Adrian shook his head. “Will you please answer me?”
“Well, you said you wanted a long, slow falling in love. Getting a bit impatient, aren’t you?”
He couldn’t help himself. He laughed. Then he took a step toward her and wrapped her in his arms.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. I love you. I love you. I want you, and only you. I want you forever.”
And then he was kissing her, laughing and holding her, with the sun all around them.
* * *
“I’m sorry it has taken so long.”
Theresa stood beside Judith in the solicitor’s office. They had been ushered into a side room and asked to wait. The room they were in was lined with books, books, books, and more books. Oddly, however, it smelled nothing like the General Register Office had smelled. That had stunk of must and ink. This was a slightly more pleasant smell—old paper and tea.
“I didn’t mean to make you wait several weeks to see the letters—such as they are—but between Camilla’s hearings and everything else…”
“Of course,” Theresa said. “You’ve been busy. And I’ve enjoyed going about the country with Camilla by train. We’ve been to ever so many places. I get to pretend that I’m a lady while I’m doing it.”
“Theresa, you are a lady.” Judith said this with a smile and a shake of her head. “I do wish you’d believe it.”
Let them call you whatever they want, the dowager marchioness had told Theresa. Just keep the truth in your head, and you don’t need to tell them they’re wrong.
“I suppose,” Theresa answered dubiously.
For some reason, this just made Judith look all the more determined. “Whatever it takes, Tee. I’ll give you whatever you need until you can finally believe it.”
Someday, Theresa suspected she and her sister were going to have a giant row—larger than their usual, regular-sized rows—about the whole lady thing. Not today.
The door opened behind them, and an errand boy entered with a folder in hand. “Here they are, my ladies.”
My ladies again.
But it didn’t matter what the errand boy called her, if he gave her what she wanted. The folder he handed over was exceptionally thin.
Theresa eyed it askance. “Anthony has been gone for almost a decade, and that’s all his correspondence?”
Judith just rolled her eyes. “Nobody will ever accuse our brother of being an avid letter-writer. I did tell you they were letters—such as they are. I’ll leave you to them, then.”
Letters, such as they are turned out to be a good description of her elder brother’s terse missives. The first could be summarized as, “hope you are all well, I’m not dead yet,” spread over four sentences with a handful of connecting words.
The second was a little better. He made stupid excuses for his inattention to his family, and said unbelievable things about love. Ha. If he really loved them as much as he claimed, he would write more. Still, Theresa immediately recognized the part Judith had feared would set her off.
When she’s old enough to understand, tell Tee-spoon that I send her all my love, as does Pri.
Theresa stopped reading, her heart giving a sudden twinge. Priya was the name of Theresa’s imaginary sister.
When Theresa was a child, and her father had first been convicted of treason, she remembered throwing tantrums that had scared even her with their ferocity, demanding that her sister—not Judith, not Camilla, but her other sister—appear.
They had scared her at every moment up until this one. She remembered believing with every fiber in her being that she had actually had a sister named Priya.
It had taken her years to be convinced that no such person had ever existed. That her memories were fallible, stupid things. That she’d invented a sibling to pass time on a boring voyage, and then convinced herself that she did exist out of sheer obstinacy.
Judith had needed to show her their family Bible with marriage lines and birth dates and everything. Finally, at the age of eight, Theresa had accepted that it had all been in her imagination.
Looking at those words on the page—seeing Anthony write the name out like that—was a blow. Anthony was no doubt an idiot about a great many things, but he would know that his fifteen-year-old sister wouldn’t want to play a game remembering an imaginary sister. Anthony communicated nothing at all in these stupid letters. No pleasantries. No information. Just excuses. And still he’d mentioned Pri.
There was only one possible explanation. He wasn’t telling her about an imaginary sister.
At fifteen, Theresa understood something she had missed at eight. A family Bible, with marriage lines and birth dates, was not proof that her father had not sired another child. Marriage had nothing to do with that.
She read the line again.
…send her all my love, as does Pri.
Judith must have assumed that Anthony was humoring Tee’s long-ago imagination. God, for all that Judith was older, she was in many, many ways so incredibly naïve.
For the first time in ten years, Tee realized the truth. She had been lied to. Not on purpose, not by Judith, no—but she had been lied to. For almost a decade, she had been told that her memory was false. That her mind was dangerous. That she had constructed a fable and believed it, and that she needed to be wary of every last thought that she had, lest they lead her astray.
Her father had been in India. Theresa could fill in the explanation that Judith had missed. Her father had had a mistress—of course he had—and his mistress had a daughter, because that was what happened. That daughter had, for some reason, been on the journey that the three-year-old Theresa had embarked upon.
Theresa had been allowed to meet her because she had been deemed too young to understand the truth. And when she had come back and cried about her missing sister, everyone who knew the truth had lied to her. Her father. Anthony.
They were all liars.
Theresa read the line once more. …As does Pri. Oh, that hurt, to hear that Pri was sending Theresa love. Her sister remembered her. She hadn’t spent all this time believing Theresa was a figment of her imagination.
It was one thing to discover that her father and brother had betrayed their country. It was another to discover that he’d betrayed her. He had allowed her to believe her mind was her enemy her entire life.
Anger came first—anger at Anthony, then at Judith, then at herself, for those years when she’d believed that something was wrong with her. Anger hit her like a wave, so powerful that she almost screamed with the heat of it.
Disgust followed. She was disgusted with her father. She was disgusted with Anthony. She was disgusted with the entirety of England, a country that wanted her to be a lady, when being a lady meant closing her eyes to what was happening around her.
Finally, there came one last emotion—a memory that she’d never quite been able to push away. That feeling that someone loved her. Someone understood her. She had a sister who knew her and had loved her. She had a sister who knew what it was like to never grow up to be a lady. She had a sister who had been abandoned by the family in a
more dramatic and painful way than Camilla.
Theresa was the only one who would care that she existed.
Judith was right. Theresa had grown up. She’d grown out of her tantrums. She’d gained nothing from the ugly rage that she’d indulged in as a child.
Theresa had a sister who needed finding, and Theresa was good at finding sisters.
Now, all she needed was a plan.
Ten minutes later, Judith returned to the room. “What did you think?”
Theresa smiled. She wasn’t a lady, but she had learned to play one. Now, with possibilities boiling in her mind, pretense had become necessary.
“He really is the worst correspondent,” Theresa said dryly.
They laughed together, and Judith didn’t realize.
Theresa could wait as long as necessary. All she had to do was hide the fact that she was done with England. She was utterly done.
* * *
Adrian returned with Camilla to her sister’s home just before dusk. Camilla conducted Adrian to a parlor, then disappeared for a moment as she sent for her entire family to join them.
Adrian couldn’t help but be nervous. Of all the ridiculous situations to find himself in. But Camilla came back, drifting to stand by him, and she introduced him to her family, one by one, as they entered.
Lady Ashford was the last to enter the room. She looked at Adrian in confusion, then at Camilla, beaming by his side.
“What is going on?” she asked.
“I have delightful news,” Camilla said, all smiles. “Mr. Adrian Hunter asked me to marry him—and I said yes.”
Lady Ashford blinked. She looked at the two of them once more. Adrian reached out and took hold of Camilla’s hand.
“Oh, for the love of goslings,” she said. “We spent weeks on the annulment. Why?”