by Megan Mulry
“She won’t think that. We will write to tell her how eager you are to meet her, that you will come to her right away, but I suspect . . .”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suspect she will want to decide the time and place, don’t you? I think she will want to be the one to dictate the circumstances of your reunion.”
Nora stared at the painting she was working on. Everything was there, but it wasn’t nearly finished—she knew how she wanted it to look, but she still needed to do the physical work to make it complete. She exhaled and knew she needed to do the same with her daughter. She needed to be patient and attentive. She needed to lay the groundwork, prepare for her arrival, and then let her bloom in her own way.
“Fine. We— I will tell the dowager duchess how eager I am to welcome Anna and her family into our home and leave it to her to convey my feelings to Anna. Perhaps you are right, and it would be invasive to write Anna directly.”
Vanessa sighed. Nora knew it was simply not in her nature to hold herself accountable for long, or anyone else for that matter. There was no real hypocrisy to it—Vanessa simply held everyone blameless, herself included. “I just hate the idea of you punishing yourself for something that was entirely out of your hands.”
“Would you rather I punish you?”
Vanessa smirked. “Touché.”
“I am not punishing anyone, darling.” Nora returned to Vanessa, touching her cheek with gentle assurance. “I am forgiving myself and everyone else.”
Vanessa turned and kissed Nora’s palm. “Please don’t ever leave me. I am a terrible, selfish person, and I live in hope that little bits of your goodness will rub off on me over time.”
“And I live in hope that your resilience and joy will rub off on me. We are a decent pair, I think. How could I ever leave you? If we were both always as effervescent as you or always as ruminative as I, we’d be silly geese on the one hand or dour spinsters on the other. Neither of those is the least bit appealing.” She sat down next to Vanessa on the chaise and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
Resting her head on Nora’s shoulder, Vanessa exhaled contentedly. “I am as desperate for you as ever, you know?”
“I feel the same—the wanting never fades. Even though you are quite despicable, you always manage to do everything out of this deep love.” Nora snaked her arm around Vanessa’s shoulder and kissed her neck. “And as much as I’d love to spend this beautiful summer afternoon letting you show me how sorry you are, we need to make a plan right away to get Farleigh and the rest of his brood out to Camburton Castle. As quickly as possible. Now.”
“Well, fine,” replied Vanessa, sounding peevish, but smiling nonetheless. “I will show you the depth of my contrition later tonight.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Vanessa kissed her again, on her neck near where it met her shoulder, and the small touch spread warmth through Nora’s body.
“Are you absolutely certain?” Vanessa asked, trailing a single finger down Nora’s neck.
“Yes. I’m certain.” But Nora’s voice was reedy and she turned to kiss Vanessa despite her claim of certainty.
The letter to the dowager duchess was written that day, but not for quite some time.
Anna watched as the Dowager Duchess of Mandeville set aside her letter and looked down the length of the breakfast table. A contented smile had spread across the older woman’s face as she watched her son and grandson. Farleigh was bouncing Teddy on his lap while laughing at a joke Sebastian had told him in Spanish; Sebastian was likewise bouncing Lola on his knee. Anna sighed at the blissful domestic tableau. She was as delighted with their family life as the rest of them, but all this hanging about and cooing over babies was beginning to wear her down. And Pia was becoming far too contented for Anna’s liking. At the moment, the two of them were squabbling amiably about whether they should walk into town right after breakfast or later after lunch.
“Let’s go now and be done with it,” Anna squared off.
Pia smiled and sighed. “I don’t want to be done with it. I want to enjoy the sunshine and take a stroll at my leisure. You should go ahead now if you’re in such a rush.” She took a slow sip of her tea, obviously enjoying it as much as she anticipated enjoying her leisurely stroll later in the day.
It was no surprise to anyone that Anna turned stormy and peevish when she wasn’t getting her way. “But I want to go with you.”
Pia shrugged and smiled again. “Then go with me after lunch.”
