Catherine shook her head at this obstinacy. “You have to accept the money, aunt. John is right. Think of your children.”
“My children don’t need Reginald’s money,” her aunt scoffed. “Although I have to wonder what Reginald did to get his son and heir in my drawing room. It must be wicked. Pray tell, what did Reginald put in the will to compel you both here?”
“How do you know that it wasn’t just a bequest? To make amends?”
“Reginald always wanted to find me. I suspect that he hoped, if he found me again, I would marry him. And I couldn’t imagine anything more horrible.”
“Why? Didn’t you love him once?”
Catherine did not understand this part of the story. It had occurred to her, when Lady Trilling told her the tale, that John’s mother had died only a year after the scandal. If they had been so in love, wouldn’t they have married? Lady Trilling had said the duke still loved her aunt up until his death, but that Mary had soured on her former lover. For her, what had changed? How had she gone from willing to risk anything for him to hiding from him?
“Tell me about Reginald’s will first.”
She and John had agreed that, if it felt right, she should tell Mary about the will. Perhaps she would take pity on poor Henrietta, although Catherine had to say that right now her aunt hardly appeared soft-hearted. But she had to try.
“You must remember the duke’s daughter?” she said, feeling a heat steal up her cheeks. The duchess had been pregnant with Henrietta when her aunt had been bedding the woman’s husband. Surely her aunt remembered.
Her aunt bent closer to her work. She gave a small nod.
“She was always to have a very significant dowry. Sixty thousand pounds. And the duke left it away from her, in his will, to a relative that he and John both hated, unless he found you and gave the annuity.”
Mary’s eyes looked up from her work and cast it aside once more. Her eyes were wide again.
“He jeopardized his daughter’s futureto send me an annuity?”
“Yes. He very much wanted you to have this money. He added the provision in a codicil a few days before his death.”
“Reginald,” her aunt said, shaking her head, her whole manner oozing disgust with her old lover. But Catherine also saw sadness lingering at the edges of her contempt. “I don’t need his money. She is his daughter.”
“He loved you,” Catherine added, cheered that her aunt seemed incrementally softer.
“You don’t understand.”
“Why not take the money?” Catherine paused. “Your children will benefit.”
“Don’t speak of my children,” Mary repeated, “when you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“It is not easy to explain.”
“I am sure you can find a way.”
Mary sighed and looked at her, a challenge in her eye. “If I tell you the truth, you can never tell another soul. Not the duke. Or the girl. Especially not the girl.”
“Why would I tell Henrietta?” Catherine said, confused, the question out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
And then she looked into her aunt’s eyes and caught a terrible meaning.
“No,” Catherine said, comprehension dawning. “It is not possible.”
“It is. I assure you.”
Catherine tried to grasp this implication, to see it as a fact, but she couldn’t. All she felt was disbelief. “It cannot be true,” she repeated. “John heard his mother giving birth to Henrietta. He heard her screams.”
“He didn’t hear her screams,” Mary said, with a strange smile on her face. “He heardmine.”
Catherine felt ill. And yet she didn’t rise. Her aunt’s words fell over her like a spell, fixing her in place.
