“I’m sorry,” she said, and took a step toward her sister. Nora stiffened but didn’t move away. That was enough for now. “I hate that you felt abandoned.” She shook her head. “No. That’s not right. I hate that I abandoned you. That I hurt you. It makes no difference, but I was trying to protect you and I had no understanding of how to do that properly.”
“Protect me from the fact that you and our mother made money on your backs?” Nora asked. Jane flinched but didn’t interrupt. “Do you know how I found out?”
“No.” Her voice barely carried.
“When Hugo asked his father for permission to court me, the earl told him. My now-husband assumed I knew the truth from the start. He came to me to try to figure out together how to get around it. He told me. And it broke my heart.”
Her sister’s voice cracked and tears flooded her eyes. It all felt like a stab to Jane’s heart. “I bungled this entirely. May I…may I try to explain now?”
“Do as you like, Jane. You have all this time.” Nora turned her face, but Jane could see her watching from the corner of her eye. She was playing at being hard, but there was part of her sister that was curious. So Jane would give her the knowledge she desired and deserved.
“Yes, our mother is a lightskirt,” she said.
“Still?” Nora burst out, her voice shaking.
Jane thought of their mother, worn and bitter in her depressing house. She had no doubts what she did to maintain the miserable life she was living. “Again. She married your father and was out of the trade for a while until…well, you know what happened. How he died. But she went back in after, I suppose because there’s little choice for women like us.” She thought of her shop. “Maybe at some point we just don’t know anything else.”
“And what about you?”
“I was a product of that world. A child from some unknown man. Not wanted, not planned.”
Nora flinched. “Oh.”
“Those eight years before you were born, she was…she’s horrible, Nora. She dragged me through her life, never protected me from it. She would get drunk and blame me, even…even hurt me.” Jane squeezed her eyes shut. “I hate telling you this. I wanted to protect you from this.”
“But the secrets didn’t protect me. Please have enough respect for now to tell me,” Nora said softly. “I need to know.”
Jane struggled for the words, which somehow felt so much more painful to say to her sister. But at last she found them.
“I thought it was over when she met your father. Winchester wasn’t kind, but he steadied her. She focused on him, she was easier for those seven years. But when he died and she went back in, it all became so awful again. I felt like I didn’t have any choice but to follow her. I had no other skills. I had to make money to try to help so she wouldn’t…wouldn’t…be worse.”
“Oh, Jane,” Nora’s voice had softened even if she didn’t move toward her. “But you were only fifteen.”
“Some girls start even younger.” Jane shrugged to dismiss it, even if she couldn’t do that in her heart. Even if it was a wound that never fully healed. “I saw her starting to turn on you the way she turned on me. I was afraid she would hurt you, I was afraid she’d push you into the same life the two of us were leading. So I took you away and I put you in the school and I tried to keep you away from her. And from me. We would hurt you. I would hurt you. And I wanted you to have a chance at something better.”
Now it was her voice that broke and she shook her head. Nora stepped toward her, holding out a handkerchief. “Here.”
“No. I’m not going to cry. I don’t want to manipulate you they way she always tried to manipulate me.” Jane fisted her hands at her sides and forced her breath to calm and her tears to recede. “I didn’t want you to go back to our mother’s home during breaks and holidays. I certainly had nowhere to put you in London where what I was wouldn’t be clear. Where my life wouldn’t be an influence on you. And so I suppose I did abandon you. I thought that writing letters and sending gifts when I could would be enough. That you might not want more.”
“But I did,” Nora said. Her eyes welled with tears to match Jane’s. “Sometimes a friend would bring me along on breaks, but mostly I sat in those empty rooms when everyone else was gone and told myself how you couldn’t love me at all.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jane said. “It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but it’s true. I never wanted to hurt you, and I hate that I did.”
Nora took a few breaths and she looked at Jane. Really looked at her, as she’d been avoiding doing since the arrival. She shook her head. “What you went through, it sounds terrible. And I…I do know how our mother can be. I started writing to her after I broke off contact with you. I found the address in some files.”
“How did you do that?”
Nora shrugged. “Broke into the headmistress’s study.”
Jane closed her eyes, but she laughed a little as she shook her head. “I’m impressed and horrified in equal measure. Miss Knightly is terrifying—you were very brave.”
“Thank you,” her sister said with a little smile. “I wrote to Mother and she…she was dreadful.”
“Yes, Miss Knightly gave me some of the things you left behind at the school. I saw Mama’s letter telling you to land your Hugo so that you might have access to his wealth.” She shook her head with renewed disgust at that. “Christ, at least she’s predictable.”
“That was the last straw,” Nora said with a long sigh. “I’d hoped to find a connection, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. When she acted like I’d marry him to use him, I knew I had to protect him from her.”
Jane smiled at the fierce way her sister lifted her chin. “You love him.”
