He had never seen her look so ill or stricken.
“It wasn’t my place,” she said, her tone desperate, “and I hardly saw what good telling you the truth would do. I didn’t know the one thing you needed to settle the legalities. I didn’t know where Mary Forster was. But I was there that night, when your father spoke with Mr. Lawson about the annuity, and I had a good notion what he put in that letter to you.
“So I knew, sooner or later,” the old woman continued, “that you would know the truth. But I also knew that telling you the truth myself wouldn’t give you what you needed.”
“How did you know about Henrietta?” he said, forcing the words from his throat. It galled him that Mrs. Morrison had known before him.
She gave a slightly dry laugh.
“I started here, at Edington Hall, as a girl of fourteen, gone into service, when your father was a boy of five. I knew him almost his entire life.”
He gave her a frustrated look meant to convey that he didn’t have patience for a long history.
“Who else would he trust when your mother and the babe died and he sought to conceal the death? Who else would he trust to shepherd Mary Forster into the Hall not a week later under the cover of darkness, so swollen with child that she could hardly step down from the carriage? I attended your sister’s birth alone. I thought Mary Forster was dying from how she screamed.”
“I remember,” he said, with hard emphasis.
“You thought you heard your mother’s screams, as did everyone else,” said Mrs. Morrison. “It ended up being convenient, how much she screamed. It made no one doubt that your mother had died in childbirth. In truth, your mother went quietly.”
He looked at Mrs. Morrison, her gray hair in a simple knot atop her head, with her black housekeeper’s dress so tidy and neat as usual. He hadn’t thought her capable of keeping such a secret.
“I need to speak to my sister. If you will excuse me, Mrs. Morrison.”
At this dismissal, the woman didn’t move. Instead, she took a step forward, with a look of such vulnerability on her face that it startled him.
“What happened to her, Your Grace?”
“Mary Forster?” he asked, bewildered as to why Mrs. Morrison would care.
She nodded rapidly.
“She is married now and lives a few hours from here. To a Mr. Ryerson.”
“Is she happy?”
“I have no idea. Why do you care?”
Mrs. Morrison shook her head.
“I suppose I shouldn’t, but she was always such a high-spirited girl. When they were young, Your Grace, before Reginald married—” She broke off. “They crept around these lands together, around the Hall. They were besotted with one another, and everyone knew it. I haven’t seen anything quite like it, in all my years.” Her voice wavered and it sent a strange emotion snaking down John’s chest.
“I know you must be angry with your father and you have a right,” she rushed out. “He made many mistakes. But you must understand what they were once. My heart broke for them when your grandfather refused to let them marry.”
John stared at Mrs. Morrison. He had known her his entire life. She was not a romantic or sentimental person. And yet her eyes brimmed with tears at the memory of this long-dead love, this youthful dalliance that had faded out years ago. Her words made real to him what his father’s letter had simply stated: his father had loved Mary Forster with a rare passion. And if Mrs. Morrison—Mrs. Morrison—was in tears, more than thirty years later at its memory, then it must have been a very unusual love indeed.
“You and Catherine,” she said, poised on the threshold of the room. “You remind me of them—how they were then.”
With these words, she slipped from the doorway.
He remembered that strange story Catherine had told him all those years ago of Tremberley: the Hampshire king who had given up his one true love to marry another woman for duty. It had felt like the story of his whole life and, back then, he had hardly known why. Now, he knew. For the first time in his life, he really understood the past, and he felt some of his bitterness towards his father melt away. He still felt anger towards him, but—for the first time since the scandal—John felt the burden of his father’s sorrow slip off of him. He had done what he could to right his father’s past. Now he had to focus on his future. Instead of trying to avoid making his father’s mistakes, he would follow his advice:if you ever love a woman, really and truly, seize any opportunity you have to unite yourself to her.
And he wouldn’t start by running off to London. He couldn’t take this part in haste. He needed to do it the right way.
No, he needed to start by talking to his sister.
Chapter Thirty-Five
It had beennearly two weeks and Catherine still had not heard from John.
