Page 133 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

Honora wiped her face quickly. “Martha.”

Her eyes moved from Honora’s face to the paper in her hand. She came into the room and closed the door behind her.

“What happened?”

Honora looked down at the record. There seemed no point anymore in choosing her words carefully. She told her everything, including the full truth about how Honora herself had ended up at Belgrave and how Cecily was actually a member of the Harcourt family.

Martha listened without interrupting. When Honora finished, she sat down slowly in the chair across from her, and for a moment, she said nothing at all.

Then she nodded, once, as though a great many loose threads had finally been drawn together.

“That explains quite a bit.”

Honora looked up. “Like what?”

“The dowager’s face, that first day Cecily arrived.” Martha’s gaze went distant. “She was whiter than the linens when His Grace held up that shawl tucked around the baby. Wilfred too, standing in the corridor not saying a word about it, when Wilfred always has something to say.” She shook her head slowly. “And about fifteen other things I have been turning over for weeks and could never make fit together.”

“You suspected something.”

“I suspected a great deal and understood nothing.” Martha’s mouth curved, though there was no real humor in it. “Now it fits.”

Honora looked down at the record again. “Did you know her? Celestine?”

“No.” Martha’s voice gentled. “I came here after. Whatever they did, they did it before my time, and nobody in this house has ever once mentioned it.” She paused. “That is its own kind of deception, is it not? Almost thirty years, and not one word from anyone.”

Honora had not thought of it that way. A secret was one thing. Thirty years of an entire household agreeing to keep it was something else entirely.

Martha studied her for a moment. “How are you?”

Honora opened her mouth to answer and found she had nothing ready. “I do not know yet.”

Martha nodded, as if that were the exact answer she had expected. “I believe that is perfectly reasonable.”

Honora gave her a weak, grateful smile. “Thank you for caring.”

“Someone must care for the one who cares for everyone else.”

Honora looked at Martha, stunned. But the cook simply shrugged, as if she had said the most logical thing in the world and did not need a response. That was just as well, because Honora had none.

***

That afternoon, once Cecily had taken a little milk and gone back to sleep, Honora sat at the small writing table in her room with a fresh sheet of paper.

She had written to Celestine many times since the accident, each letter filled with things she could not say aloud to anyone living and things she could no longer say to the sister she had loved so fiercely. But that letter felt different before she had written a single word.

The last of them, she thought, understanding it was true as soon as she thought it.

Celestine,

I know who you were now. Not who I thought you were. Who you actually were.

You were born at Belgrave. Your mother is the duchess, your father the late duke. They sent you away when you were three days old because of the way you looked, and Mother and Father raised you as though none of that had ever happened, and neither of us ever knew.

I am so sorry I did not know sooner. But it does not change anything. You were my sister before I read the birth record, and you are my sister after it. Nothing in that paper changes the fact that you taught me to braid hair in the garden and laughed at everything I said, even when it was not funny. You were the best mother I have ever seen, and I think it will always break my heart that you will not get to watch Cecily grow up.

Cecily is a Belgrave. She has your family’s name whether anyone writes it down or not. I think you would have found that funny, in the end. All the secrets, and here she is anyway, being loved exactly the way you always said she deserved to be.

I miss you every day and will keep missing you, no matter what happens next. And I still love you for as many reasons as there are stars in the sky.