Chapter Three #3
Jane had never felt so horrible in her entire life. What had they done in coming to this place?
She immediately went to Faith, but before she could say anything, Faith held up her hand to speak.
“Please. It seems that you and your sister are half-siblings of my husband and Arabella. Which not only makes you guests, but family.”
Arabella visibly relaxed, but Jane shook her head.
“No. No, we couldn’t possibly stay after discovering all this.”
“If I’m correct, you don’t really have a choice, Jane,” she said.
“Your brother, Lord Atherton, has cut you loose and you and your sister have nowhere else to go.” She glanced at Arabella, who hung her head.
“I can only assume what else was written in that letter that our dear Arabella has not shared with us.”
“But we cannot impose—”
“It is not an imposition, and leaving is out of the question. Besides, we have much to discuss.” Faith moved around the table to take a seat. With her shoulders drawn back, she bent at the waist over the table and began to prepare for herself a cup of tea. She glanced up. “Please.”
Jane was of two thoughts at that moment.
On one hand, she could gather Cora and herself and leave Harris House at once, which would be the correct thing to do.
This was not what she had hoped to find in Scotland.
Yet, where could they possibly go? The only home they had ever known was hundreds of miles away and they didn’t have the coin to travel back to London.
They were at the mercy of the Harris household, and while the gentlemen weren’t as welcoming, Arabella and Faith emanated a sort of protectiveness that Jane had never experienced, which was probably why she felt so uneasy.
Deciding to try a final time, she spoke.
“While my sister and I appreciate your hospitality, Lady Harris, we can’t—”
“One thing you’ll learn rather quickly about me, Jane, is that I don’t like the word can’t,” Faith said as she stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her tea.
“What’s more, there aren’t many English in these parts and I’m afraid I simply couldn’t let you leave without introducing you both to my sisters.
Oh, and Aunt Belle, of course. They’ll love to hear about the recent goings-on in London. ”
“Oh, Aunt Belle is going to love you two,” Arabella said, coming around once more to sit next to Cora. “How do you take your tea?”
“Just a splash of milk,” Cora said quietly, earning a pointed look from Jane.
“But we can’t—”
“There’s that word again,” Faith murmured, taking a sip. Then she looked directly at Jane. “Tell me about your life in London, Jane.”
Her life? What was there to tell? In all honesty, their life at Atherton Hall had been as plain as any life.
Jane and Cora had grown up with an uninterested father, a moody elder brother, and a calculating mother.
Jane’s earliest memories were of their nursemaid, a Mrs. Ganger.
She was a stern but fair woman, who had taught Jane and Cora a good set of morals, though they were often in opposition to how everyone around them were behaving.
“What do you wish to know?” she asked, coming forward.
“Well, let’s see. We know you and Cora are the daughters of Helen Harris and Lord Atherton, both of whom have passed away. You grew up in London, I’m assuming, and your brother seems uninterested in his duties toward you and Cora. Is that correct so far?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask a question?” Cora spoke. “How is this all possible? I mean, I can’t remember Mama ever even mentioning Scotland or the name Harris and yet she had a whole other life here.”
“Well, according to my father,” Arabella began, “he and Helen met while he was visiting a friend in London. The way he explains it, it was love at first sight. They wrote letters back and forth for several weeks until it was time for my father to return home. Helen didn’t wish for their love affair to end and neither did he.
So, when he left, she went with him. Albeit, against her uncle’s wishes.
She was disinherited by him and married my father, but after my brother was born, she started to miss London. Or at least that’s what Papa says.”
“And she lived here?” Jane asked, looking around the house.
“Oh no. No, Logan had this house built when he returned home from the Second Burmese War. We used to live in a cottage closer to Glencoe Village.”
“Mama lived in a cottage?” Cora asked, stunned.
“She did. For a while, at least. According to Papa, she was overjoyed when Lady Belle retired to Lismore Hall, just across the loch from here,” Arabella explained.
