“All those years ago, the Duchess of Edington and I were both with child. Reginald, coward that he was, kept the duchess’s pregnancy from me. He had told me that he hadn’t touched her in years, but I discovered, after we were found out at that garden party, that he had lied to me. The duchess was with child and it wasn’t anyone else’s but Reginald’s. I found out when I was at Martha’s, where I stayed for the six months after the scandal broke.”
“You told me in your last letter that you planned to leave Martha’s.”
“When I wrote to you and your father, I still planned to go abroad. When Reginald and I parted that day, that was our plan. That had been our plan ever since I found out about the pregnancy. John was going to school and Reginald claimed he no longer loved Gloria. He would go abroad and so would I. There we would live in scandal but together and happy. Once I was at Martha’s, I received a letter from Gloria, telling me in no uncertain terms that she was with child and to stay away from her family. I wrote to Reginald and he admitted it all in his response. But he still wanted to leave England with me. He wrote that he couldn’t live without me. He told Gloria that he chose me and that is what prompted her to run off with the Baron of Eastwick. But I was not about to pledge myself to a man who had lied to me. I saw Reginald for what he was. Worthless.
So I stayed at Martha’s, with no plans and no money. I couldn’t return to Edington, where I would only make the scandal worse by going back to Forster House. My brother was furious.”
“He was heartbroken,” Catherine interjected, indignant on her father’s behalf.
“You didn’t read his letters,” her aunt said, with a shiver.
“He bankrupted himself defending your honor.”
“Defendinghishonor. I never asked my brother for that. He was obsessed with the title, the one our family lost centuries ago, and he had never recovered from the offense of Reginald marrying Gloria. I was wild at seventeen. Everyone knew I had been precipitous in my affections with Reginald. I had wanted him and so I had him. I wanted to marry him, when I was seventeen and when I was thirty. And my brother was furious that the man had taken what belonged to the Forster family—my virtue—and paid nothing for it.”
Catherine opened her mouth to defend her father again, but Mary held up a hand.
“My brother is no matter. It didn’t signify in the slightest, because, at the very end of my pregnancy, Reginald wrote to me. The duchess had returned to Edington Hall, gravely ill, and she and her child had both died. He wanted me to return to Edington and marry him immediately. That way, my baby would be legitimate. It would have been beyond scandalous. We would have never recovered in society, but he was prepared to do it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Mary looked her in the eye, her stare bleak, as if she were back in that moment. “I didn’t love him anymore.”
Catherine was stunned. How, she wondered, could her aunt’s love for Reginald, which had driven her to so many bold acts, have just disappeared?
“He wasted so much of my life with his lies and his cowardice. I didn’t want to live with him, have a family with him. I already loved the child growing inside of me, but I must admit that—as much as I loved her, already, and I did—I still loved myself more. I didn’t want her to be the tether that bound me to him. Besides, that was no life for a child. So, when he wrote, I went, but I made it very clear to him that I had conditions. I would give birth and, if I survived, he would keep the child and I would go free. We would never speak again. The child, for my freedom. He would raise her as Gloria’s child, so that she would appear legitimate, and she would be a duke’s daughter. He didn’t want to agree, but what choice did he have? I wouldn’t marry him.”
“You gave up your child?”
Catherine felt shock from the crown of her head down to her feet. She had thought so much about how her aunt had abandonedher. Now, she understood why she had never heard from her. Catherine wasn’t the child she had given up and left behind.Henriettawas that child.
“I did. And it broke my heart. But my heart was already broken. Reginald had seen to that. I was dead already, inside. You must understand, Cathy. He had begged me to have his child. He made all sorts of promises. I listened. I didn’t want the child tying me back to him. She would have always given him a way back into my life. And I knew there was a better life somewhere else—for myself.”
Catherine wasn’t sure that she could understand, but she wanted to try.
“But you stayed. Near Edington. You didn’t want to leave her completely.”
“It’s true. But I needn’t have stayed so close. Reginald lived until she was seventeen. She will have a season, marry, and no one will know the secret. She will have a good life. I made the right choice.”
“Don’t you want to meet her?”
Mary shrugged. “I have seen her, here and there, over the years. She is a beautiful girl. And she is fine without me.”
“Is that what you thought about me?”
“Yes,” Mary said, blinking, “in fact, I did.”
“But I wasn’t,” Catherine said. “I have only suffered for what you did. You have no idea what I have endured for your mistakes.”
“You come to me, dear,” her aunt said, using her kindest voice yet, “engaged to a duke. Is that irreparable suffering?”
With a sinking feeling, Catherine realized that her aunt was right. She was engaged to a duke, but she couldn’t be for much longer.
Because Catherine couldn’t ever tell John that Henrietta was Mary Forster’s daughter. He still hated Mary. Even more so after this meeting. The knowledge would threaten his relationship with Henrietta. Who knows if their bond would be the same after learning such a shocking fact.
And she couldn’t marry him with this secret between them. She had seen what lies and deception wrought.
She couldn’t have that type of life.