Anna stood up and tossed her serviette on the table. “You all are entirely too cheerful and languid. I’m going for a ride.”
Sebastian turned to look up at her, tender concern coming off him in waves. “Would you like company, my dear?”
She smiled down at him and their toddler, and kissed them each in turn. “No, thank you. I’m obviously in a mood. A solitary ride will do me good.”
“Very well. Do be careful.”
She rolled her eyes. She had finally come to accept Sebastian’s love—as hard as that had been—but she wished he would quit his ongoing solicitude. Not that her wishes ever prevented him, in this at least!
The dowager duchess spoke up as Anna began to turn away. “Remain a moment, Anna. I have some news.” The older woman let her hand come to rest atop the letter. Everyone faced the head of the table where she sat.
“What is it, Mother?” Farleigh’s unease was palpable.
“Oh, nothing to worry about. Something wonderful actually. I’ve heard back from Mrs. Nora White, and she is willing to paint your portrait at your earliest convenience. In August, even.”
Pia gasped. “This August? Next week? I thought she had a two-year wait until her next commission, and even then— I heard she flatly refused to paint Pedro de Quevedo y Quintano.”
Anna’s eyes narrowed. “I like her already. That bastard doesn’t deserve to be painted.”
“Anna,” Sebastian murmured. “Language, please.” He covered their daughter’s ears where she wriggled in his lap.
Anna turned to the dowager duchess and dipped her head. “I’m sorry, Duchess.”
“That’s all right, dear. I think Mrs. White has little patience for Papist inquisitors from Spain.”
Pia spoke up. “Does Mrs. White know we are Spanish?” She gestured toward Anna and Sebastian, then swung her hand around to include herself. “Maybe she will want nothing to do with us?”
“Yes. I told her a bit about you. There’s actually something rather important that I need to discuss with you all.”
Farleigh rang the bell to his right and one of the footmen entered the dining room a few seconds later. “Summon the nannies at once.”
The servant bowed and departed, and the two young women who took care of the babies arrived a few moments later to retrieve them.
Once they were alone in the grand room, Farleigh exhaled. “I don’t like the sound of all these important discussions, Mother. Are you certain you are well? I hope you’re not commissioning this portrait as some sort of dying wish.”
“Oh, do stop being so dramatic, Farleigh.”
He smiled at her reprimand. “Very well, then.” He crossed his arms in front of his broad chest. “What is this important news?”
She took a deep breath. “Anna, dear. You should sit back down. This has to do with you.”
Anna had been looking out the large French doors, thinking she might be able to slip away from a Mandeville family conversation that didn’t involve her. She turned her head. “To do with me?”
“Yes, dear.”
Anna sat down next to Sebastian, and he pulled her hand into his. “What is it?” he asked, ever protective.
The duchess took a moment to collect her thoughts. Anna could practically read the anxiety in the lines of her face, but what could possibly be such a monumental worry? Everyone that Anna loved was sitting at this table or being cooed to in another room. Her life was finally her own, and no one could ever take it away from
her again, she had made sure of it.
His mother’s silence was apparently more unnerving to Farleigh, who pressed, “Mother, do go on. This is painful.”
“Well, it’s rather complex. But I suppose I must simply say it outright.”
“Yes?” Pia prompted.
“It may very well be the case that . . . I mean to say, it appears that . . . The fact is, Mrs. Nora White is actually señora Leonor Medinacelli de Redondo, the deceased wife of the Conde de Floridablanca. Well, not deceased, obviously—” She sighed with exasperation.
Anna gripped Sebastian’s hand and tried to focus on the words, but her ears were crashing with a deafening thrum of blood, and she wasn’t quite able to breathe.
The duchess continued, speaking more easily now, as if she were telling a tale about someone she’d seen in London on a recent visit. “It turns out she changed her name and discarded her Spanish identity when she moved to England in 1790 with Vanessa Cambury and her uncle, Fitzwilliam Montagu. Nora had been horribly abused by her husband, the count. He had apparently cast her out after the birth of a daughter . . . he lied and told Nora the baby had died . . . he threatened to have Nora killed . . .”
