She didn’t notice how her daughter never went to the courtyard to play with her friends any more, or how Thomas was turned away from their door time and again by their maid. And she was too busy primping in front of the looking glass before going downstairs to greet the duke during his suddenly more frequent visits to realise that Elizabeth no longer ran to meet her father at the door like she used to.
Lizzie was unfailingly polite to the man: she answered his questions, thanked him for her presents, and endured his company for as long as she had to. When he died two years later, she was ashamed of how relieved she was to be free of those duties. And when Thomas joined a ship’s crew two years after that, with Elizabeth not having spoken a word to him since that day at the Park, she was finally able to close the lid on the box that held those feelings and memories and move on with her life.
One
Chapter 1
London, 1817
“Ma?” Lizzie called into the silent house as she unlaced her bonnet.
“I'm in the parlour,” her mother called, and Lizzie didn’t even attempt to squash the annoyance she felt whenever her mother insisted on calling their sad little drawing room “the parlour” but made sure to carefully hide any trace of it from her face.
Her mother, Catherine, seemed determined to live her life pretending that things were not what they were, and who was Lizzie to take that away from her? Especially since, after her father’s death, her mother had never fully recovered.
During those dark months, her mother sobbed and wrung her hands a lot, spent entire days in bed, complained of their fall in life to anyone who would listen, and never even considered hiding the mess they were in from her young daughter.
“How was work, dear?” her mother asked as Lizzie flung herself onto the worn settee left behind by the previous renters, exhausted.
“It was fine. Lots of new orders ahead of the Season, like every year. But also more pay, so it's worth the effort,” Lizzie shrugged as her mother called out to the maid to bring their tea.
When her father died, Elizabeth and her mother were left with one hundred pounds per year and the jewellery Catherine had been gifted during the years she shared with him.
The inheritance was barely enough to cover rent and coal and food for the two of them, and with the recent increases in the cost of food and everything else, it was plain to Elizabeth that someone in their household needed to find a way to make money, and her mother seemed unlikely to take such a step. So, a decision was made in the dead of the night: she would find a way to care for and support her mother.
Catherine had always been somewhat lost in her own world, utterly consumed with the relationship she had with the Duke, and now she was absorbed in her role of grievingfauxwidow. Luckily, Elizabeth had the Barlows to help her navigate their new circumstances.
The entire family (sansThomas, who was still at sea) moved with them when Lizzie and her mother were forced to move from Belgravia to Church Street. When Elizabeth turned sixteen, Thomas' sister Mary helped her find employment at the modiste’s where she already had a job as a seamstress, and finally, those hours of needlework her mother had subjected her to back when she was still attempting to make a perfect little lady out of her paid off.
Elizabeth started working as an improver, but after months spent observing, studying, and imitating the other women, she was recognised for her talent, speed, and work ethic, and advanced to a full-time seamstress. But her efforts didn’t stop there.
Whenever she had a free day, she taught the neighbourhood children to read and write in exchange for whatever food their parents were willing to part with that week, and Mrs. Barlow and Jane had found a million ways to combine those odds and ends into delicious stews.
Elizabeth smiled at their maid Jane as she set down the chipped ceramic tray that held their tea things, as well as some stale bread and a cut-up apple. She never knew a life without Jane in it, she realised, before turning to her mother.
“What about you, Ma? How was your day?”
Her mother pressed her lips together briefly. She didn't approve of not being calledMaman, as was the fashion among the gentry, but Elizabeth lived for these small rebellions. Catherine waited for Jane to leave the room before replying.
“I actually had a very, very eventful day.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth couldn't imagine anything eventful occurring in the hovel-like house where her mother spent all of her time.
“Elizabeth,” her mother straightened her spine and focused all of her attention on her. Elizabeth's stomach tightened, and she felt slightly nauseous. It was like her body knew something was about to change.
“I don't know how much you remember about your late father,” Catherine began, and Lizzie's first instinct was to jump up andrun from the room or to at least cover her ears, but she resisted both of those and instead held herself unnaturally still.
“I'm sure that at some point growing up, you must have realised ours wasn't a conventional arrangement. In fact, your father was married to someone else,” her mother said, and Elizabeth instinctively knew that the admission cost her a lot.
It required shattering the fantasy life she had convinced herself was true, and Lizzie didn't know what could have prompted her to do so now, after all these years.
“How can I have my father’s name if I was born out of wedlock?” she frowned.
“I took it upon myself to register you in the parish under the name Elizabeth Hawkins,” Catherine said with misplaced pride.
Elizabeth felt cold. Had her father been aware of that? Had he even wanted her to have his name?
“Why are you telling me this now, Ma?”
