by Sarita Leone
“I am fine. It was not a large swoon, only a quick buckling of my knees. Besides, Hugh caught me before I could hurt myself.” The memory of being in the strong man’s arms brought a surge of heat to her middle. Of their own accord, Elise’s nipples pebbled and gooseflesh broke out on her arms.
“Who is Hugh?” Louise demanded. She was obviously much more intrigued by the man than she had been by even the whores. “And why didn’t you tell us about him before?”
Elise shrugged. “There is nothing to tell. Hugh is Emmaline Byrd’s cousin. She’s the woman who runs the…ah, you know. She runs the house.”
“Does Hugh help her with her, ah, business?” Louise smiled, smugly, when their mother kept quiet.
“I didn’t get that impression at all.” Thinking back, Elise could not pick one instance where either Hugh or Emmaline acted as if he helped her in any way. In fact, she had been sure he was something entirely different, not a relation at all, but now that the story unfolded it seemed to make sense that he was present to assist Emmaline. Perhaps he contributed financially, since without any patrons a manse of that size must require a good deal of funds to operate.
“Is Hugh an old lunatic also?” Louise had settled back against the chintz cushions. She pulled the book back onto her lap, rescuing it from the floor where it had fallen when she’d jumped up to hug Elise. Absently she flipped through the pages, her disinterest in two elderly lunatics clearly less rabid than her desire to learn about prostitutes.
“No, he is neither old nor crazy.” But what was he, exactly? The man was an enigma, cruelly teasing one moment and kind the next. How to describe someone like that? She settled on remembering the physicality of the man. “He has dark, dark eyes and loads of black curls covering his head. Broad shoulders and a grin that comes unexpectedly. He—”
The book pages stilled. “You sound smitten, sister.”
Elise’s breath caught, her mind blank for an instant. Then, she shook her head from side to side, knocking some pins from her travel-worn updo. “I am not smitten. Believe me, he is incorrigible and teased me heartlessly. No, Hugh is not the kind of man I would become smitten over. Not that I intend to ever be smitten—”
It sounded like she’d already stuck her spoon in the wall but a life dictated by the whims of a deceitful man seemed far worse than becoming a Tabby.
Elise’s fingers curled around the bundle in her pocket. She pulled it out, pressing it into her mother’s hand.
“What is it?” Genevieve held the pouch as if it contained a cobra—a very tiny cobra. “Where did it come from? And whom?”
“I don’t know what is inside, but Emmaline told me to give it to you. She said you would tell the rest of the story, although the first part of her ‘secret’ is so preposterous I’m not even going to dignify it by repeating it to you and Louise. If my guess is right, there isn’t anything of any value—either monetarily or otherwise—in that pretty little pouch. The woman was queer in the attic, Mother. Truly, she was, but I took the thing because I could see she wasn’t going to let me go until I did. So, here I am—now with a mystery pouch instead of a mysterious letter. Not much progress, is it?”
Louise cast aside her book. She reached out, took the pouch from their mother’s palm and untied the ribbon holding it closed. Then, she upended it over Genevieve’s palm, tilting the contents out.
Elise stared at the objects in Genevieve’s hand. Her guess had been wrong—very wrong. The pouch’s contents were both valuable and meaningful.
She reached up, fingering the pearl studs in her earlobes. Looking across her mother, she saw Louise’s fingers were on her earlobes, as well.
The tiny raindrop shapes engraved in the gold surrounding the pearls in Genevieve’s palm were identical to the ones she and Louise had worn their entire lives. Their mother had always told them the earrings were priceless, part of a duke’s cache that had been sold to pay gambling debts. She had said there were no others like theirs, not anywhere in the world.
Well, that had been a falsehood, because the truth was right before them in black and white. Rather, in pearl and gold.
Genevieve clasped her fingers tightly, pulling the earrings against her chest. She had gone white, but before either Elise or Louise could ask if she was ill, she gasped, “No! It can’t be!”
