“It’s not her death that gets to me. It’s… Oh, I don’t even know where to begin. It all gets so muddled in my head, and I haven’t talked about it for years. Father forbade me from telling Land the truth or at least all of it. He knows bits of course but…”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Archer sipped on his tea.
“She was having an affair. I spent years thinking that my bad behavior was the reason she left in the storm. That if I had just listened to her, she wouldn’t have done it.”
“I was six. And I woke up, terrified of the thunder. Land can’t have been more than a few months old, and my father was away on some business trip.”
Lydia took a sip of her tea and then continued, “I kept asking her to comfort me, and she kept trying to tell me to go to bed and thenhearrived. Jared Nightingale.”
Archer’s eyes widened. “The Rake of Studmarsh? I heard he died in a carriage crash with some—Oh.”
“It was my mother. They were only a few miles from the estate. The storm blew down a tree, and it landed on the carriage. I’m told she died instantly, but he was dragged by the horses for another twenty miles. An unpleasant way to die.” Her voice was icy cold. “My father always acted as though he had bewitched my mother into falling in love with him. That his rakish charms were what led to her death. But he did not want to see the truth.”
“Men seldom do when they are in love.” Archer’s jaw clenched.
“Her letter said that she was leaving. That she would never be back. She said she had done her duty; she had given him an heir and a daughter. She considered her debt paid.” Lydia let out a mirthless laugh. “It was a marriage of convenience, you see, but then he fell in love with her, and she… she fell in love with a rake. Do you know what the last thing she said to me was?”
Archer shook his head.
“I’ll be right here; you go see to your brother.” Lydia’s voice broke. “She lied to me. I chased her in the rain, slipped in the mud. I screamed and begged her to come back, and she didn’t so much as look at me.”
“You deserved better.” Archer’s voice was hard, and he fought down an urge to pull Lydia close to him and bare his teeth at the world. “No child deserves that.”
“We rarely get what we deserve, just what we are given.” Lydia gave him a weak smile. “From what your sisters have told me, you did not deserve the mother you had either.”
“It seems neither of us had particularly good mothers.”
“No. But I am glad your sisters had you, someone to protect them.”
Not all of them.Archer’s jaw tightened. “You should have had someone to protect you. How could your father let you think it was your fault?”
“I never told him. My mother leaving broke him. I was not about to add to his pain with my own self-indulgence.”
“You were a child who was abandoned by her mother. It was his job to indulge your pain.”
“He did what he could. He was never unkind to me, and he never refused my help with running the estate. To be honest, he welcomed my contributions, treated me like a partner more than a daughter.” The pride in Lydia’s voice kept Archer from saying that she should have been able to be both. “I often wondered if it would have been worse if she stayed.”
“Trust me, it would not have been.” Archer thought of his own mother, of the times he had wished her dead and the shame he had felt at such dark thoughts. The shame that had died with Katherine.
“Perhaps not.” Lydia shrugged. “I can’t really complain though. Because of her, I got to do all manner of things that young ladies don’t usually get to do. Do you know, some of my father’s most successful business ventures were my idea? While other girls were out preparing for their debut, I was helping my father check over legal contracts and plan our finances for the coming year. Other girls were pursuing beaus, and I was looking after my father.”
The pride was ebbing from Lydia’s voice, and Archer thought he heard a tinge of regret. “You sacrificed a lot for your family.”
Lydia shrugged and made a dismissive gesture, but Archer caught her hand, turning her face to his, forcing her to meet his eyes. Her brown eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and it tore at his heart.
“Do not make light of what you gave up, Lydia.” Archer’s voice was an insistent growl. “Your brother and your father may not have seen it, but I do. You may have loved the business, but it should never have had to come at the expense of the things all girls should get to experience.”
“I didn’t want those things.”
“You didn’t want them, or you didn’t think you deserved them?” Archer’s searched her eyes for the truth.
Her breath caught. “I don’t know.”
Somewhere a clock chimed. It was four o’clock in the morning. Archer moved away from Lydia and jerked his head towards the stairs. “We should go to bed.”
Lydia hesitated, and as she winced at the sound of thunder, Archer realized that she was still afraid. Without thinking, he held out a hand to her. “Why don’t you come to bed with me?”
Lydia’s eyes widened, and Archer’s face flushed. “Not like that. I simply meant that you are welcome to stay with me. You can sleep in my bed, and I will sleep on the chaise. That way you will have company for the storm.”
