The duchess smiled, her voice still tremulous. “It seems so to me too.” It appeared to Apple as if those large eyes devoured her. “You have grown up delightfully, my dear Appoline. No, Apple, for that is what you like, is it not? Little Apple! Oh, you were the sweetest babe! Covered in dark curls!”
Her free fingers touched at Apple’s hair, catching at a curl, then stroking the strands away from her forehead. The fingers strayed and Apple, quite tongue-tied, felt them gentle on her cheeks and then pinching her chin. A laugh escaped the woman’s lips.
“You have my little chin. Isn’t that odd? It’s a family trait. You can see it in portraits.”
“Do I — do I look like you?”
The duchess sat back, as if to observe her better. “The hair, yes. And your eyes are of my colour. I think there must be a general resemblance, but to me you look much more like your father.”
Apple’s heart dropped and she could not help a hostile note. “The duke?”
The duchess’s face changed. “You blame him. They all did so, and I must confess his conduct was reprehensible. But we loved one another. We still do.”
The significance of her title struck Apple all at once. Why in the world had she not realised before? “You’ve married him!”
“Yes. We never thought to marry, for all was at an end after you came. But fortune favours the brave, they say. Godfrey lost his wife several years ago, and my husband — an estimable man of God who was very kind to me, so young as I was when we married and so dreadfully guilty — yes, about you, my poor girl… Where was I?”
A crack of laughter escaped Apple. “Oh, dear, I am afraid we are more alike than you know. I chatter quite as much as you do.”
Her mother — how odd to think of this strange woman as her mother! — broke into a girlish giggle.
“Dear me, do you drive Lord Dymond demented?”
“Yes! He tells me I am feather-brained.”
“And Godfrey calls me scatter-brained!”
The shared laughter did much to soothe Apple’s lacerated feelings, and the shock of discovery began to subside. “How came it about that you married the duke then?”
The duchess hesitated. Then a grimace passed across her face. “No, I will conceal nothing from you, my little Apple. Will you think badly of me if I tell you that our liaison was never severed?”
Apple blinked. She and the duke had continued their affair through both their marriages? She could not think of such outrageous conduct without deep disapproval, and struggled not to show it — in vain.
“Ah, you are shocked, are you not?”
Apple drew a breath. “I’m afraid I am. But I have no right to judge you.”
“Oh, my child, if anyone has that right, it is you. I could wish I might plead mitigation, but truth to tell, there is none. I threw my cap over the windmill for love and I was rescued from my own folly. To your cost.”
“No!” This at least she could say with honesty. “Papa gave me a life I would never wish undone. He never once allowed me to think I was not his daughter, even when I had my suspicions. And I was his daughter, in everything but name, as I now learn.”
“Alas!” The duchess’s eyes grew pitiful. “I see you will never accept poor Godfrey in his place.”
“No, I shan’t!”
She regretted the vehemence the moment it was out, but the duchess merely sighed. “Perhaps you may find it in your heart to forgive him one day.”
Apple’s tongue got the better of her, all the repressed bitterness rising up. “When he’s made it impossible for me to be with Alex? It was he sent Mr Vergette to warn him off, was it not? Had he not done that I need never have known. I may have suspected, but…”
Her voice died as she recalled there had never been the slightest chance of a life with Alex. The suspicion was enough. And if she’d been who she purported to be, who her grandfather had made her to save her face, she would still not have been good enough for the heir to an earldom.
The duchess had not spoken, only eyeing her in an odd fashion that Apple could not interpret. She caught her breath.
“Not that it matters. Either way, I am utterly unsuitable.” Her hand was still reposing in that of the duchess and it felt wrong. Apple withdrew it, trying for a lighter note. “When did you marry?”
“A little over a year since my widowhood. Last November it was. When you, as I apprehend, ran off with your Alex.”
“I did not run off with him! Where had you that? I just happened to hide in his coach. I had never met him before that day.”
