Duchess of Seduction (Hearts in Hiding 3)

Cressida imagined how tormented she’d be if any of her children had been taken away. Cautiously, she asked, “Has he found answers?”

The other woman hesitated. “Justin has been assiduous in his task and a kind and understanding friend when I could reveal my secret and suspicions to no one else.” She closed her eyes briefly. Then, sighing heavily, she said, “What you witnessed in the corridor at Madame Plumb’s earlier this evening, Lady Lovett, was my gesture of gratitude toward your husband, who had just confirmed that my daughter still lives”—there was a catch in her voice as she continued—“but that, as a loving mother with her best interests at heart, I was barred from making contact with her.”

Cressida’s own breath hitched in her throat, her fears escalating. Madame Zirelli had had a child years ago? Madame Zirelli had been Justin’s mistress years ago?

“Why did you tell me you had no children?” Cressida studied her trembling hands. Vague uneasiness had taken root and was fast growing into full blown suspicion. What might have motivated the woman opposite her to have kept such a secret from Cressida?

Madame Zirelli’s next words banished that fear. “My daughter is eighteen years old now, and her father, Robert, was the love of my life.”

Immediately, Cressida knew she’d been foolish. Justin had been helping Madame Zirelli as an old friend, not with a vested interest.

“I’m sorry.” What else could Cressida say? She felt foolish for, surely, she should have known a practical reason existed for the relationship between Justin and his old mistress. He’d neither have sought out, nor been otherwise complicit in the kind of clandestine relationship Catherine was so keen to suggest.

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nbsp; Discovering the identity of Madame Zirelli’s daughter was what had preoccupied Justin the past three weeks—coupled, of course, with his, no doubt, very real confusion over Cressida’s erratic behavior.

A heavy silence had descended upon them. Cressida studied the woman in the glow of the fire. She looked a different person when leached of both sympathy and vibrancy, her eyes filled with such pain and sorrow, Cressida could not fail to consider their respective situations. Both had known Justin in the most intimate way. She had to acknowledge that; and yet, she felt neither disgust nor anger.

“What happened?” Cressida finally asked. It was none of her business, and yet it was very much her business when discovering the truth was the basis of what had nearly driven Justin and Cressida asunder. “If you want to tell me, I will listen.”

Madame Zirelli glanced at her, then closed her eyes. “Robert was the youngest son of a well-connected family in the local village.” She smiled, as if remembering happier times, opening her eyes to add, “My father had been employed as singing master to Robert’s older sisters. After my mother died, he’d taken up the offer of this illustrious Englishman and so we left Spain and came to live in a quiet English village. A very different life from the one we’d known.”

Cressida nodded. Madame Zirelli looked very foreign to her eyes with her raven black hair and Castilian features.

“Though I knew Robert by sight, it wasn’t until I was sixteen that we spoke for the first time, after he offered me a lift in his carriage in the midst of a snowstorm.” The memory transformed her face. “After that, we found many opportunities to meet. We were in love, but Robert was just nineteen. We were too young and powerless to direct our own lives so while Robert wanted to marry me, of course his father refused, while mine was furious at what he considered my trying to rise above my station.” Madame Zirelli glanced at Cressida, her gaze falling to the smooth silk of Cressida’s gown, to the curve of her belly, and her expression became bleak. “I tell you this to bolster the case that I was more than qualified to speak to you of the miseries we women face when we cannot control our ability to have children.”

Cressida understood. How many times had her heart battled with her fears of the consequences of succumbing to what she’d wished could be confined to an act that brought her husband and herself so close.

An act of loving intimacy that made them as one, as ordained by the church—and yet which so often meant...more than one.

Cressida said nothing. Oh, but she understood.

Madame Zirelli’s voice wavered. “For the sake of my father and, I believed at the time, Robert, I was coerced into not revealing to Robert that I was carrying his child, and I was sent away. Under directions from his mother, I told Robert I was taking up a position as a governess.” Her voice thickened with emotion. “Robert swore that in two years’ time, when he was twenty-one and of age, he would gallop into the grounds of my employer on a great white charger and whisk me off to the nearest church to get married. He said if I loved him enough to be patient for just two years, all would be well.”

Cressida bit her lip. “But all was not well. You were carrying his child.”

Bitterly, Madame Zirelli responded. “Robert’s mother, Lady Banks, arranged everything. I had no mother who could even tell me what to expect, much less forewarn me of the consequences of intimacy with Robert, and my father was the great family’s minion.” The fire crackled and a breeze rattled the windows. She took a painful breath. “For five months, I was all but imprisoned with a cottager and his wife, who gave me food and who had clearly been directed to monitor all correspondence. I wrote to Robert, begging him to help me, but I knew my letters never reached him and that his would never reach me. We were both minors and powerless against the will of his parents.”

Wearily she went on. “My daughter was removed from me when she was a few days old. Once again, Lady Banks arranged everything.” Her tone became bitter. “Robert’s mother had great plans for the illustrious match her son would make and I was not a contender. When I returned home to nurse my father, who was now very ill—from the trauma of my disgrace, I was told—Robert had joined his regiment on the peninsula. I never saw him again.”

Cressida shook her head. She’d heard tales of heartbreak like this before, and she knew the impossibility of a single woman keeping her infant under such circumstances, yet she had to ask the question. “Why seek information about your child now?”

Madame Zirelli thrust out her chin. “I was told my child had died. And even though I only half believed it, I knew there was little to be gained by tormenting myself when I had no means to support myself, much less an illegitimate child?”

“Your father—?” Cressida ventured.

Madame Zirelli’s eyes narrowed. “My father was very ill, but his employer graciously agreed to let him remain in the cottage they’d rented for him, on the condition all ties between us were cut. Father died three months later.”

Cressida glanced at the few meager possessions around the room, contemplating a woman’s vulnerability when she had no protector. Fortunate women like herself did not tend to dwell on such matters but rather to dismiss fallen women like Madame Zirelli as arbiters of their own fates, she thought guiltily .

“After struggling to support myself through my singing,” Madame Zirelli resumed, “I found myself, several years later, in the power of another man. Lord Grainger was my employer, to whom I gave myself willingly and recklessly one night, which meant”— she gave a small, ironic laugh—“that I was now to bear his child. The thought of being forced to give up another child I could not support was intolerable. I sought the offices of a woman who apparently”—her mouth quivered as she uttered the word—“dealt with such matters. A woman whose brutal butchery nearly killed me and left me scarred and infertile. An irony, since Lord Grainger made me his wife shortly afterward, then divorced me because of my inability to provide him with an heir...compounded by his fury at learning of what I had done.”

Cressida gasped.

Madame Zirelli gave an eloquent shrug. “For years, I have lived alone, accepting that my daughter was lost to me until, by chance, three months ago, I saw her. The resemblance to the Castilian side of my family was remarkable. So certain was I that I had seen my own daughter, and so horrified by the circumstances, I sought out your husband in the hope he would be able to trace her back- ground and confirm my suspicions.”

She indicated the table in the corner of the room by the window. Upon it was a small, portable writing desk. “All the answers to your questions are there,” she said. “You are free to examine any correspondence...anything at all...if it will satisfy you that your husband’s relationship with me has been purely on a business footing.”