“What am I supposed to do with all of this?” She drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees, just as she’d done when she was a child and it was storming outside. Curling into a ball had soothed her fears and uneasiness. But there was no comfort to be found now. “What am I—what am I supposed to think?”
“I’ve told you everything I know, Joanna. I probably should have told you sooner, and for that…for that, I am sorry.” Ruth glanced down at the floor. She was not a woman who apologized easily, or often. “But it is up toyouto decide what you’d like to do going forward. You’re the eldest. The leader. The one your sisters look to in times of trouble. This does not change that.”
Joanna bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. “But without the ring, we’ve nothing.”
Ruth lifted her head. “Then go get it.”
Joanna hardly sleptat all that night. How could she, with all that she’d learned? Secrets piled upon secrets, with still more questions than answers.
When dawn crept across the sky in a spill of pink and orange, she was the first to wake. Or so she thought, before Evie tiptoed across the bedroom they shared and climbed into bed with her.
“I heard everything,” Evie said without preamble, her voice hushed so as not to awake Claire who still slept, blissfully unaware of all that had been unveiled.
“But of course you did.” Joanna jabbed her elbow into her sister’s side. “You’re a renowned eavesdropper, and a gossip besides.”
Evie winced, then gave Joanna a jab right back. “I am neither, thank you very much. And it’s notmyfault you and Grandmother were speaking loud enough to wake the dead.”
Joanna wished shecouldwake dead. For then, she’d be able to ask her mother why she’d had an illicit affair with an Englishman whose initials were JW. And she could ask her father why he’d agreed to cover it all up and raise another man’s daughter as his own.
Had he thought of her differently than Evie and Claire? That was what shereallywanted to know. Had he looked at her and seen the man his wife had betrayed him with? Or had she always been his, right from the very beginning?
She liked to think it was the latter.
Shehopedit was.
But how could she ever be certain?
How could she ever be certain about anything, ever again?
Sitting up, she pulled a pillow against her stomach and hugged it tight. “Did you know?”
Looking offended that Joanna would even ask, Evie gave an adamant shake of her head that sent her long hair, black as a raven’s wing, spilling across her shoulders. “No. I had absolutely no idea. I…I am sorry, Jo.”
“As am I.” Joanna clasped the pillow even harder, fingers digging into the soft feathers in a desperate need to cling to something tangible. “Grandmother believes I should go after the ring.”
“She wants you to go all the way toEngland?” Evie’s eyes widened. “I must have missed that part.”
“Eavesdropping isn’t perfect, I suppose.”
“I told you I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
“Then what would you call sitting at the top of the stairs and listening in on a private conversation?”
Evie pursed her lips. “Being observant.”
“What are you two discussing?” Her voice groggy with sleep, Claire sat up in bed and peered drowsily at them. “And why are you up so early?”
For an instant, Joanna considered hiding the truth from her little sister. But now that she knew what it felt like to have secrets withheld fromher, she couldn’t do the same thing to Claire. Claire may have been the youngest, but she was also compassionate, and intelligent, and wise beyond her years. If they were going to get through this, they’d need to do it together or not at all.
Taking a breath, she began from the beginning, repeating everything Ruth had told her and Evie had overheard. Their mother’s affair in England, the quick wedding upon her return, the decision to raise Joanna as if she were Jacob’s daughter, and, finally, the significance of the ring.
Claire listened intently and did not interrupt with the exception of a soft gasp here and there, which Joanna could hardly blame her for. Even to Joanna’s own ears, the story sounded…well, it sounded made up. Like the plot of some gothic romance whereupon the heroine discovers she is the hidden by-blow of a mysterious English lord who then goes to great extremes to steal the only item that could link him to his illegitimate child.
But it wasn’t made up.
It was real.
Andshewas the hidden by-blow.
