Chapter 49

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 49
Chapter Title: Gerald Pendleton
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He sat in a chair directly across from the door, his feet propped casually on the oak desk, leisurely smoking a cigar. He cast a cold gaze at his niece, who had appeared so suddenly.

“Have you not learned to knock?”

Miss Pendleton approached the desk without a word. Standing before it, she offered a slight curtsy.

“Forgive my rudeness. I have come because there is something I wish to ask you.”

“As it happens, I have something to say to you as well. How fortunate. If your matter is not urgent, I shall speak first.”

Miss Pendleton nodded, but Gerald seemed to have little interest in her consent, his eyes drifting aside. He rested his cigar on the ashtray and lowered his feet. Then, he draped his arms leisurely over the armrests of the chair.

“Tom will be at the Lance’s ball tomorrow. There, you will accept his proposal.”

Miss Pendleton bit her lip.

“You have refused enough. You have maintained your dignity as a lady. No one will be able to say you leaped at the first offer of marriage. Now, marry Price and start a family.”

“Uncle, I have already given you my answer on this matter. I have refused, I have the freedom to refuse, and you have no right to force me. Even if you promised me to Mr. Price, my consent was not given, so it cannot influence my decision.”

Gerald’s eyebrow twitched.

“Did you hear this from Miss Jensen?”

“I do not believe that is of great importance in the current situation, Uncle.”

Her uncle’s other eyebrow furrowed. He stubbed out his cigar. Then he looked Miss Pendleton up and down. Miss Pendleton endured his contemptuous gaze. He clicked his tongue with a ‘tsk’.

“The problem was that you grew up to be far too pretty.”

Gerald looked at Miss Pendleton with displeasure.

“As Dolores Pendleton’s daughter, you were bound to be comely, so I always wondered why you had not yet married. Now I see why. I suppose the face you see in the mirror each morning has made it impossible for you to stop being so selective, hasn't it? This is no time to be haughty, Laura Pendleton. Know your place. Your age, your blood, your fortune. Not a single one is without its flaws. Tom Price is the perfect match for you. In fact, you should be thanking me.”

“For what should I be thankful?”

“For bringing you a suitable groom, of course. I thought you would surely realize you’d have nowhere to go once your grandmother passes and accept the proposal. I never imagined you were so naive and vain.”

Miss Pendleton bit her lip.

“I am not weighing my options based on my appearance or any other condition. I have spent my entire life trying not to forget my station. The world never allowed me to forget it, so I had little choice. I am a flawed person. Flawed in many ways.”

“Then why do you refuse Tom’s proposal? You claim not to have forgotten your place, so why? A man has appeared who would save you, so why? Is this not proof that you still have some pride left in you?”

“Uncle, no matter how flawed and imperfect I may be, must I sell myself to a man I do not love, to a man who would buy me as if I were a mere object? Am I not human to begin with, Uncle?”

Gerald Pendleton’s jaw hardened.

“I know you are human. Disgustingly so. If you were an object, I could have at least thrown you away. I truly lament the day you were born human.”

His spat-out words were filled with contempt.

“I know. I know how much you despise me. I am the family’s disgrace, born from my parents’ shameful union. You made me realize that when I was very young, and I have never once forgotten it since. If I were truly an object, you would have thrown me out a hundred times over.”

The contempt in his eyes was gradually turning murderous.

“When my mother said she would raise you, I should have secretly abandoned you at an orphanage. No, I should have drowned you in some ditch so you couldn't function at all. If I had known you would grow up so ungrateful, I would have long ago…!”

“Please do not speak to me of gratitude. Strictly speaking, I have received nothing from you but mistreatment. I was raised on my grandmother’s love and fortune. I may owe my grandmother, but I owe you no debt of gratitude.”

Gerald’s other eyebrow furrowed. He glared silently at his niece before him, his hand closing around the nearby ashtray. And then he threw it.

Crash!

Miss Pendleton dropped into a deep crouch. It was by a hair’s breadth. A moment later, and the ashtray would have struck her square in the face.

Her crouched body went rigid. In that instant, a powerful sense of familiarity seized her. It was a memory from a past faded by more than a decade—the memory of Gerald Pendleton, who had always been the stronger one before her younger self.

“Living on Grosvenor Street, in the most elegant of townhouses, adorning yourself with silks and lace, and riding in a luxurious carriage—you must think you’ve truly become a count’s daughter, don’t you? You are the shame of the Pendletons. A dirty stain on the family name. Everything you have enjoyed in your life was obtained solely thanks to the ghost of your grandmother.”

Miss Pendleton remained crouched as she listened to her uncle’s words. They were the same self-reproaches she had repeated to herself countless times. The shame of the Pendletons. A dirty stain. A fortune unearned, obtained through her grandmother.

