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She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”

“Call it a need for fellow feeling.”

“Well, then, I shan’t mince words.”

He had to smile. “Have you been?”

“I have indeed.” She set Wallace on the floor by her feet. “Your mother was an absolute harridan.” She smiled, a bit sadly. “Would you like me to elaborate?”

He was a bit taken aback, though he shouldn’t have been. “Please do.”

“Your brother and I hoped to have children, but we were not so blessed.”

That was, alas, not a surprise. Simon had wondered—silently, to himself—why his brother and Frances hadn’t, in their several years of marriage, had children. His mother had wondered, too, unsilently.

“Your mother poked at the topic constantly. It’s difficult to explain exactly what it was like, to be in her sights. She would often give me gifts for our nonexistent child, for example. A christening gown she had embroidered for ‘if it is ever needed.’”

Simon could hear the tone in which the words would have been delivered—a performative sort of martyred resignation. One couldn’t find fault with the words themselves, but the delivery gave them an entirely different meaning.

“Yet at the same time, I often got the sense that she didn’t want James to get an heir.”

“How do you mean?” Simon said, though he thought he understood.

“She resented me, I think, for the time James spent with me.”

Yes, Simon knew this feeling. Still, he felt compelled to issue a protest. “You were his wife.”

“Yes, but I think she fancied herself the most important woman in his life. In Michael’s, too. I shudder to think what life would have been like had Michael married as well. By way of example, whenever I tried to do something for James, bringing him a cup of tea, say, she would, were we out of sight of anyone else, take it from me rather forcibly and do it herself. I can’t imagine what it would have been like had she been acting that way twice over.”

“I am sorry,” Simon said. Her tale reinforced his own resolve to leave marriage for the future—the post-Mother future.

“And she always knew, somehow, when my menses were late.” Frances regarded him. “Am I causing you embarrassment?”

“No,” he said, though she was. What was a little embarrassment in exchange for the truth?

“I assume because the maids told the housekeeper and the housekeeper told her.” Frances’s voice cracked, and she cleared her throat before continuing. “But it matters not. The point is, she always seemed to know. She would make small comments, indicating that she and I were in on a shared secret.”

Simon had observed Frances to have a quick wit and a sparkling personality. She was quick to laugh and always seemed to be at ease in the world in the same way Michael and James had been—and that Simon himself was not. But here, her voice had gone uncharacteristically flat.

“You see, I got with child twice over the years.” She closed her eyes and wrung her hands. “I lost them both.”

“Oh, Frances,” Simon began, his heart breaking, but she held up a hand, and he understood that she wanted to continue her tale. He well knew how expressions of genuine sympathy could stop one in one’s tracks. It was probably the reason some part of him resisted embarking on Earls Trip each year—it could be almost painful to be with people who understood one’s situation and empathized.

“Your mother gave me a certain type of tea when I was expecting,” Frances continued. “She would tell me with a wink that it was good for a lady in my condition. I used to think it a gesture of kindness.” Bitterness had crept into her tone. “I thought it her way of making an overture of friendship, or at least of peace. I have observed, in my life, that people like your mother who are full of bile, who are jealous and ungenerous with their time and regard, are usually that way because someone made them so. Most people aren’t born villainous. I still believe that, though your mother certainly tested the bounds of that belief.

“So I—foolishly, recklessly, it turned out—accepted the apparent olive branch. I drank the tea. Which tasted terrible, I might add.

“The last time I drank the tea—the second time I was with child—was a week before James and Michael died. I made an offhand remark to Julie, a new lady’s maid who’d come to Galecroft—you remember when Becky retired?”

Simon nodded. Becky had been a servant of forty years and was—he hoped—enjoying her retirement.

“I told Julie, in an attempt to take her into my confidence, the way one does with a servant with whom one is going to become intimately acquainted whether one likes it or no, that your mother was bringing me tea, and that it tasted awful. Which meant I told her about the pregnancies. I was trying to ingratiate myself, I suppose. She seemed alarmed. She asked me if it had been belladonna tea. It couldn’t be, I replied. Your mother was terrible, but she can’t have been that terrible.” She paused, seeming to gather herself. “The new maid asked me to describe the tea’s taste, and the next day, brought me a cup and asked me to try it, to confirm it was the same type your mother had been giving me.” She paused, her lips pursed. “I did.”

Oh no. No. Simon didn’t know what belladonna was, but he didn’t have to, to know what was coming next. He wanted to cover his face with his hands, but it was important to give Frances his full attention.

“Belladonna is an herb that spurs the premature expulsion of a pregnancy. Midwives give it to ladies who find themselves in a bind.”

“Frances,” Simon said, unembarrassed by the anguish in his voice, by the tears he was suddenly doing a poor job holding back.