by Rowan Nina
“It was my grandmother’s idea,” she told Alexander. “She said we would remain at the sanatorium for the time being. I think she and my father might have sent me off immediately if they hadn’t realized I was the only person who’d gotten through to my mother—even with such a disgraceful secret. So my father told me to continue to sit with my mother and try to reach her.”
“Did you?” Alexander asked.
“For several weeks, yes. Until it became clear her condition was worsening. My father spoke with the nuns about keeping me there during my confinement, and they agreed.
“No one else knew about my condition except Dr. Cole, and of course there was no danger of him telling anyone. So my grandmother said that after the child was born, we would tell people it was my mother’s. My father donated a substantial sum to the sanatorium to ensure the nuns went along with that story. That… that drained his finances significantly. He was never able to repair them.”
Her heart pounding with fresh trepidation, Lydia finally lifted her head. Alexander stood across the room, his gaze fixed on her. Wariness shone behind his eyes, but there was none of the censure or disgust she had feared.
“Go on,” he said.
“After the birth, we remained in Lyons for another year. Then when my mother died, we returned to London with the story intact and unbreachable. Jane became the daughter of my mother and father. She became my sister.”
“And you’ve kept the secret all this time.”
“Yes. Although people knew my mother was unwell, they had no reason to believe Jane wasn’t my father’s child. If we hadn’t told them, they still would have assumed she was the legitimate child of my parents. Even our distant relations believed that. Of course, we never wanted to change that assumption. And so we haven’t.”
“You’ve told no one?”
“My grandmother said that if anyone knew the truth, it would cause irreparable damage to our family’s reputation, and I would have to leave,” Lydia said. “So I was allowed to serve as Jane’s tutor, to continue my work in mathematics, though somewhat anonymously to lessen the chances of encountering Dr. Cole again. Of course, my grandmother has insisted on absolute propriety, irreproachable conduct. Considering the circumstances, I can’t say I blame her. And so it’s been for almost twelve years.”
Until now. Until you.
He paced to the windows and back again. “Jane didn’t know the truth?”
A wave of pain pounded against the numbness around Lydia’s heart. “She… the locket, Alexander. There was another compartment behind the first. My father had it specially made.”
Tears pushed against her eyes. “He’d placed a coin of good fortune inside the locket before he gave it to my mother. The coin was lost long ago, but the locket has held a key ever since Jane was born.
“I kept her birth certificate in a locked copper box, and I put the key inside the locket, in the hidden compartment. No one knew it was there except me.” She glanced at him. “You had the locket for almost three months. You never noticed there was another compartment?”
“No. I didn’t spend untold hours examining the thing. I’ve never even heard of a locket having two compartments.” He frowned. “You didn’t answer my question. Does Jane know the truth?”
Lydia’s tears spilled over. “After you gave her the locket, she found the key. And she figured out that it belonged to the copper box, which has always been in my father’s study.”
Alexander was silent for a moment; then he cursed. “Christ. Is that why she went to meet Cole? Bloody hell, if I hadn’t—”
“No. Don’t do that. Not now.”
The sound of his boots shuffling against the carpet drew her head up. He stopped closer to her. His hands flexed at his sides, tension lining his body like steel.
Oh, so many mistakes. So much pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So sorry.”
“I… I was relentless, wasn’t I?” Self-disgust laced his words. “Wouldn’t leave you alone. Couldn’t.”
“In a secret part of my heart, Alexander,” Lydia said, “I didn’t want you to.”
She stood, aching to touch him and knowing she could not. “But now you understand why a marriage between us can never be possible. I admit that for a brief moment, I believed it might work, but… well, that’s a fool’s errand, isn’t it? And never let anyone accuse either one of us of being a fool.”
Unable to help herself, she stepped to him and reached up to press her lips against his unshaven cheek. He turned his head, his mouth meeting hers in a kiss so light it almost didn’t exist. And yet a thousand regrets passed between them with that single touch.
Lydia turned away, her heart cracking.
“I love you,” Alexander said.
She made it through the door before the tears fell again.
Chapter Thirty
Doesn’t matter if the charges are proved or even legitimate, Northwood.” Rushton stared at the fire. “It’s an excuse to remove you from the Society council, from your position as director of the exhibition.”
“It’s an excuse to get rid of him,” Sebastian said bluntly.
Alexander’s stomach tightened at the shadowed gravity in his father’s expression. Anger boiled in him at the realization that all his work for the past two years was coming to naught. That despite all he’d tried to do to restore his family’s reputation, they would now be blamed for the destruction and injuries caused by the riot.
His father was correct. The truth didn’t matter.
Did he care? Ever since Lydia had walked away from him, a hard, painful knot had formed in Alexander’s chest. He thought about her every passing minute, dreamed about her at night and woke sweaty and aching. He’d analyzed the Jane situation from every angle, tried to find some way to place the full blame on Lydia, to vilify her… and only ended up ashamed of himself.
