Jane, Lady Trenear, had filled each one with information about orchids, including sketches of different varieties and notations about their individual temperaments and properties. Sometimes she had used the journals as a diary, weaving personal thoughts and observations throughout.
Reading the journals had helped Helen to understand her elusive mother far more than she ever had in life. Jane had stayed in London for weeks or months at a time, and left the rearing of her children to governesses and servants. Even when Jane had been at Eversby Priory, she had seemed more like a glamorous guest than a parent. Helen couldn’t remember ever having seen her mother less than perfectly attired and perfumed, with jewels at her ears, throat, and wrists, and a fresh orchid in her hair.
No one would have thought that Jane, generally admired for her beauty and wit, had a care in the world. However, in the privacy of her journals, Jane had revealed herself as an anxious, lonely woman, frustrated by her inability to produce more than one son.
I’ve been split open like a sausage, Jane had written after the twins were born, by a pair of daughters. Before I even arose from my childbed, the earl thanked me for producing “two more parasites.” Why couldn’t at least one of them have been a boy?
And in another notebook . . . Little Helen is proving to be a help with the twins. I own, I like her better than I once did, although I fear she’ll always be a pale, rabbit-faced creature.
Despite the stinging words, Helen felt sympathy for Jane, who had been increasingly unhappy in her marriage to Edmund, Lord Trenear. He’d been a disenchanted and difficult husband. His temper had veered from scorching to freezing, rarely lingering in-between.
It wasn’t until after her mother’s death that Helen had finally understood why her parents had always seemed reluctant to acknowledge her existence.
She had learned the truth while nursing her father through his last illness, brought on by a day of hunting out in the cold and damp. Edmund had gone into a rapid decline despite the doctor’s efforts to heal him. As the earl sank into a half-delirium, Helen had taken turns with Quincy, his trusted valet, to sit at his bedside. They had administered tonic and sage tea to soothe his sore throat, and applied poultices to his chest.
“The doctor will return soon,” Helen had murmured to her father, gently wiping traces of saliva from his chin after he’d suffered a coughing fit. “He was called away to see a patient in the village, but he said it wouldn’t take long.”
Opening his rheumy eyes, the earl had said in a dry, scoured voice, “I want one of my children . . . with me . . . at the end. Not you.”
Thinking that he hadn’t recognized her, she had replied gently, “It’s Helen, Papa. I’m your daughter.”
“You’re not mine . . . never were. Your mother . . . took a lover . . .” The exertion of talking had provoked more coughing. When the throat spasms had calmed, he had rested silently with his eyes closed, refusing to look at her.
“There’s no truth to it,” Quincy had told Helen later. “The poor master is raving mad from fever. And your mother, God bless her, was admired by so many men that it poisoned his lordship with jealousy. You’re every spit a Ravenel, my lady. Never doubt it.”
Helen had pretended to believe Quincy. But she had known that the earl had told her the truth. It explained why she had neither the temperament nor the looks of the Ravenels. No wonder her parents had despised her—she was a child born of sin.
During the earl’s last lucid moments, Helen had brought the twins to his bedside to say good-bye. Although she had sent for Theo, he hadn’t been able to arrive from London in time. After their father had fallen insensate, Helen hadn’t been able to find it in her heart to make the twins attend his deathwatch.
“Do we have to stay?” Cassandra had whispered, swabbing her red eyes with a handkerchief as she sat with Pandora on a little bench by the window. They had no affectionate memories of him to share, no advice or stories they could reminisce over. All they could do was sit silently and listen to his faint rattling breaths, and wait miserably for him to pass.
“He wouldn’t want us here anyway,” Pandora had said in a monotone. “He’s never cared beans for either of us.”
Taking pity on her young sisters, Helen had gone to embrace and kiss them both. “I’ll stay with him,” she had promised. “Go say a prayer for him, and find something quiet to do.”
They had left gratefully. Cassandra had paused at the threshold to steal one last glance at her father, while Pandora had walked out in a brisk stride without looking back.
Going to the bedside, Helen had looked down at the earl, a tall, lean man who appeared shrunken in the vast bed. His complexion was gray-tinged and waxen, his swollen neck obscuring the shape of his jaw. All his great will had burned down to the frailest flicker of life. Helen had reflected that the earl seemed to have faded slowly in the two years after Jane had died. Perhaps he had been grieving for her. Theirs had been a complex relationship, two people who had been bound by disappointments and resentments the way others were bound by love.
Helen had dared to take the earl’s lax hand, a collection of veins and bones contained in a loose envelope of skin. “I’m sorry Theo isn’t here,” she had said humbly. “I know I’m not the one wanted with you at the end. I’m sorry for that, too. But I can’t let you face this alone.”
As she had finished, Quincy had entered the room, his deep-set black eyes gleaming with tears that slipped down to his white-whiskered jowls. Without a word, he had gone to occupy the bench at the window, determined to wait with her.
For an hour, they had watched over the earl as each strained breath grew softer than the last. Until finally Edmund, Lord Trenear, had passed away in the company of a servant and a daughter who possessed not a drop of his blood.
After the earl’s passing, Helen had never dared to talk to Theo about her parentage. She felt certain that he must have known. It was why he had never wanted to bring her out in society, and why his attitude toward her had held echoes of his father’s contempt. Neither had Helen been able to bring herself to confide in Kathleen or the twins. Even though she hadn’t done anything wrong, she felt the shame of her illegitimate birth acutely. No matter how she tried to ignore it, the secret had lurked inside like a dose of venom waiting to be released.
It bothered Helen a great deal that she hadn’t yet told Rhys. She knew how he loved the idea of marrying a daughter of the peerage. It would be incredibly difficult to confess that she wasn’t a Ravenel. Rhys would be disappointed. He would think less of her.
Still . . . he had a right to know.
Sighing heavily, Helen packed the rest of the journals into the trunk. As she cast a cursory glance at the empty bookshelf, she noticed a little pale bundle wedged in the dusty corner. Frowning, she lowered to her elbows and reached into the bookcase to pry it loose.
A wad of writing paper.
Sitting up, she opened the crumpled mass carefully and discovered a few lines of her mother’s handwriting. The words were more widely spaced than usual, sloping downward within their sentences.
My dearest Albion,
It is foolish, I know, to appeal to your heart when I have come to doubt its existence. Why has there been no word from you? What of the promises you made? If you abandon me, you ensure that Helen will never be loved by her own mother. I watch her sob in the cradle and cannot bring myself to touch her. She must cry alone, uncomforted, just as I must now that you have forsaken me.