Then, she did what none of them “ever” did.
Genevieve swooned.
****
“How can you be so certain she will return?”
Emmaline stood in a pink morning gown before her bedroom window. The drab sky matched her dreary mood. Hugh had spent the better part of the past hour trying to coax her to eat but she couldn’t get one morsel of food past her tight throat.
She only had had one thing to do, one mission in life left to her, and she had failed miserably. It tore at her already broken heart.
How could she live knowing she had let him down? He had never done that to her. Never. Yet here she was, an absolute disappointment. It was more than she could bear.
“Take me at my word, dear cousin. She will return. If I were to wager a Sovereign on it, I’d bet our Miss Fulbright shall be back before dinnertime.”
Hugh leaned back in the smallish side chair where he had crammed his full-size male figure with no room to spare, patted a hand on his belly, and then crossed one leg across the opposite knee. He left standing and staring to Emmaline, choosing instead comfort by the hearth in the cozy room. The breakfast trolley held enough for a quartet, perhaps more, so he felt no guilt plowing through a full serving of fried eggs, rye toast and juice.
The meal was mindless, and filled time. He, like Emmaline, was anxious to see their houseguest again. The sooner, the better.
Women had fallen at his feet, offered themselves up to him because of his charisma and, of course, his wealth. They acted as if their bodies were currency, used freely to purchase his interest. For a while, when he was a much younger man and his breeches were more insistent than his head, he had allowed the folly, using women to satisfy his desire without letting them near his heart. Not that they wanted his heart. No, that was never what any of the so-called “lovers” he’d taken was after.
Lover. He was a skilled sexual partner but he had never been loved, or loved in kind. He’d never been anyone’s lover, not in the fullest sense of the word. The essence of lovemaking, the melding of mind, body and soul, was still foreign to him.
His parents’ sham of a marriage, coupled with the desire of every woman he had been involved with, showed him that women were only interested in where a man could take them. The man didn’t matter; the destination on the social ladder was of utmost importance.
“Hugh! Are you listening to me?”
He hadn’t even been aware Emmaline was speaking. He forced his head to focus on his cousin, even though his body was still on a certain young woman in Essex.
“Sorry?” She had turned from the window, crossed the room and stood, arms crossed over her bosom, staring down at him. He hadn’t been aware she was on the move, and felt foolish that he’d allowed her to sneak right up on him—in broad daylight, even. It was clear she knew he’d been daydreaming. Composure came with breeding, so he shrugged nonchalantly and asked, “What was that you said? I seem to have missed it.”
Emmaline gave a very unladylike snort. “I should say so. You were woolgathering, my dear. Something has got you at sixes and sevens. What is it? Or should I ask who is it?”
Transparency. After a lifetime of closeness, she could read him as well as any of the books in the downstairs library. Emmaline’s professional choices had been on the shady side but her mind was bright, her reading taste eclectic and her insight keen.
There was no use trying to lie. Why bother? She saw the truth anyhow.
“So I may have taken a fancy to our Miss Fulbright.”
“Your Miss Fulbright, perhaps,” Emmaline said softly. She tapped a fingertip against her bare cheek, studying him as she would have a potential client for o
ne of her women. “You are enamored, I think.”
“Interested.”
Emmaline sat opposite him, looking at the breakfast trolley between them. She chose a triangle of toast, brought it to her lips and took a bite. She chewed thoughtfully before swallowing.
“You wish her back as much as I do. Your reasons are different, but you want her to return.”
Their reasons were as different as night was from day—even if he wasn’t altogether sure what his exact reasons were. Yet. He would decipher them eventually.
Most times life was a question of mind over body. Where women were concerned, Hugh’s position was body over mind, every time. It would probably prove the case this time, too.
Although this time he wasn’t completely convinced.
Conceding the point, Hugh nodded.
“Why?” Leave it to Emmaline to be so direct!
“I am not sure,” he answered honestly.
“She is pretty.”
