Page 59 of The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady
Lucy stared at him, pale and solemn from her nest of blankets.
“I will tell you nothing until you sit down and promise to listen to me without interrupting me. Perhaps it was wrong to keep this secret for so long, but there are things you do not understand,” she said, gazing at him so steadily he wondered how it was that he’d never recognized her eyes as his own before this moment.
James swallowed hard and sat gingerly in the chair, ready to bolt again at a moment’s notice. He choked back a laugh when he realized it was because he was afraid — afraid of what she might say, as though words could rend him further apart when he already felt as though he lay in pieces at her feet.
“Proceed,” he said, his chin coming up, as he forced himself to sit normally, drawing his shoulders up, and bringing his gaze to meet her own.
Lucy tilted her head to the side to regard him with a certain amusement. “Sometimes when I look at you, I see your father.”
“Do not tell me about my father. I want…I want to understand what you are saying. Why are you telling me these things?”
“Because you cannot be hurt by what you already know. She can do no damage to you if you know. Or at least not more than what the scandal of your mother leaving brought upon you. Pray, let me speak, and you will perhaps see why the matter is so urgent.” Lucy took a breath, and added almost in a whisper, “And hopefully then you will find it in your heart to be forgiving.”
Lucy sank into the blankets and began.
“When your father married Amelia Allen, theirs was not a love match but one arranged by their families for the sake of combining two rather large properties. They were amiable enough, but Amelia proved to be unable to give your father an heir. After the loss of several infants who never so much as took a breath on this side of heaven, Amelia sank into a deep depression. It was obvious to all that to bear a child again would send the poor thing into madness.”
Lucy raised her head a little, to look at James somberly. “Many solutions were bandied about. But it was Amelia herself who had the idea of it first. In the Bible there was the story of Rachel, who could bear no sons to her husband, and so, in desperation to provide an heir, she gave her maid to him, that a child might be born through that union.”
Lucy hesitated here, swallowing hard before continuing. “I was her maid.”
James shook his head, feeling sick to his stomach. “No…No…Father would not have…”
Lucy smiled a little, her face somber and sad. “Do not think it was a terrible solution. For Amelia knew well my feelings for your father. I had never been able to school my expression, and it was plain to see, perhaps to all of us, how much I cared for him. I went eagerly to him but reckoned little on how much I would come to love him.”
She reached to touch James’s hand, her fingers cold and shaking from the effort. “And the baby that grew within my womb.”
James choked back a sob. “No. Tell me they did not…” But he knew the answer, for had he not been raised as their son? He had clung to Lucy as his governess when she had in fact been his mother.
Lucy’s hand tightened on his own. “I was sent away until after my lying in. Then after the birth, a solicitor was brought in, and you were adopted legally as their son. Your title is secure if that’s what you are worried about.”
He wrenched his hand away, staggering to his feet. “None of this can be true. You have been injured, a bump to your head. All of this is a flight of fancy, nothing more.”
“There is proof,” she said quietly, “In the chest that lays at the foot of my bed. Have them bring the blue bag to me, and I will show you the documents, and you will know.”
Numb and still very much in shock, James stumbled to the door and gave the order to those who hovered outside to find the bag and bring it to him. He stayed for a moment there, long after he closed the door, unable to face her, not wanting to believe a word of what she had just confessed.
But deep down hadn’t he always known? Had he not already noted many times over the sameness of Lucy’s eyes and his own? Had he not witnessed the affection his father had held for the governess, the extra kindnesses he’d shown her?
Had he not seen the bitterness and resentment in Amelia’s eyes when she gazed upon them. The desperation and bitterness of her fights with his father? Did it not all make a wicked, terrible sense now when put into this context? It was no wonder then that Amelia would leave, running away with the young man who had eyes only for her.
Had her own husband not betrayed her, by loving this woman here, who crouched by the fire, looking at him with such terrible, anguished eyes? And was Lucy really to blame for any of this? Perhaps the true villain of this particular piece was James’s own father, long dead now.
“How does Miss Barlowe fit in any of this?” he asked as he thought through all these things, feeling that his mind was in such a terrible muddle, that it would be a miracle if he could ever sort any of this out.
“Your father and Harcourt Barrington were very close friends. Your father went to him with this decision for he agonized greatly overtaking such a step, though it was not unheard of for a man who was childless to adopt an heir. You are not the only adopted heir born on the wrong side of the sheets but legitimized later. I can only surmise that Phoebe found out about it somehow.”
“She came to you then?” James demanded, not liking the turn this conversation was taking.
“You were but a child, and her little more than one herself, still a girl of one and twenty when she appeared. She had found some proof, a letter, which she showed to me. Your mother had only just left, and your family was still reeling from the scandal. To have such a thing bandied about by the ton at such a time…your father would not have recovered from it.”
Lucy stared at her hands, clasped in her lap. “Nor would I. I would have been forced to leave your side. Your father could not have kept me in his household if it were to come to light that I was your true mother. And to leave you…and him…it was impossible.”
She smiled tenderly at him. “Oh, do not think it was easy. I wish I could have married him, but by the time your mother left, it was too well known that I was but a servant in this household. He asked me, but I would not allow the scandal. But even then, I could not leave. It was then I discovered how selfish I was, and how far I would go to keep that secret.”
Lucy sighed a little. “It was easy to comply. Phoebe wanted only some small trinket from the house, and I acquiesced thinking none would miss such a tiny item, for it was only a snuffbox, never used. ‘Twas only a gift given to your father, but pretty enough. I think she only asked for it to test me. And when she discovered I would give her that…”
“She knew she could ask for more. That is why you were out in that storm then,” he said, wondering how many such trips he had not known about, likely made on days when she had asked to be free for a personal errand.