Hearing those words again from Gerald, she understood with stark clarity. The origin of her long-held self-blame was the words that came from Gerald Pendleton’s mouth. In her early childhood, he had said the very same things to her, and her young heart had remembered them, repeating them to herself for a lifetime.

She pushed herself to her feet. Her body, remembering Gerald’s violence, was trembling uncontrollably, but instead of fleeing, she opened her mouth to speak.

“I once believed, as you said, that I had sullied the family name. People said that children must live to atone for the sins of their parents. I carried my parents’ mistakes as my own burden. But now, I am no longer certain what their mistakes were.”

“What did you say?”

Gerald Pendleton clenched his teeth.

“Are you daring to say there was no sin in the vagrant scoundrel who seduced a Pendleton lady and ran away with her, or in your lewd mother who bore a child out of wedlock? It seems your morals are as corrupted as your parents’, are they not?”

“My parents held their own wedding ceremony before a priest and a witness. They were on their way to Gretna Green to register the marriage when they had to stop due to my mother’s severe morning sickness. They intended to marry, but simply could not. Before my father entrusted me to the Pendleton family, he gave me a necklace and told me everything. He said my mother truly loved him. That their union was shameless before God.”

“Like parents, like child, indeed. Fine, let’s say that’s true of your mother, but what of your father? Do you intend to defend that damn scoundrel who sought to change his fortunes through a secret marriage, seducing a noble lady far above his station?”

Miss Pendleton looked at Gerald, who was seething before her, and unleashed the true feelings she had so carefully concealed within her.

“The reason you insult my father is not because he ran away with my mother. If she had eloped with a man of ducal rank, you surely would not have been so angry. Nor is it because he was an American. If you harbored such long-standing anger for that reason, you would not be fawning over and walking on eggshells around your American daughter-in-law.”

The color drained from Gerald Pendleton’s face, leaving it white with rage. Miss Pendleton delivered the final blow.

“You despise my father simply because he was poor. You speak of honor, but your mind is filled with nothing but money. From the very beginning, you have known nothing but money. The reason you could never forgive my mother was that you couldn't sell her for a good price, wasn't it? Because you couldn't get a decent sum for her, just as you are trying to sell me now. What has sullied the Pendleton name is not my parents, but your own miserly nature.”

Only silence filled the study. Gerald Pendleton stood frozen, staring at his niece, Laura Pendleton.

That little wretch. That insignificant insect… what did she call me? What was it? A miser?

He replayed his niece’s words and finally understood completely. She had called him a miser. For the first time, Gerald Pendleton realized how much his niece before him had grown.

The last time he had seen her, she was a little wretch who would turn pale and tremble at the mere sight of him, yet now she stood before him, her neck held stiffly, acting so insolent.

This is how frightening one’s environment can be. A change in surroundings makes one forget one’s place, forget one’s station. Gerald Pendleton thought to himself. He would have to teach his niece a lesson again.

“I will say this one last time, Laura Pendleton. Tomorrow, you will accept Tom Price’s proposal.”

Miss Pendleton shook her head.

“I cannot accept Mr. Price’s proposal, Uncle.”

Gerald Pendleton snatched his niece’s slender arm. And threw her to the floor.

Thud!

Miss Pendleton collapsed in a corner of the study. Her body ached where it had hit the floor. She tried to push herself up, but her tightly laced corset restricted her movements.

Before her sprawled form, the toe of a polished shoe appeared. Gerald Pendleton had already approached and was standing over her. Miss Pendleton looked up at him.

“Say it. That you will return the Pendleton name and take Price’s hand. And that you will hurry up and get lost to America, your father’s homeland.”

“You have no right to do this, Uncle.”

She gritted her teeth.

“When Grandmother passes, I will leave with nothing. Not a single penny. I will cast aside this name as well. I will live with my father’s name. Forcing me to marry is an unreasonable… Ah!”

He pressed down on Miss Pendleton’s fingers with his shoe. Miss Pendleton screamed and reflexively grabbed her uncle’s leg.

“You filthy, disgusting insect. Is that insolent tongue something you learned while rolling around in high society?”

He pressed down on her fingers with even more force, his expression one of utter contempt.

“Ah, Uncle, please…!”

Miss Pendleton clung to her uncle’s leg.

“You dare to be so impudent after living off the fortune my son is meant to inherit? Apologize at once. Apologize with that same tongue you used to insult the head of this family.”

Miss Pendleton burst into tears. It felt as if her fingers were being crushed. She cried out desperately, fighting to survive.

“Uncle! S-stop…!”

But the foot crushing her fingers did not ease in the slightest. He looked down with contemptuous eyes at his niece, who trembled beneath him.

“Accept Price’s proposal.”

Miss Pendleton looked up at her uncle. He was looking at her as if she were an insect that needed to be crushed to death. It was a gaze that wanted to crush not just her fingers, but her entire body.