Page 63 of Dropping the Ball

“No!” Lady Gladys said, pulling her hand away from Alden with a wince. “I will not stay here for another moment. You are a madman! I cannot believe that I ever harbored the least bit of affection for you, or that I deigned to believe you would make a worthy husband for me.”

Bernadette frowned slightly, shocked by the unfairness of what Lady Gladys said. She stood when Lady Gladys wrenched herself to her feet, as did Alden, but she did not make any attempt to stop or soothe the woman as she went on.

“I want to leave this place at once, never to return again,” she shouted, grasping her wrist and holding out her hand, which was shaking. “I might have died, and you would have cared more for the damnable frogs than me!”

“That is not true,” Alden said with a frown. He took a step toward her, saying, “Lady Gladys, I must implore you–”

“No!” Lady Gladys shouted again. “I wish to leave. I must get away from this den of death as swiftly as possible.”

“Really,” Kat sighed from where she had been watching the scene from the side. “Are these theatrics truly necessary?”

Bernadette sent her friend a censorious look. She was not helping matters.

“I will escort you home, Lady Gladys,” Lord Cedric said, stepping forward.

“We both will,” Muriel moved in, resting a hand on Lady Gladys’s back. “But you must also allow us to send for the doctor.”

Lady Gladys made a miserable, keening sound and nodded. She allowed herself to be led towards the terrarium’s door, weeping as she went. As much as Bernadette wanted to stop the woman and implore her to stay, at least until a doctor could determine how desperate her injury was, she was glad to see the back of her rival at last.

“Well,” Hethersett said, glancing around the terrarium at those who remained. “This is not what I expected to find here in Wessex.”

Everything else that had made the evening so shocking flew back to Bernadette. She took a step toward Hethersett and said, “I am so terribly sorry for this strange welcome, my lord.”

It felt odd to refer to the man she believed she had had such a close connection with for so long so distantly. Her mind was still grasping the idea that she had never been married to Hethersett, never known the man at all.

“It is I who feel as though I should apologize to you, Lady Bernadette,” Hethersett said with a regal nod. “You must be in shock after learning your situation for the last ten years or more has not been what you’ve believed it to be.”

“It is quite a bit to come to terms with,” Bernadette admitted. She glanced to Alden, feeling a bit guilty, then back to Hethersett as she said, “I..I have valued our friendship, despite it’s odd nature.”

She blinked, then glanced to Lady Hethersett, who stood off to one side, her arms around her children, looking deeply anxious.

“But I suppose it has been your friendship that I have valued all this time,” she said, glancing one last time at Hethersett and Alden before moving to stand in front of Lady Hethersett. “I should have guessed that my correspondent for all these years was a woman. Your attention to the details of the Norwegian court has always been magnificent.”

Lady Hethersett let out a tight laugh of relief, then glanced down. “I have very much enjoyed our friendship as well,” she said, then peeked up at Bernadette. “I have not always been accepted at court, even with Harold as my husband. There were times, especially in those early days, when you were my only friend.”

“I am both happy that I could have provided that friendship and sad that you felt so isolated,” Bernadette said, resting a hand on Lady Hethersett’s arm.

“You see, that is why I could not reveal the truth, once I understood what I was doing,” Lady Hethersett said. “I … I greatly feared that you would never write to me again, that you would never want anything to do with me. I did not think it would matter, until you wrote to me last month, telling me of your love for Lord Alden.”

Both Bernadette and Lady Hethersett glanced back over their shoulders at Alden.

“You wrote of him with such passion and longing,” Lady Hethersett went on. “I could not keep up my ruse any longer when I understood that. You deserve to be happy, and I knew the only way that was to happen was if I confessed all to my dearest Harold.” She glanced bashfully to Hethersett.

“I do not blame you for wishing to have a friend,” Hethersett said. He turned to find Lord Attleborough standing by the side of the small group and said, “I blame the man who perpetrated this falsehood for his own gain.”

“I–” Lord Attleborough began to protest, but gave it up at once with a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders. The man knew he was defeated, and giving up without making everything worse was the best he could have done in the moment.

Bernadette stared at her father for a long while in silence. The man had, arguably, destroyed her life. At least, he’d changed the course of her life from what it otherwise could have been, and all for his own gain. But without the misunderstandings of the last ten years, the path of her life never would have led her to Alden.

“I forgive you, Papa,” she said quietly. To do anything else would not have felt right.

Everyone else was shocked.

“You would forgive a man who turned your life into a series of lies?” Minerva asked, crossing her arms and staring murderously at Bernadette’s father.

“It’s quite magnanimous of her, actually,” Lord Lawrence said with a proud smile for Bernadette.

Minerva sent him a dubious, sideways look. “That is a decidedly sunny way to view the situation.”

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