Page 128 of The Marriage Method

Nell forced herself to look at her. Hurt and compassion warred within her breast. “Why did you do it?” she asked.

“Is it you?” Lady Belwood asked in return, her voice the veriest whisper. “Is it really you?”

Nell didn’t deny it. “I recognized your perfume when I called on you with Mrs. Royce,” she said. “I still remember it. And that isn’t all.”

Lady Belwood had gone white about the mouth. She was clenching hard to her embroidery.

“I remember that you stopped coming,” Nell said. “That the servants left me at the gates of the Academy without explanation. Without so much as a name. I deserved neither, I suppose. I was nothing to you.”

Lady Belwood’s unfocused gaze fell to the handkerchief in her clenched hand. Blood was seeping into the white fabric. She loosened her hold on it, revealing the distressing sight of her sewing needle sunk partway into her thumb. She stared at it blankly. “Oh dear,” she said in a queer, hollow voice. “I seem to have pricked myself.”

Nell sprang up in alarm. Tearing a scrap of muslin from one of the squares of fabric in her workbag, she hastened to Lady Belwood’s side. She carefully removed the needle from her ladyship’s thumb and used the makeshift bandage to bind the wound.

All the while, Lady Belwood sat quiet, betraying no sign of pain. Nell wondered if the revelations about the past had sent the woman into shock.

“It happens often in the workroom at the Academy,” Nell remarked for lack of anything better to say. “A result of handling needles too cavalierly. You must rinse the wound at the first opportunity. And some carbolic wouldn’t go amiss if you—”

“I have thought of you every day for the last eighteen years,” Lady Belwood whispered.

Nell’s lungs squeezed. For an instant, she couldn’t breathe. She briskly tied off the bandage. Smoothing her skirts, she withdrew back to her chair, grateful to restore the distance between them. “You were afraid, for every one of them, I daresay, lest I reappear and spoil your happy life.”

“I was afraid,” Lady Belwood admitted. “Afraid of being found out. Afraid I had done wrong by you.”

Nell sat down. “One fear necessarily outweighed the other.”

“I was but nineteen,” Lady Belwood said. “The man—your father…We were in love. He had promised to marry me.”

“But he didn’t. Obviously.”

“He died.”

Nell’s blood rushed in her ears. It occurred to her that Lady Belwood may not be the only one of them experiencing some degree of shock. “What?” she asked softly.

“It was typhoid fever,” Lady Belwood said. “He went so quickly. He never knew I was in trouble. I was left to deal with it on my own, with only my guardian to counsel me—an aged maiden aunt, without an ounce of compassion for my predicament. She made arrangements for you to go to a farmer’s wife in Shropshire. The woman had a dozen children already. You’d have been a drudge.”

“Is that why you kept me for a time?” Nell said.

“I couldn’t part with you. Not when—” Lady Belwood stopped. She continued with an effort. “Your father was the love of my life, you see. You must understand what that means to a girl. Yours is a love match, is it not?”

Nell blinked. “How do you—”

“I’ve observed you together,” Lady Belwood said. “You appear to deal with each other with a good deal of tenderness.”

Nell briefly dropped her gaze, thinking of her husband. One wouldn’t know it to look at him, but yes. Miles could be excessively tender. He had been so last night. Rather fiercely so.

“I love you,” he’d said to her.

The memory of it made Nell’s heart contract. “It is,” she acknowledged. “That is…we do.”

“Then you do understand,” Lady Belwood said.

Nell would rather she didn’t. She didn’t want to think of Miles catching a fever and dying. The very idea of it was enough to depress her spirits.

Lady Belwood slowly folded her bloodstained handkerchief. “I thought, if I kept you somewhere…”

“That you could pay me discreet visits until I came of age?”

“I don’t know what I imagined the future would hold for you. I was only a child myself.”