Chapter 28
Honora lay awake long after the candle had burned down to almost nothing. She had checked on Cecily twice already, though the child had not stirred either time. There was no real reason to be awake at all, and yet sleep would not come. She suspected she knew exactly why.
She touched her own lips without meaning to, then lowered her hand quickly, as though someone might have seen her do it.
Leopold had kissed her. Somewhere beneath the surface of things, she had known it might happen eventually.
What she had not known was that it would happen like that, with thirty years of secrets pressed into that small room.
She also had not known that a kiss could feel so natural, as if they had been kissing for years, and simultaneously somehow feel entirely new.
“He kissed me,” she whispered to the dark, testing the words aloud. She had spent some time bracing herself against exactly this sort of feeling, certain that wanting anything from Leopold Harcourt would only end in another loss to carry.
Instead, it had ended in a kiss she had not expected, and a warmth in her blood that refused to settle no matter how many times she turned onto her side and closed her eyes.
What he had said before it stayed with her too, about admiring her for understanding his father instead of condemning him outright. So did the way he had looked at her afterward, as though the interruption at the door had cost him something he intended to finish collecting later.
Honora sat up and reached for the small cup of water on the table beside her bed, more to give her hands something to do than because she was thirsty.
So much had changed since the morning she arrived at the servants’ entrance under a name that was not hers, and Belgrave no longer felt like the house she had walked into that day.
Cecily slept safely in the next room, loved by people who loved her by choice, rather than obligation.
And there was Leopold, who had stood at that window with his father’s letter in his hand, admitting he did not know how to forgive a dead man and had stopped expecting himself to figure it all out right then.
She had understood him completely in that moment.
Lying awake right then, with her heart behaving in a manner she could not control, she understood something else, as well. Understanding a man and wanting him were not nearly as separate as she had once believed.
Honora set the cup down and lay back against the pillow.
She would see him again the following day, and she had no idea what either of them would say about what had happened, or whether anything needed to be said about it at all.
But for that night, she decided she would simply allow herself to have felt it and let it offer comfort to weeks of fear, sadness, and unrequited affection.
She closed her eyes. The kiss remained with her anyway, warm and unresolved, until sleep finally took her sometime near dawn.
***
Honora thought of every question she had had since the day she first held the Belgrave shawl in her hands. Yet as she sat before the dowager, who was finally willing to answer them, it took her a moment to gather her courage.
She had already learned so much that had saddened and angered her. Could the woman say something that would lessen those feelings? Or would she only end up feeling more resentful than she did?
“Will you tell me about the night Celestine was born?” she asked after what felt like the longest silence she had ever endured.
The dowager duchess took a deep, slow breath before nodding. “The labor started before midnight and continued until nearly dawn. The physician had been sent for twice before he finally arrived. By the time he came, Celestine was already trying to make her way into the world.”
Honora smiled softly. She always was impatient when she wanted something, she thought.
“Did the physician react to her…different appearance?” Honora asked.
The dowager duchess sighed. “He was pleased at first. Then he looked at her properly in the candlelight. I have never forgotten his face. He said nothing at all. He only looked at her, and then at me with an expression I had never seen before or since on a man’s face; one which I still cannot accurately describe.
I understood then that something had gone wrong. ”
“Nothing had gone wrong.”
“No.” She looked into the fire as she said it. “But that is what his face told me. Perhaps it was that very expression that was the catalyst for everything I did afterward.”
Honora nodded, fighting against her anger. The dowager had cruelly sent her daughter away because of her appearance. But it seemed that she was trying to make amends in the only way she still could, now that Celestine was dead and unable to hear any words of explanation or apology herself.
“How long did you have her?” Honora asked.
“Three days.”
“And then?”
“She was taken to Wiltshire, and I did not see her again.”
“Did you hold her?” Honora finally asked.
“Every hour I was awake.” The dowager’s hands had gone still in her lap as she said it.
“I believe some part of me loved her despite her appearance. She was my daughter, after all, and a mother bonds with her child before they take their first breaths. But that part of me was not bigger than the part of me that was afraid of my family being shamed and scandalized.”
“Celestine was beautiful,” Honora snapped, letting some of her anger be known. “On the outside as well as the inside.”
The dowager met her gaze then for the first time, and there were fresh tears in her eyes that began to spill down her cheeks.
“I know that now,” she whispered. “But perhaps, I might find absolution in giving Cecily the love that her mother deserved from me.”
“Cecily is not your chance to raise the daughter you gave away.” Honora’s resentment pulsed behind her eyes, making her head ache. But her heart ached more.
The dowager duchess dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief that was clearly saturated with her previous tears.
“I know,” she said again. “Cecily is her own, beautiful little person, and my granddaughter, and I would never treat her otherwise.” She paused, stifling a sob.
“I just hope that wherever Celestine is now, she will see my love for little Cecily and understand how sorry I am for sending her away, and how I am giving her daughter the love I was too afraid to give to her.”
Honora took a deep breath, staring at the soaked handkerchief. In that moment, the dowager seemed more vulnerable and more sincere than she had ever seen her.
To her surprise, her anger subsided. She did not forgive her.
She thought that might take a great deal more time.
But her remorse was almost tangible, and her grief was genuine.
Celestine would have offered a kind word to someone in such a state, even if she were angry with them. So, Honora decided to do the same.
“I believe that loving Cecily like any good grandmother should will put Celestine’s spirit well at ease.”
The dowager duchess looked up at her again. She still looked too ashamed to appear relieved, but her gratitude was visible.
“Thank you, Honora,” she said.
***
Two days later, about a week after Honora’s and Cecily’s rescue, a solicitor’s response appeared in the papers. She tried not to be too eager to read it, but Martha set the paper beside her breakfast plate regardless.
“You may as well know what they are saying,” Martha said.
The statement itself was short. Honora Bellamy, sister of the late Celestine Ainsworth, nee Bellamy, and aunt to Cecily Ainsworth.
There it was, her own name and her sister’s name and Cecily’s place in the family, set down in plain type where anyone in England could read it for themselves.
Isolde’s version would no longer hold any weight with anyone with good sense.
A birth record had been produced, with a solicitor’s seal for good measure, and against those two things, a letter built entirely on implication simply could not survive.
The columns that followed the statement in that paper told a much different story than they had before. A nursemaid who had lied to a duke was no longer the valid account.
The questions now pointed at the late duke and at the dowager duchess instead. Why had a daughter been hidden for thirty years, and the household kept silent, and money sent quietly to Wiltshire for the better part of three decades without a single word of explanation?
Honora smiled softly to herself. I could not make society stop staring at you everywhere we went, she thought, wiping a tear that slipped down her cheek. But I get to witness the moment London learns who you were. And if I had any part in helping that come to pass, I can take comfort in that.
***
That day after lunch, as Honora put Cecily down for a nap, Leopold appeared in the nursery doorway.
“There is someone downstairs,” he said softly, so as to not disturb the sleeping child.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Honora stared blankly at Leopold. She had been so overwhelmed by all the recent events that she had not had time to think much about her father. What would she say to him? Could she ever find a way to forgive him?
“Has he come to stay here?” she asked.
“He has been staying at the village inn,” Leopold replied.
“For how long?”
“Since the day after we came home.”
“Why?” she asked, swallowing hard.
“He said he was waiting until you were ready to see him. But the decision is yours. I will send him away if you wish.”
Honora studied his face carefully, and she understood that he meant what he said. He was offering her the choice and his support and knowing that made the decision easy for her.
“All right,” she said finally.