When had the two of them become so close that they conversed in such an intimate manner?Lizzie wondered.Had I been ill for that long?
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it ever since our last conversation. Can you even fathom that I’d had no idea I was increasing? I was worried I was dying! And my nausea wasn’t going away, so I went to my employer’s wife, Lady Isolde, and explained to her what was happening to me, and she got frighteningly mad. She informed me I was in the family way andaccused me of seducing her husband. It was both mortifying and terrifying.”
“Did you ever hire a governess for your daughter?” Mrs. Cooper asked after a while.
“No proper, young woman from a respectable gentry family would ever even enter my home, let alone live and work there, not for all the money the late duke had. However, now that I am thinking about it, I don’t know if I could have handled having one. I’d always worry about leaving her alone with him…”
Elizabeth, who was holding her breath as she listened to her mother’s response, slowly crept back to her room after hearing that last sentence and leaned her back against the door after she closed it.
She’d never talked to her mother about the circumstances of her conception (or much else, really), but the resentment she’d carried from her childhood coupled with the memory of her mother’s preening whenever her father had been around had given her young brain enough reason to paint a picture of scandal, intrigue, and forbidden love.
She remembered when cousin Andrew had given in to her pleas and answered some of her questions regarding her legal status as an illegitimate child, which was when he’d told her about theBastardy Act, under which every unmarried pregnant woman could be forced, on oath, to name her child’s father, who would then have to marry her or (in the case of men like Elizabeth’s father, who were already married), pay for the expense of raising said child.
Upon learning that, Elizabeth had deduced that her father and his sister had most likely been trying to avoid the public scandalassociated with such a proceeding, and that was why they had sent her mother to London, where she knew no one, and had kept her secluded in the house the duke had paid for, with a staff he had selected, to waste her life away hidden from the world like the shameful secret that she was.
Elizabeth was certain by now that the shame for a man of her father’s standing wasn’t the infidelity or the illegitimate child, but fathering the child with a governess, who was almost a servant in the eyes of theTon, a nobody from the countryside.
Only the most sophisticated ladies were worthy of being his paramours, she thought with disgust,and only God knows how many of them he had.
She pictured her mother as the clueless, inexperienced, terrified eighteen-year-old governess that she’d actually been, then the little girl whose only idea of illegitimate children was tied to a cautionary tale of an unknown woman’s execution.
Elizabeth shuddered. She feared that her fever was returning.
She slid under the covers and spent a whole hour trying to make sense of the two conflicting images she had of her mother, who now felt less like only hermamanand more likeCatherine,a woman, a complete, separate person with an inner life – dreams, hopes, trials, and disappointments of her own.
“Are you awake?” Mary whispered from the doorway, and Lizzie sat up. “How are you feeling?” Mary asked as she smoothed Lizzie’s hair, which must have been ruffled from tossing and turning in bed.
Lizzie took a moment to properly look over her friend for the first time in days, if not weeks. She seemed plumper all over,and her face, although strained by something that looked like fatigue, was radiant. Her complexion had never looked better.
“Being with child suits you, Mary, you look lovely,” she said sincerely, making a mental note to consult Doctor Cooper about her friend’s health.
Mary smiled with delight and started showing off her face, “Look! All cleared up! It’s like magic, Lizzie!”
Lizzie felt her eyes and nose sting. She knew how hard it had been for her friend all her life, and how ugly she had always felt (despite all of the reassurances her loved ones continuously gave her) and how much she’d suffered because of her blemished skin.
And yet Robert has always looked at her like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
The tears were now flowing freely as pain and jealousy warred against overwhelming joy and pride in Lizzie’s heart.
“I’m so happy for you, Mary, you deserve all the best things in the world,” she managed to croak out between sobs.
“So do you,” her friend said sternly as they hugged. She then pulled back from the hug, grabbed Lizzie by the shoulders, and stared into her face intently. “You’re going to survive this. I know you. I don’t know how yet, but youwillovercome this.”
“I hope you’re right,” Lizzie said sadly.
“Fiend seize it,” Mary cursed under her breath and stood up. “I came up to tell you that Lady Burnham is downstairs, and instead I’m nattering about.”
Lizzie got up as well, “I’ll be down quickly.”
“Do you want me to help you dress?”
“I’d rather you go apologise to her for me. I’ll manage the dress.”
Mary looked at her hair doubtfully but didn’t argue.
*
“My child, what happened?” Lady Burnham asked as soon as Lizzie entered the parlour, her slip into informality revealing the extent of her agitation at her protegee’s sudden change of address.