“Many women are attractive.”
“She is intelligent.”
“Intelligence is not required for most of my dalliances, Emmaline.”
A second toast triangle received a generous dollop of orange marmalade. Then, a small bite and careful chewing before the comment, “She does not throw herself at you. In fact, Elise seems annoyed by your presence. That is something you are not accustomed to from a woman, Hugh.”
“Thank you for pointing it out.”
Chapter 7
“Ancient Arabian legend? You expect us to believe you kept the truth from us because of an ancient Arabian legend?” Elise could not help herself. Composure was nowhere to be found and keeping her voice down was out of the question.
“Legend be damned,” Louise declared. Her hair, once so neatly secured in a braid down her back, had come undone sometime during the long, difficult night. Her fingers had swept through the strands so many times they tangled around her shoulders in untamed waves. She looked as if she’d had a wild night filled with dreamy adventures.
“Louise! I will not tolerate that kind of talk beneath this roof!” Motherly instinct survived, despite the torturous sob-punctuated explanations that had filled the past hours.
Genevieve looked worse than either of her daughters did. Red-rimmed eyes alternately held their gazes or stared off into the darkest corners of the room. Now that daylight had broken, she had nowhere to look away from them so she concentrated on the fingers she clasped in her lap.
Only the epithet brought her attention back to them. “I am still your mother, regardless of the mistakes I have made in my lifetime. You will not speak so deplorably again. I forbid it.”
Louise stuck out her chin, the spoiled child in her surfacing yet again. She’d shown her indulgent nature so often during the past hours Elise was ready to strangle her sister.
“Deplorable actions breed deplorable deeds. I should think you have only yourself to blame if I do not measure up, Mother. I am, after all, a bastard. Oh, but I am ruined—a bastard is so much less desirable than a dressmaker’s daughter, don’t you think?”
“You are not illegitimate.” Genevieve’s voice broke over the last word. “I told you—a hundred times, it feels like—that you and Elise were conceived after I married your father. Just because he left me—”
“To live with a whore, apparently,” Louise interjected.
“The point is that you are not illegitimate. Neither of you are.”
Genevieve’s hand, when it reached across the kitchen table for Elise’s hand—which she freely gave—was damp. Her cotton nightdress, wrinkled from sitting so long, made her seem small and, not for the first time, Elise felt sorry for her mother.
She had been deceived, and in turn deceived her daughters, it was true. But had the man she married not left her for another, the deception would never have been necessary.
Elise gave her mother’s hand a fast squeeze. Relief shone in Genevieve’s troubled eyes.
Time to diffuse the situation. They were all tired, worn to the bone from revelations long overdue. It would not help anyone to keep pointing fingers and making accusations. What had been done was done. There was no turning back the clock. The future was all that mattered. And that, as far as she could see, had not been altered.
Elise faced her sister. “You have got to get away from considering Emmaline Byrd at all. She does not matter to us. So she lived with our father. So what? Mother told us he went away on a ship and never returned; that was not the case. Living in London with Emmaline or gone by sea—who cares? He left us, which is what is important. He abandoned us, something men have been doing since the dawn of time. No need to blame Mother—or ourselves—for something a man does as part of his nature.”
“I don’t believe all men do what your father did, girls. He left me, not you, because we were not compatible. It didn’t have anything to do with either of you, our parting.” Genevieve took her hand away. Three mugs of tea, long gone cold, sat before them on the worn wooden table. She lifted hers to her lips and sipped. Grimacing, she set the mug down so hard liquid splashed the tabletop. “I should not have lied to you, regardless of what happened between your father and me. It was not right and I am sorry.” She met their gazes, one by one, then said, “I am sorry, girls. Sorry for this, and for so much more.”
To her credit, Louise’s all-about-me demeanor crumbled in the face of their mother’s regret. She reached out and whisked the wet spot away with her hand, wiping her palm across her opposite sleeve. “It is not your fault, really. It sounds like our father was a dashing man, and you an innocent girl. How could you resist his charms?”
