Page 2 of The Vanished Sister

“I’ve never been a prophet,” said Justina with perfect equanimity.

She poured two cups of tea and offered Joanna one. Somehow, next to the elegant simplicity of her visiting dress, the Sèvres set, Joanna’s pride and joy, with its double-walled surfaces that resembled Chinese windows, suddenly seemed too much. Too much fretwork, too much gilding, too elaborate and fussy for any actual use.

Joanna perspired in her stiff new frock.

“Congratulations on the baby, by the way,” said Justina. She opened her reticule and took out a wrapped present. “I’ve a gift for her for when she’s a little older.”

“Oh,” said Joanna. She’d never prepared gifts for Justina’s children—they would have been returned unopened.

The bow atop the box was made of pink ribbon, the double loops small but perfect. “Thank you,” said Joanna. “I’m sure Penelope would like it.”

“Have you thought about how she’ll be introduced to the world? Will the duke marry you for her sake?”

It was not unheard of for a man to marry his mistress at the end of his life. That and an act of Parliament would ensure Penelope’s legitimacy.

Joanna shook her head. The duke’s two eldest sons, as a condition for allowing Joanna to live at Eastleigh Park, had extracted a promise from their father that he would not marry her on his deathbed—or before that.

“Then have you found someone to marry you, someone willing to sign his name to a marriage license and claim Penelope as his own?”

Joanna again shook her head. Between the baby and the duke’s health, she hadn’t had time to think properly, let alone seek out such a man, a man she would have had to trust without reserve.

She loved Penelope more than air and water, but she could never envision the child’s future without a stab of anxiety. Her father held one of the greatest hereditary titles in the country, her half brothers were highborn, the eldest a future duke himself. But where would Penelope belong? Could she ever achieve the kind of simple respectability that Joanna had given up when she’d decided on the stage?

“What if you say that she’s Cousin Gordon’s orphaned daughter whom you’ve taken in out of charity?”

Their cousin Gordon Redmayne’s child had been born a few months before Penelope. The entire family, however, had succumbed to the wave of influenza that struck Britain not long after.

That would be a convenient solution but Joanna did not feel a leap of joy. In fact, she shuddered at the thought of being called Cousin Joanna by her own child.

“Wouldn’t people wonder why I’m the one charged with Cousin Gordon’s baby when you’re right there?” she asked rather weakly.

Justina sighed.

With that trace of melancholy, her beauty only became more striking, the Taj Mahal under the glow of moonlight, perhaps.

Once upon a time, Joanna had considered Justina’s looks a little one-note. Once upon a time, she’d considered Justina herself a little one-note, obsessed with everything around her appearing just so. But the passage of the years had endowed Justina with a stillness that made Joanna want to ascribe to her a great wisdom to go along with that great beauty.

But should she? Had Justina ever been sage, or only ruthlessly practical?

“Why are you so concerned for the well-being of my child, Justina? What is it that you really want?”

Justina took a sip of her tea. “Have I ever stood in the way of what you wanted, Joanna?”

“No.” That much Joanna had to acknowledge: Justina could have leaked Joanna’s plans to their grandfather, and Joanna would have been racked with guilt for disappointing the dear old man.

“And I would have left you and your child alone. I’m happy that you’re still alive, Jo, happy that your dreams haven’t destroyed you. But remember what Grandpa used to tell us? All opportunities carry costs. The cost of my marriage is that my husband also has a say in such matters and he does not wish for his children to have an illegitimate cousin.”

Joanna wanted to lash out—one could not catch illegitimacy. But unfortunately she understood all too well how being related to a fallen woman affected a sister—somehow it was always the mothers and the sisters who had to answer for the choices of a woman gone astray, and bear the damage to their own reputation.

“If having a demi-mondaine for a sister did not prevent your marriage to Mr. Carstairs of Noble House, how will Penelope lessen your children’s exalted stature?”

Justina did not answer immediately.

She’d used to be more voluble and forthcoming with her opinions, especially on the harebrained things Joanna was often up to. In the silence that rippled and warped, Joanna heard everything Justina chose not to speak aloud.

Have you ever felt the loneliness of a woman not to the manor born, standing before the senior servants of a great house? Have you ever felt lost in a web of bloodlines and other connections that stretches across centuries and half the country? And have you ever feared that your child would be regarded as the lesser, because you were once a woman of no consequence whatsoever?

Or were those Joanna’s own fears echoing in her head?