What could one say about a sixteen-year-old girl who’d lived a life of isolation and darkness, whose brilliant mind made her both a prodigy and an anomaly? A girl who’d lacked friends and a mother and a normal childhood? A girl who had succumbed to the grotesque manipulations of a man twice her age?
How could he blame her for any of that?
And how could he blame her for not telling him the truth when she’d been so adamant about not marrying him in the first place? She’d tried to protect him by declining his proposal, and he’d not taken no for an answer. Instead he’d manipulated her all over again to force her to change her mind.
He winced and scrubbed his hands over his face.
No. The only person he had to blame for this whole debacle was himself.
“Alex?”
He looked up at his brother.
“The police are looking into Cole’s circumstances,” Sebastian said. “Seems he was staying at a lodging house over in Bethnal Green. According to the owner, a Mr. Krebbs, he’d been there for almost five months. Krebbs claimed Cole had few possessions and said he had no kin. The superintendent doesn’t expect they’ll find anything of much import. Which is to your… our advantage. The official report will state that Cole died during an attempt to kidnap Jane.”
“Doesn’t affect the riot situation, though, does it?” Rushton asked.
“That’s what they want to charge me with.”
“I don’t see how they can,” Sebastian said. “It wasn’t as if you were making a seditious speech or distributing anti-British pamphlets.”
“Does it matter?” Alexander asked. “The council has been wanting me off the board for weeks, even before the war started, and likely out of the Society altogether. Why not claim I incited the riot that destroyed the exhibition and St. Martin’s Hall? Like Rushton said, they won’t care about the letter of the law if they’ve an excuse to get rid of me.”
And while the council members wouldn’t intentionally drag his name through the mud, they’d do nothing to stop it from happening.
Well, hell. He might as well marry Lydia, truth be damned, a
nd live in scandal for the rest of his life.
He’d be a bloody earl one day, and if people wanted to gasp at his shocking behavior in public while they bedded their servants and mistresses in private… so be it. He’d have them all over for tea and give them both cakes and plenty of fodder for gossip.
Alexander looked at his brother. Sebastian would never let anyone else dictate how he lived his life. Why should Alexander?
“Lord Rushton.” Alexander stood.
His father and Sebastian looked at him with faint surprise.
“Northwood?”
“Whatever happens,” Alexander said, “I still intend to marry Lydia Kellaway.”
Sunlight burned through a crack in the curtains. Jane pushed her hair away from her face and went to pull them open, allowing light to flood the room. She washed her face and hands at the basin, then paused at the table, where hot tea and a basket of muffins waited.
The door creaked open. She looked up from pouring a cup of tea to find Lydia in the doorway. Her sister… her mother… looked pale and drawn, her eyes wary. Grandmama stood behind her.
“May we come in?” Lydia asked.
Jane nodded. With a tentative smile, Lydia stepped inside. Grandmama went to sit on a chair beside the bed, her movements slow. “How do you feel?”
“All right. Tired but… fine.” Jane sipped at the tea and picked up a muffin, then put it down when she realized she wasn’t hungry. She returned to the bed, pulling the covers up over her legs. “Is Lord Northwood all right? And you?”
“We’re both fine.” Lydia settled on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. “Jane, I—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jane interrupted, anger and hurt rising to fill her chest again. She looked accusingly from Lydia to Grandmama. “Why did you lie to me?”
“It’s a long, complicated story,” Lydia said. “But believe me when I say it was for the best. If you’d known… if anyone had known, you would have been taken away from me. This was the only way we could keep you with us.”
“It’s true, Jane.” Grandmama sounded weary but resolute, as if she still held the belief of her strong convictions. “We did it to keep our family together. When my daughter fell ill, we did whatever we could to help her, even if it meant draining our finances. We traveled everywhere in search of a treatment.
“And when we lost Theodora”—she paused, cleared her throat—“to the ravages of that horrible illness, we had only each other left. My husband passed long ago, Sir Henry had no brothers or sisters, and Lydia… Lydia always thought she was more comfortable with her numbers and equations. She never realized how much she needed us.”
Lydia stared at Grandmama, as if hearing this for the first time. Grandmama met her gaze, tenderness softening her features.
“So when we learned of Lydia’s… situation,” Mrs. Boyd continued, “we refused to allow you, an innocent child, to suffer. Especially when we knew that you might well prove to be Lydia’s salvation.”
A strangled sound emerged from Lydia’s throat. Tears filled Jane’s eyes as her mother’s hand tightened on hers.
“It’s true, Jane,” Lydia choked out. “I never… I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t had you. You gave me a purpose in life beyond numbers. You gave me hope and love and… I wouldn’t change any of it. I would have lied to the devil himself to keep you.”
“It was my idea, Jane, so you mustn’t blame Lydia,” Grandmama said. She gripped her cane and rose, then bent to press a kiss against Jane’s forehead. “And it was all done to ensure you remained with us. With Lydia. Remember that.”
She squeezed Lydia’s shoulder and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Jane tried to imagine being raised in another house, with another family—and couldn’t. She would only ever belong to the Kellaways. Only to Lydia.
“I didn’t mean it when I said I hate you,” she mumbled.
“I know.”
