Her mother’s face froze. “You read my letters?”
“Yes.”
“My private correspondence?”
Verity swallowed. Some of her bravado was already slipping away.
“It was in the storage room, up in the attic. I didn’t know they were such… intimate letters until I began reading them.”
“You saw something that did not belong to you. Yet you helped yourself to its contents out of idle curiosity.” The warning was still there. Verity’s courage was failing fast.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I know it was wrong.” And then a little flare of rebellion… “But you can’t deny the truth. Before you married Father, you loved someone whose initials were T.L. You loved him deeply, but you married Father instead. Why? Why did you not follow your heart?”
Mrs. Lockhart leaned back in her chair. “You haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about, my dear child.”
But Verity remained resolute. “I have eyes. I know what I read. I know what you gave up. And you would tell me to do the same as you—to marry someone I do not love because it is practical.”
Mrs. Lockhart turned her full gaze upon her daughter, anchoring Verity with the weight of it. “Have you observed anything in all these years to suggest your father and I are unhappy?”
“No, but you were married for many years before I was born. You had already grown fond of each other before you had me. But in the beginning, it must have been difficult.”
Her mother picked at a stray thread on her cuff before folding her hands on her lap. “It might surprise you to know that I was fond of your father from the start.”
“Oh.” Verity’s confidence deflated somewhat. “But Father is so… you know…staid. He is not a very passionate man. Not like the gentleman in the letters.”
A smile quirked about her mother’s lips. “It might interest you to know—not that it is any of your business, and I really feel you have overstepped the mark in the whole affair, Verity—that the passionate gentleman who wrote those letters is, in fact, your own dear papa.”
Verity’s small world exploded.
“It can’t be!” she spluttered. “Father is nothing like that!”
Her mother sighed. “We were young. That is how the young go about things—all wild abandon and unfettered swooning. It lasts a while. Long enough to marry and have children and become busy, distracted. Then you settle into a familiar pattern. Less exciting, to be sure. But not less meaningful.”
“But,” protested Verity, still quite unable to come to terms with this new information, “Father’s initials are not T.L. He is John Lockhart. There is no ‘T.’”
“Ah, that. He was ever the romantic, my John. ‘T.L.’ stands for True Love, for that is what he has always been to me. Though we grow old and grey and tired, we have loved each other since our youth, and no one else.”
Verity suspected that such news should have pleased her. For one, it meant her mother had not made a terrible sacrifice in marrying her father. And for another, it proved that the young Dorothy had indeed been true to herself and followed her heart. Both these discoveries should have offered relief, even encouragement. Why, then, was she dissatisfied with the outcome?
Mrs. Lockhart looked with pity upon her daughter. “I rather think you would have preferred a scandal. Your father and I have not provided the escape you sought from your own doubts.”
Yes! That was it! How wise her mother was. And how horribly, awfully right.
Verity fiddled with her fingers, her eyes unable to lift to meet her mother’s. “You believe,” she began in a small voice, “I am capable of finding a lasting love like yours. Why… Why would you think that?”
“Oh, my dear!” Mrs. Lockhart threw her sewing down. In one fluid movement, she was beside Verity, wrapping her arms about her and cradling her head against her shoulder.
“You do make things impossible for yourself, my precious, foolish child. All that pining after little creatures, and endless hours spent painting in your room. This is not the way to love. You will have to give a greater measure of yourself to receive more in return.”
Verity lifted her head and pulled a face. Her mother had just described everything that she did not want to hear.
“Now, now, do not look at me so. You know I am right. You are not ready to hear it, but I must say it nevertheless. Perhaps what you need is…”
Her mother’s speech stalled. Verity could picture the cogs turning in the mechanisms of her mind. That did not bode well. Whenever her mother had abrilliant idea, it was usually mortifyingly embarrassing for Verity.
“What is it, Mother?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“Oh, nothing.”