Pia and Sebastian gasped. Anna stiffened and swallowed, trying to relax her vicious grip on Sebastian’s hand. He held her tighter. Farleigh was lost. “Who? What in the world? Redondo?” He turned swiftly from his mother to face Anna. “Isn’t that your maiden name? Is she a relative of yours? Why does the name Floridablanca ring a bell?”
Anna straightened her shoulders and pulled her hand away from Sebastian’s at last. None of this mattered to her. All of it was in the past. None of it mattered, damn it. Nora White did not matter. “If what the duchess says is true, Farleigh, that painter woman is my mother—or more accurately, gave birth to me.” Anna stood up slowly and pushed the dining chair back away from the table with one steady hand.
Sebastian leapt up. “Anna. Darling, sit. Please. We must talk about this. Your mother is alive. This is cause for celebration.”
Sebastian thought everything was cause for celebration, the fool. “I need that solitary ride more than ever. Please let go.” She looked down to where he had grabbed hold of her wrist and then realized he was refusing to release it. She gave him her most domineering look; he would pay dearly later—she envisioned the many lashes she’d mete out across his backside. Unfortunately, he would probably enjoy it.
“Well. That is news!” Farleigh took a sip of his strong coffee and then noticed Pia’s withering stare. “What?”
Pia clasped her hands on the table and continued to glower at her husband. “Anna has had a great shock. Her mother lives! Have you no heart?” She got up from her side of the table and walked slowly around the grand room toward Anna, as if nearing a feral animal.
“You know I have no heart,” Farleigh continued sarcastically. “You called me heartless this very morning, and I made no effort to disabuse you of that notion. In fact, I think you quite liked my heartlessness on that occasion.”
Anna would have to thank Farleigh later for at least trying to drain this maudlin affair of so much blasted emotional treacle.
“Farleigh!” Pia chided, still making her way toward Anna. “Your mother is sitting right there.”
“I am,” the duchess agreed. “But I shall leave the four of you alone for now. I’m sorry for being so abrupt about all of this, Anna.” She crossed the room, then set down the letter on the table next to where Anna was standing. The duchess stood there quietly for a few moments before continuing. “But I trust you will all be able to see the importance of a meeting with Mrs. White. Please know that Nora is desperate to meet you, but dreads imposing or making you feel the least pressure. She was very persistent about that point, about wanting to respect your wishes.”
Sebastian nodded. “We will work on Anna, Duchess.”
Anna fumed at being spoken about in the third person, as if she were a child or a malade.
The duchess nodded and left the room.
Anna wrenched her hand from Sebastian’s hold. “How dare you force me to stay in this room like that? And you!” Anna wheeled on Pia, her other sweet, traitorous lover. “You who know what I have suffered! Pia, how could you want me to meet her? All those years of being told I was the daughter of a whore—well, at least she was a dead whore, I always thought!” Anna made no effort to wipe away her angry tears.
Pia gasped at Anna’s cruel words. “Clearly, she was not a whore, Anna. We know that now. That horrible man told her you were dead—” Pia reached out to touch Anna’s check.
Anna swatted Pia’s hand away and shook her head in disgust. “And she simply believed him? She must have cared so deeply! She must have tried so hard to find me! Do you think I could ever live another day if there was even a chance that Lola lived on this earth and she had been taken from me? Do you think I would be gallivanting in Derbyshire and London, swanning about with painters and—” Anna stopped short. She didn’t even owe that woman the time it took to be appalled by her. She wiped away her tears and stood up straighter.
Farleigh stirred his coffee. Pia and Sebastian stood there speechless. The tension was so unfamiliar between the four of them. Anna decided to blame Nora White for that as well.