“She was the first Englishwoman mama had encountered in ages, and supposedly it had unlocked a part of her. She longed to return to London and begged Papa to move there, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to find work.
When she suggested that her uncle would give them an allowance, Papa’s pride got the better of him.
He refused. So, several weeks later, after I was born, she left.
” Arabella shrugged. “And that was the last time anyone ever saw her.”
Cora glanced at Jane, who was finding it difficult to stomach such an act. How could her mother abandon a newborn?
“That was over twenty years ago,” Faith said, her eyes on Jane.
It was her turn to speak.
“Our father was a widower, having lost his first wife to childbirth fever. I was born twenty-one years ago, this coming winter,” Jane began, her throat tight for some reason. “My birth occurred within the first year of Mama and Father’s marriage, although the timeline has always been…foggy.”
Cora leaned forward.
“According to Jeremy, Jane was born three months premature, but he said she was one of the largest babies he had ever seen.”
“How many babies could Jeremy have seen as a ten-year-old, honestly?” Jane snapped, falling back into the same trap her brother’s relentless teasing had caused. She shook her head. “My apologies. It’s a sensitive topic.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” Faith said gently.
“Anyway, Cora was born a year after me, and our existence was wholly ignored by our parents and brother. Papa had wished for sons and so had little use for us. Jeremy hated us from the beginning, as well as our mother, who spent most of her time being a lady of society. It was a fairly boring existence, until Papa passed away several years ago. When Jeremy inherited the title, he and Mama began to have terrible arguments. We moved into the dowager house with her, and bit by bit, Jeremy shrank our world. First, he stopped affording Mama and us new gowns, then tutors, then the carriage was always gone. Mama was incensed. She would call him terrible names but always told us to be as sweet as possible to him. But not out of goodness, out of the hope that it might play on his heartstrings. Near the end, she was consumed with a fear that we wouldn’t be taken care of. ”
Jane stopped then, feeling she had already said too much.
“How did she die?” Arabella asked.
“It was a coughing disease,” Cora continued instead of Jane.
“The doctor wasn’t hopeful, and she passed away in her sleep, not exceptionally long after her diagnosis.
We went into mourning, and Jeremy only afforded us dye so that we could have black gowns.
But then, half a year later, not even the appropriate amount of time for a proper mourning period, we awoke one morning to find all our gowns packed away.
He told us we were going to stay with Mama’s family. ”
“He said he wasn’t going to be sent to the poor house over a pair of ladies he doubted were even legitimate,” Jane whispered to herself. She glanced at Faith. “Dear God, he wasn’t just saying vile things. We’re illegitimate, aren’t we?”
“Jane?”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Jane asked Arabella as she stood up. “Is that what Jeremy wrote you?”
Arabella nodded silently.
“Illegitimate?” Cora said. “But Mama and Father were married.”
“But she didn’t divorce her first husband. She committed bigamy,” Jane said, horrified. Her hand came up to her cheek. “This is a nightmare. What are we going to do?”
“Well, we’re not going to panic, that’s for one thing,” Faith said, her face tight with worry. “You both will stay here until we can figure all of this out.”
“We appreciate your kindness, Lady Harris, but the situation is so, well, uncomfortable for all parties. I don’t think we should.”
“Nothing needs to be decided on tonight,” Faith said. “Please, do not feel as if you are intruding. And please, call me Faith.”
“Faith’s right. You’re family, sisters to me,” Arabella hurried to add. “It would be the thrill of my life if you would stay here. Please? At least for a few days.”
“We don’t have anywhere else to go, Jane.”
That was the bottom line, wasn’t it? Jane and Cora had no money, no prospects, and no family besides the strangers they had met here. She sighed as if she felt herself give up.
“Then I suppose we don’t have a choice.”
Arabella grabbed Cora’s hand as they smiled at one another, while Faith kept her gaze on Jane.
“I promise, Jane. All will be well.”