“I will wait for as long as you need to feel comfortable, and I promise I shall not judge you. I am only here to listen.”
Juliet’s shoulders sagged, and Lydia got the impression that this was what Juliet needed most of all, someone to listen to her sad tale. She had been carrying this secret with her for a long time, and it must have taken so much out of her. Juliet pinched the bridge of her nose, and with a heavy sigh, she launched into her story.
“Lord Harry and I were planning to have a future together. The Duke would never allow it. There was a terrible argument, and in the end, Lord Harry said that he would be willing to renounce everything for me. I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t allow him to face ruin. Especially because, well, we got a little carried away with our feelings.” She smiled as she said this. “I found out I was with child, and I knew it would never be tolerated. I took myself away. I left Lord Harry because I knew that it would only ruin him. He’d told me what happened to his father, and how everything was precarious. I would not become his undoing.”
Lydia listened patiently, still processing all the information. Her stomach churned, and she wrung her hands together. She had never imagined that the meeting with John’s mother would end up being like this, but the dots were being connected in her mind. The unexpected child, the resemblance to Victor, why John had been left at the townhouse. It was as though an artist was painting a picture in her mind, and it was being revealed with every stroke.
“But you were with child. He would have looked after you. Even Victor…”
“I would have been sent away, or the baby would have been taken from me. There would have been whispers… you know what people are like. And Harry… I did not want him to feel as though he needed to be with me because of the baby. I wanted him to be free to make his own decision. I just thought it would be easier this way…”
“But it can’t have been easy. Did you have anyone to support you?”
“No,” Juliet said. “I had friends, but all of them are in the acting profession. It is hardly the most stable life. I moved from house to house, and I kept working until I started to show. It was impossible to cast me after that. I did some odd jobs for people, but it quickly became clear to me that I would not be able to offer the child a good life. I had to watch my friend’s children picking scraps of bread off the street, and I didn’t want that. Not for my son. Not for Harry’s son. I changed my mind and decided that he would be better off with Harry. He would have a better life in a noble home.”
Juliet sniffed, stretching her body and clearing her throat. She wiped her eyes again. Relating this story was clearly taking its toll on her, and Lydia could not help but be affected by the emotion on display. However, despite Juliet being a skilled actress, Lydia got the sense of earnestness from her words. There was something about it that simply could not be faked.
“I took what money I had and enlisted the help of a maid. I didn’t dare approach the house myself lest anyone recognize me. Even I am not such a good actor to avoid that attention. I told her towrap him in a blanket so that Lord Harry would know that the baby was of good breeding. I wanted him to have something of his own family. She was supposed to put him in Harry’s room, but she must have become confused.”
Lydia listened, stunned.
“So, the baby is Lord Harry’s.”
“Yes. How is he? How are they both?” Juliet asked, clasping her hands in front of her heart. Although she had made efforts to wipe away the tears, they came with such energy that it was impossible to stem the flow. There was a desperation about her voice and her manner, and it was clear that she had been worried about both John and Lord Harry.
In that moment, almost all of the resentment that Lydia had created towards John’s mother was mollified. It had been easier to hate a shadow, but now that she knew Juliet’s face and could hear her words and especially hear how Victor had put her in an impossible position… it was easy to feel compassionate towards her.
“They are both well although Lord Harry doesn’t know that the child is his.”
“What? He… I thought he would know. I thought… I left a message intended for him.”
“That message never arrived. I found the child, and then Victor walked into the room. Soon enough the entiretonmisconstrued the situation, and we were forced to marry, passing the child off as our own. It has not been easy.”
“No… no I can’t imagine it has been.” Juliet ran a hand through her hair and started gnawing on her lower lip.
“He is happy though. And he’s healthy. We took him away to Brighton, and the coastal air agrees with him. All the maids dote on him, and even Victor has warmed to him. As for me… well… I have treated him as if he were my own. I called him John.”
“It is a strong name,” Juliet said and seemed to get even small, as though she was shrinking before Lydia’s eyes. “You must think so little of me. You must think I am wretched.”
“I think… I think that you were placed in a difficult position, and you did what you thought was best for you and your child,” Lydia said.
“I never intended to cause trouble. I thought that Harry would find the baby, and it would be difficult for him, yes, but natural. Father and son would be together, and he could do more for him than I…”
“I’m afraid it did not work out that way.”
“I am sorry. I can only thank you for being an angel and looking after my son. I know it must have taken a great deal from your life.”
Lydia wanted to say that she didn’t have a choice, but that was not true. Caring for John came naturally to her, and it was something she wanted to do, just as now she felt a need to care for Juliet.
Lydia immediately felt ashamed for the resentment and enmity that she had allowed to bloom in her heart. All of her life those feelings had rarely sprouted, and yet in this instance, it had been easy to hate the imagined shadow of the woman who had left John behind. Lydia had assumed that she would be a mean-spirited, cruel thing. Callous and hard, without a shred of decency in her heart because how could anyone who possessed a heart turn her back on her child?
Yet now that Juliet was standing before her, Lydia understood better than she ever had before. Juliet hadn’t left John behind because she didn’t care. She’d left him because she did love, because she wanted the best for him. She had carved a huge gash in her heart, suffering the greatest wound that any woman could suffer, sacrificing all she had to give her child the best life.
A child who would never have known her.
Lydia’s heart trembled. She too had thought about how John would grow up without remembering her, and in this way, she and Juliet were reunited. Juliet looked bedraggled. Confessing her story had taken all her energy, and now, she looked limp andhollow. Her eyes were dark, and there was barely any life to her at all.
Lydia took her hands.