Genevieve lifted her shoulders slightly, and then let them fall slowly. “Yes, he was a smooth talker. Handsome, funny, a good conversationalist. But the truth is, I didn’t pay attention to how good a man he was until after I’d made my mistake. And really, I couldn’t fault him for leaving me when he found out. Of course, at the time I was hurt and angry, but I’ve had a lot of years to think about it. I drove him away.”
“What did you do?” Elise asked. It was a personal question but after hours of revelations, tears and apologies, she did not hesitate to ask.
The velvet pouch, the pearl earrings resting on top of the sleek fabric, sat in the center of the table. Elise reached for them as she spoke, but midway her arm stilled and she brought her hand back. The third set of earrings seemed untouchable, now that they’d been identified as Genevieve’s wedding gift from their father. The little pouch had held more than earrings; the secrets tied within had shaped all three women’s lives.
Genevieve did not hesitate. She grabbed the earrings, looked Elise straight in the eyes and said, “I let it out that my main attraction—initially, that is—to your father was his station. He wasn’t a peer but his father was a highly successful merchant who passed his business, and wealth, to his son. When your father learned that uppermost in my mind had been the thought that accepting his hand in marriage would bring me higher socially, he was devastated. In hindsight, I can’t blame him. It must have hurt him dreadfully, knowing I’d cared more for what lined his pockets than for the man who wore the pants. My only excuse—and it is no good excuse at all—is that I was immature. Thoughtless. Self-centered.” She paused, gazed at Louise for a lingering moment, then went on. “I let the cat out of the bag, in a fit of pregnant hysteria which I will forever regret having. He couldn’t bear my motives for marrying him, and left. Dear man, he thought I’d loved him all along.”
“Didn’t you?” Louise asked.
“Oh, yes. I loved him. I just realized it too late, is all.” Genevieve sighed, and the grief in the sound tore Elise’s heart to shreds.
“He sounds like a romantic fellow.” Having a heartbroken father was more soothing than thinking he’d been heartless. Elise continued, “You cannot blame yourself forever, you know. Forgiveness, especially now the truth is out and he is passed on, is something you need to give yourself.”
“I know,” Genevieve repl
ied. She said it but didn’t appear as if she believed it.
Elise hoped that in time their mother might find peace. She had given everything for her daughters, and she had paid for her foolishness already. It was time for them to move forward, regardless of the past.
Trying to lighten the moment, Elise smiled as brightly as she could given the condition of her tired mind and body. She shot a warning glance toward Louise.
“Tell us again, mother, about the Arabian legend. How did our father’s father come by the six earrings?”
“Wait—don’t say a word until I get a fresh kettle of water on the fire.” Louise rose and hurried to the sink, grabbing the teakettle from the stove as she passed by. Elise watched in amazement as her sister completed the task without mishap. When she sat back down, Elise gave Louise a questioning look.
“What?” Louise acted as if she was born to the position of cook.
Genevieve smiled, the first real smile she’d given them since seeing her earrings, and said, “Louise and I took turns in the kitchen while you were away. It is working out well. Your sister handles a skillet without any problem. She also makes an appetizing blueberry buckle for dessert.”
“I’m impressed, Louise. I had no idea…”
“Neither did I,” her younger sister admitted with a giggle. “I guess there’s more to me than one would assume.” She shrugged, as if that explained everything.
“More to all of us, it seems,” Elise said. Turning back to Genevieve, she prodded, “Well? The legend?”
“Your father’s father…wait. What am I saying? Your paternal grandfather acquired the earrings years before your father was born. There were actually eight pearl earrings to begin with. One pair went to your grandmother on their wedding day. The next pair…” Here Genevieve stopped. Opening the hand that held the earrings, she said, “This pair was my wedding gift from your father. It amazes me that he kept them all this time.”
“If he gave them to you, how were they in his possession?” Elise asked.