“She is not wrong. I have not been myself since you left. You took a part of me—the best part of me—with you. But I cannot be angry with you for that any longer, because you returned, and you brought me Emily. You brought me our daughter.”
He kissed their daughter’s head as he said the last, and more of Julianna’s resistance was melting. The walls had been destroyed. Nothing but rubble remained.
“I…” She paused, trying to think of what she wanted to say. “If I could go back and change what happened, I would. I never would have gone to New York City.”
“Mayhap it is for the best that it all unfolded as it has,” he said, surprising her. “My grandmother always said you cannot appreciate what you have—truly appreciate it—until it is almost taken from you.”
“Your grandmother was a wise woman.” Julianna offered a sad smile. “I wish I could have met her.”
“She would have loved you,” Sidney said.
Time fell away, and it was as if they were standing together at Farnsworth Hall once more, the day they had said their goodbyes. Their stares clung. Communication passed between them that was deeper than words.
“It was not a lie, what happened that summer?” The question was torn from her, almost against her will, and yet, she wanted the answer. Needed the answer from his lips. The reassurance.
“Not one bloody second of it was a lie,” he rasped.
And she believed him. He had no reason to charm her. No reason to woo her or mislead her. They were already married. He was free to carry on with half a dozen mistresses if he chose. To drown himself in wine. To go to sleep in a different bed every night.
Instead, he had been here. With her. He was being a father, a husband. Working through their differences and the hurts they had dealt each other. But all this time, she had allowed fear to rule her.
That ended today.
This moment.
This next breath.
“I still have your handkerchief,” she told him. “The one you gave me when we said goodbye. I could never bear to part with it. That little square has crossed the ocean twice.”
And she knew what his middle initial stood for now thanks to their marriage ceremony. Edgar.
“Julianna.” There was a wealth of emotion in his eyes.
But she was not finished. Not yet.
“I was afraid,” she blurted. “My mother and father hate each other. They cannot bear the sight of one another. That terrible entrapment is not what I have ever wanted for myself. I saw how miserable it made the both of them, so wretched my mother ultimately left when I was a girl, and that…when she left, it cut me deeply. I felt as if I had lost the only person who could ever love me, and it was a terrible feeling. One day she was there, telling me to perfect my posture and giving me lavender-scented hugs, and the next day, she had gone to America.”
“She abandoned you,” he said.
“Yes.” Julianna bit her lip—to the devil with fretting over the habit and stifling it. “She abandoned me.”
“She has never loved you as you deserve to be loved, Julianna,” Sidney said vehemently. “Her love is for herself alone.”
Emily stirred at the menace in his tone, but he calmed her with ease, patting her bottom and rocking harder whilst whispering in her ear. “Hush now, little poppet. Papa has you. Papa shall always have you.”
A lump was rising in Julianna’s throat. An insurmountable lump, caused by his observation about her mother—true—and the way he was so effortlessly protective and loving toward their daughter. If only her own father and mother had been so protective, so loving. But they had not been, and she had suffered for it. Their own selfish actions had left her broken, afraid to trust when the first challenge arose.
And what had she done? She had fled, just as her mother had done.
Realization hit her. “I am just like her, am I not? I am my mother.”
“You are nothing like her,” Sidney bit out. “Not one whit. You are kindhearted and good. I will not have you compare yourself to her. What kind of a mother would abandon her own daughter, cross an entire ocean, without taking her with her?”
It was the question Julianna had never dared to ask herself.
Because the answer would hurt far too much. And the plain truth was, that even when she had finally joined her mother in New York City, Mama had only welcomed her for the chance it had given her to debut her daughter amongst the city’s elite. It had always—every decision Mama had ever made—been about herself.
“She is a selfish woman,” Julianna acknowledged, feeling sick. “But I am hardly any better. Look at what I have done with Emily, keeping you from her—”