Jane looked down and saw a crumpled piece of paper in Lydia’s hand. “Is that…”
Lydia smoothed out the document, revealing the swirled penmanship naming her as Jane’s mother. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.
“It had fallen beneath one of the other globes,” Lydia explained. “Alexander found it.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Give it to you.”
Jane looked at her. “Give it to me?”
Lydia nodded and placed the acte de naissance on Jane’s lap.
“What am I to do with it?” Jane asked.
“Whatever you like. It belongs to you. I will never lie to you again. Not about anything.”
Jane stared down at the paper that she’d pored over to the point of exhaustion, trying to believe, to accept, what she’d read. Now as she looked at the document for the hundredth time, she realized how fitting it all was.
There was her name, her birth date. The place where her grandmother Theodora had lived. Papa’s name, Grandmama’s name. Kellaway, Lydia. And a blank line where her father’s name should have been.
Painful, but fitting. And right.
Jane swiped at a stray tear. “I’m sorry.”
“What on earth do you have to be sorry about?” Lydia asked.
“For… for writing to… to him. Keeping it from you. I thought to tell you a number of times, but it was… well, it was a secret I had for myself. Something that belonged only to me.”
“I understand. You’ve no need to apologize.”
“Yes, I do. He told me… he said you had to give up your work after I was born. You could have done so much, Lydia, changed so many—”
“Jane!”
Jane looked up, startled, to find Lydia descending on her with all the force of a mother eagle. Lydia wrapped Jane in her arms and hugged her, pressing her cheek to Jane’s hair.
“Never, never think I gave up anything for you. Never! I wanted you, Jane. You’ve no idea how much. Yes, I was frightened and yes, I made terrible mistakes, but once you were born—when I held you that first time, I knew my world had changed. I knew numbers and equations could never fill my heart the way you did. All I cared about from that moment on was being with you.”
Jane’s tears spilled over as she buried her face against Lydia’s neck and breathed in the familiar scent of her. Her mother. For eleven years, she’d had a vague sense of longing for a mother, when all this time her mother had been right by her side. Always.
“I wish I’d known,” she said. “I wish—”
“Would it have changed so much between us?” Lydia asked, her arms tightening around Jane’s shoulders. “Would our relationship have been so different?”
No. She might have been different, though perhaps she wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps she was meant to be exactly who she was.
Jane eased away from Lydia and looked at her, wondering why she’d never before noticed the similarities in their features.
“Did you love him?” she asked.
Sadness filled Lydia’s eyes. She shook her head. “No. I never loved him.”
“Do you hate him?”
“No. Because without him, I wouldn’t have had you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Alexander’s heart pounded so hard he felt it would burst through his chest. He’d waited for news of the riot to calm over the past week before approaching Lydia again, but the span of time had caused his emotions to knot into a disordered mess. He wiped his damp palms on his coat as Mrs. Driscoll bustled forward to lead him into the study.
Lydia rose from a seat beside the window, a guarded smile appearing on her face. His heart thumped harder. She’d never looked more beautiful, standing in a patch of fog-coated sunlight, wearing a black dress with a lace collar encircling her neck, her long hair captured in a ribbon. Her skin was pale, her blue eyes grave but not cold.
After Mrs. Driscoll left, Lydia stepped forward to clasp Alexander’s hands, squeezing them tight. She smiled.
Oh, God. Could he
possibly love her more?
“Hello.” He couldn’t manage another word.
Amusement flashed in her eyes. “Hello.”
Alexander cleared his throat. “You’ve… you’ve been all right?”
“Yes. You? Talia told me the Society of Arts council has called a meeting for next week.”
“To discuss what happened, yes. Lord Hadley asked two of the police inspectors to attend and give their reports of what happened that night.”
“Why would the police… oh, Alexander.”
“It doesn’t matter, Lydia.”
“It does matter! They can’t charge you with something that wasn’t your fault.”
“They’ve been wanting an excuse to strip me of my duties anyway, so this is certainly convenient. Russian blood alone wasn’t a strong enough reason for dismissal.”
“But if there’s no evidence—”
“They don’t need evidence proving I was at fault. What matters is that there’s no evidence proving I wasn’t.”
“Surely they know it wasn’t until the gunshot that—”
“The police weren’t there when that happened. All they’ve got are people’s accounts. They don’t really know anything.”
Lydia caught her lower lip between her teeth and stared at his cravat for a moment.
“What are they saying?” she asked. “That you incited the riot by assaulting Dr. Cole?”
“Essentially. It’s not a legal charge, but they’ll either find a way to make it one or there’ll be a report in the Times that’ll do as much, if not more, damage.”
“But there was a mob of people outside before you even arrived at the hall. There was already—”
“Lydia.” He stepped closer to her, cupping the sides of her neck between his hands. He inhaled and let the clean, fresh-pencil scent of her soothe his frayed nerves. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re wrong, Alexander.” Lydia’s voice rose a notch, her shoulders tensing. “All you’ve done, all you’ve worked for, they can’t take it all away from you on some trumped-up charge. You can’t let them—”
