“Your father,” Dietrich asked, “does he have anything from when you were a baby?”
Ella took another sip of her tea, staring at Dietrich.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
Dietrich spread his hands in a show of innocence. “I don’t know everything,” he said, “but I was looking at a portrait the other day,
and you remind me of someone we lost many years ago. I thought perhaps you might know if your parents were, in fact, your parents.”
Ella let out a scoffing laugh. “I can’t imagine why my stepmother would keep me around if I wasn’t actually my father’s child.”
But the more she thought about it—the more the images of her childhood filtered through her mind—the more she remembered the way she had instantly become nothing more than a scullery maid for her stepmother after her father’s death, the way her stepsisters could never quite look her in the eye, and the way her stepmother acted as if she was not truly a member of the family.
“It can’t be,” she said softly.
Dietrich paused, his brown eyes searching hers with an intensity that made her want to back away, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t let Dietrich see that he held the upper hand.
“I just wondered,” he said. “It’s not every day I find someone the spitting image of the late duchess.”
Ella’s eyes widened and she leaned forward in her seat. “A duchess?” she squeaked. “You think I’m a missing duchess?”
Dietrich shrugged, leaning back against his seat. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said. “If you are so sure that your father is your father, then you can’t possibly be Lady Eliana, now, can you?” His voice turned quiet as he said the words.
Ella’s mind was racing. There was no way it was true, but….
She looked nothing like her father. His hair was black, where hers was a shining gold. He had been short and stumpy, and she was tall and willowy—for a girl, at least. She had grown taller than her father, which had always felt odd.
Every other family she saw had children that were shorter than their fathers, aside from an occasional boy who outgrew his father, and it was rare to find someone who didn’t have at least a few of their father’s features, whereas it seemed as if she had gotten all her features from her mother.
But what if it was because she was not actually his daughter?
The thought was terrifying. If her father was not her father, where had she come from? Could she actually be a duchess, as Dietrich claimed?
What did that mean for her stepmother?
“I don’t know,” she whispered, staring down at her mug of tea.
A table nearby moved as Thea, the owner of the Cozy Cat Café, bustled around with a tray, cleaning things. She hurried over when she saw the look on Ella’s face.
“What happened?” she demanded, frowning at Dietrich. “Did you do something?”
“Why does everyone automatically assume that everything is my fault?” Dietrich protested.
“Because it usually is,” Thea said dryly. “Ella, is everything all right? I’ll make him leave.”
“No, it’s fine,” Ella said, nodding her head. “He just…confused me, that’s all.”
Thea turned to Dietrich with a questioning look.
“It was before your time,” Dietrich said with a shrug. “You wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Try me,” Thea said. “I hear a lot in this town.”
That did not surprise Ella at all.
“Have you heard much about the late Duchess Vaughn?” Dietrich asked.
Thea nodded. “I’ve heard it was terrible, that they lost their daughter, and the duchess didn’t make it more than a year after that. Why?”
