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“She always smelled of lilacs and was infallibly kind to me.
“It was a shame she never had children.
“She was pretty, and with her fortune and lineage, I would have thought men would have been eager to wed her, even if she did have a few barely noticeable pockmarks beneath her artfully applied rice powder.”
Zander snapped his head up.
Pockmarks?
Coincidence?
Mayhap. There were still occasional outbreaks. But not bloody likely.
By thunder, if and when, he regained his memory, he meant to look into the matter.
He would not say a word to Lilly in the meantime.
Could Lilly be the late Matilda Davenport’s illegitimate daughter?
It certainly would explain a lot.
Seventeen
In Kelton Hall’s main corridor on the way to Lilly’s office
The middle of October—shortly after the midday meal
Would the letter be here today?
The correspondence from the University of Cambridge that Lilly had eagerly awaited, yet simultaneously dreaded?
Those questions had become a daily ritual for her, and each day her stomach twisted into a glob of anxiety when she checked the post.
The fabric of her new mazarine blue wool gown swished softly as she proceeded down the corridor, lost in thought.
Mouth drawn into a tight line of expectancy, she thumbed through the correspondences she collected from the half-table in the entry that had been delivered while she ate luncheon with Zander and Mrs. Jones.
Miss Wobblecroft and Miss McKenzie supervised the children while they ate in what had once been the grand ballroom.
The four instructors rotated supervising the students’ dining.
Lilly turned over a creamy rectangle—foolscap folded into a tidy envelope.
The postmark caught her eye.
Cambridge.
It came.
Her heart catapulted to her throat and then plummeted to her feet, where it flopped around like a bass tossed upon the riverbank at Thamesmead.
She flushed hot, then cold, then hot again.
How could a mere correspondence cause such consternation?
Because this letter could change everything.
It might reveal Zander’s identity.
