home Part 1

Catherine -

Dawn came like a judgment, pale and cold and entirely too final. I stood at my bedroom window, watching the sun struggle through October clouds, and tried to memorize the view—the garden where I'd played as a child, the stable where Chester whickered his morning greeting, the oak tree Jamie had fallen from last summer and broken his arm.

In an hour, I'd leave this place forever. The thought sat in my chest like a stone, heavy and immovable and somehow unreal despite the packed trunk at my feet.

The trunk itself was a exercise in brutal practicality. One traveling case to hold everything I'd need for the rest of my life—however long that might be. Three dresses, including the blue wool from Father's mysterious windfall. Undergarments, stockings, a single pair of good shoes. My mother's silver brush and mirror set, the only valuable things I owned that Father hadn't been forced to sell.

Everything else—the books I'd collected since childhood, the pressed flowers I'd kept in a journal, the small watercolor painting of our family that had hung above my bed—would stay behind. They belonged to a girl named Catherine Montgomery who'd lived in London and worried about nothing more serious than which dress to wear to which social function.

That girl was dying today. In her place would be... what? A companion to a mysterious lord who bought women with gold and spoke of bargains like ancient law? A prisoner dressed in silk and fed on luxury but trapped nonetheless?

A sacrifice, whispered the honest part of my mind. You're a sacrifice.

"Catherine?"

Mother's voice from the doorway made me turn, though I'd heard her approaching long before she spoke. She moved differently now, with the careful precision of someone who'd learned that sudden movements might shatter what little remained of their world.

She stood in the doorway wearing her best dress—the green silk that brought out her eyes—and I realized she was trying to make this feel like a special occasion rather than an execution.

"The carriage is nearly ready," she said softly. "Your father is loading the last of the supplies."

Supplies. As if I were going on a pleasant journey rather than being delivered like goods to fulfill a debt.

I nodded, not trusting my voice to remain steady. We'd said our real goodbye the night before, when she'd held me while I cried and we'd both pretended this was temporary, that I'd somehow find a way home again.

"You look beautiful," she said, stepping into the room properly. "That blue brings out your eyes."

The dress was beautiful—far finer than anything we could have afforded in our current circumstances. The irony wasn't lost on me that I was wearing my buyer's gift to meet him for the first time.

"Mother," I said, then stopped. What was there to say? I'm terrified? I don't want to go? Please find another way? She knew all of that already, and voicing it would only make this harder for both of us.

"You're stronger than you know," she said instead, crossing to where I stood by the window. "Stronger than I was at your age, certainly. Whatever awaits you in that castle, you'll find a way to manage it."

Manage it. Such a careful phrase, as if my unknown future was simply another household challenge to be organized and controlled.

"What if I can't?" The question slipped out before I could stop it, small and vulnerable in the morning quiet.

Mother's hands cupped my face with the same gentle touch she'd used when I was small and frightened by thunderstorms. "Then you'll learn," she said firmly. "You'll adapt, you'll survive, and you'll find moments of happiness even in difficult circumstances. It's what women do."

It's what women do. Accept. Endure. Make the best of situations they never chose. The words should have comforted me, but instead they felt like a prison sentence disguised as wisdom.

"Will you write?" I asked, though I wasn't even sure letters would be possible from wherever I was going.

"Every day," she promised, though we both knew it was likely a lie. "And you'll write to us too. Tell us about the castle, about the countryside, about whatever books you find in his library."

The future she painted was so deliberately normal—letters exchanged between family members, news of daily life shared across distance—that it almost made this bearable. Almost.

A commotion in the hallway announced Jamie's arrival before his voice did. "Cat! Cat, wait!" His feet thundered on the stairs with the particular urgency of an eight-year-old who'd just realized something terrible was happening.

He burst through the doorway like a small hurricane, his dark hair sticking up at impossible angles and his face flushed with sleep and distress. "You can't go! Not without me!"

My heart clenched so hard I had to press a hand to my chest. "Jamie—"

"I can come with you," he rushed on, his words tumbling over each other in his haste to get them out. "I'll be good, I promise. I won't get in the way or ask for anything expensive. I can help in the stables or the kitchen or wherever they need an extra pair of hands."

The desperate hope in his voice was almost my undoing. I knelt down so we were at eye level, this brother who'd been my shadow for as long as I could remember.