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“Enjoyin’ the view?” she asked, walking up to stand beside him.
August looked down at her in surprise, though his smile was quick to spread across his lips. Those lines she’d grown to love so much caused his smile to appear ever brighter.
“I am,” he said.
She smiled, glancing over her shoulder as another member of the tour group shifted farther away.
“I s’pose we ought to follow ’em,” August said.
Livvy nodded, then paused. “May I speak with ye for a moment first?”
He stared down at her curiously. “Right ’ere?”
“I know ’tain’t the perfect place, and I know it be rainin’, but…” She glanced around them, ensuring once again that they were far enough from the few who remained before she continued. “I can’t keep this in much longer.”
The curiosity grew in his eyes.
She knew she should probably be more nervous than she was at that moment, and yet, she knew August. Better than she knew anyone else on the Mount. And she knew there was nothing he wouldn’t accept about her, nothing that he wouldn’t understand or allow her to explain before deciding his opinion about her.
“Be everythin’ well?” August asked, his smile having faded.
She nodded. “Yes. Well, ’twill be. I only…” She looked away and drew a deep breath. “I’ve been needin’ to share somethin’ with ye for quite some time now. So I’d like to share it with ye now.”
He nodded, his swallowing visible.
She needed to do this swiftly, if only to calm his own nerves.
“Ye recall when I mentioned bein’ the only one to see me mother ’fore she died?”
He nodded in silence.
She stared out at the sea as she continued. “I’ve been wantin’ to tell ye more ’bout what she said for quite a while now, ’specially after last night, and, well…I thought it be time for ye to know that I might not be who I be said to be.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.”
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
August listened intently, his heartrate rising as Livvy continued.
When she’d first said she had something to say to him, he could’ve sworn he was going to be called out in that moment and told that she knew all about his lies and deceit.
But now, he wasn’t entirely sure.
“Ye see,” Livvy whispered, “Mother told me that…that me father might not be me father after all.”
August stared, the breath from his lungs expelling as surprise shook his senses.
Livvy watched him closely, clearly trying to gauge his reaction. As such, August drew a measured breath and merely raised his brow. “That must ’ave been quite a shock to ye,” he replied, not knowing what else to say.
Livvy, not Mr. May’s daughter after all? Of all the terrible things to be told just as one’s mother lay dying. How had Livvy coped?
“It was a shock,” Livvy agreed, “’specially at the age o’ ten. She told me that she’d…” She paused, her cheeks turning a bright shade of red. “That she’d been with a number o’ men on the mainland ’fore I was born—all without Father’s knowledge—and she couldn’t be certain who me real father was.”
August scrambled for words, actions, prayers, anything to respond to what she’d just revealed. But what could be said to account for how he felt about her suffering through such a horrifying betrayal—all while she was just a child?
Before he could think of a response, she continued. “That be the real reason I stayed away from others. I was already hearin’ cruel words ’bout ’er takin’ ’er own life. I couldn’t ’ave handled it if they’d heard word o’ Mother’s admission.”