“Don’t touch me. Any of you.” She pushed Sebastian’s hand away as he slowly reached out to her. “You with your mothers who love you. Yes, even you, Pia! Even the poor orphan girl who was destined to spend her life in a remote convent, you have your tiny cameo of your mother—a mother who may have died, but even then she never left you wondering about her love of you! I don’t need to listen to any of this.”
Anna turned furiously from the room and strode out to the stables. She proceeded to ask the groom to saddle the largest, most ill-behaved stallion, and rode him for four hours until they were both exhausted beyond measure.
Vanessa walked into the dining hall at eight o’clock sharp as usual, with Nora on her arm. The room was bustling with activity, crowded with students and instructors, writers and painters, and actors and musicians who were spending the summer at Camburton. Vanessa adored everything about these crowded summer evenings—the controlled chaos, the bubbling creativity—and had to repress an immodest pride that she had been the one to make it all happen.
When Nora had reached a level of prominence that brought both financial rewards and public acclaim, Vanessa had decided to open up Camburton during the warmer months to make it an artists’ colony of sorts. While Nora’s name drew lots of starry-eyed creative types, it was Vanessa who schooled them in the lesser-known art of common sense. In addition to their chosen field—painting, literature, music, or drama—each student was required to take a course in the basics of financial management. Vanessa was especially pleased to be able to offer this course to all the girls and women who had never been raised to comprehend even the most basic rudiments of economic well-being. And many of the men for that matter, who were often the sons of dissolute dukes and profligate peers who occasionally provided no more than debts and an entail when it came to parental bequests.
Camburton accepted twenty students each year—and the occasional misfit, as Vanessa liked to think of her “special cases.” As well as students and instructors, there were also usually ten or twelve artists and writers in residence, who worked most of the day, and were rarely seen. Except at dinner. Everyone was required to attend dinner.
Vanessa was especially pleased tonight because Nora’s nerves had finally begun to settle. She’d received a reply from the Dowager Duchess of Mandeville, informing her that Anna was in shock, but plans were moving forward for a visit to Camburton in August. The dowager duchess tactfully added that it would probably be best for Nora to await contact from Anna rather than to initiate it.
As soon as Vanessa and Nora were seated, voices lowered and people moved to take their places at the extended dining table that could accommodate forty at one meal. Once all were settled, Vanessa rang a small crystal bell by her plate an
d silence fell. “Welcome to this beautiful evening, everyone. Before we begin the meal, who will share what they’ve created today?”
There was a stirring at the far end of the table, where a man and woman were elbowing and whispering encouraging words to the shy Miss Selina Ashby.
“Selina?” Vanessa called down the length of the room. Everyone at the table went still. Archie was sitting to Vanessa’s right, and he craned his neck to get a better view of the startled young woman. Selina blushed furiously, but stood up at last.
“Yes, Lady Camburton.”
“What have you written today? Let us hear a passage.”
The novelist mumbled something that couldn’t be heard across the full length of the table.
“Speak up, dear.”
“I said it’s not appropriate, Lady Camburton.” The words rang through the silence, followed by a few snickers around the table.
Vanessa smiled benevolently. “The finest things rarely are, don’t you find?”
The tension lessened somewhat, but Selina’s blush deepened. Archie looked like he was going to leap to her defense, ask his mother not to single her out. Something. Vanessa quelled him with the slightest glance. Then turned back to Selina. “Speak up, then. We’ve all been forewarned to gird our tender sensibilities.”
Over the years, Vanessa had encouraged many artists just like Selina Ashby, people who had been discouraged or browbeaten in the past, but who only needed a slight nudge to come out of their shells. In most cases, insecurity was rapidly overcome by her brand of forceful enthusiasm. Nora was the perfect example: if it had not been for Vanessa, she might never have picked up a brush. Vanessa took a sense of pride in her calling; she knew she was born to drive people on, to help them be their best selves.
Selina patted her dress and smock, as if she were missing the piece of paper with her writing on it and therefore couldn’t comply, but one of her encouraging friends pulled a folded piece of parchment from the inside of his jacket.
“Here it is!”