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“What?” His brain felt suddenly filled with fog, and he felt Katherine reach for him as she too gasped. With difficulty, he tried to breathe evenly again. “I don’t understand you, Mother. Why would you keep such a thing from me?” Anger like he’d never known surged through him. He felt a whole lifetime of angst at not knowing his true parentage was mocking him. A thousand voices were laughing in his ears.
“Don’t be angry, I beg of you! Please Jack!” his mother begged. “I couldn’t tell anyone you were mine after I found you again, having lost you for seven years and believing I’d never see you again. Seven years…almost the same length of time you’ve lost Diana,” she added in a tone of wonder before Jack snapped, “Did you not think it was important for me to know the truth? When I’ve wondered my entire life if my father was a thief, a murderer? I was so grateful to Odette for accepting me as I was and taking the chance that the blood of villains might taint the blood of the children we would have…” He stopped himself. He was with Katherine now. This was not the moment.
But…
“Katherine, did you know this?”
She shook her head. She was even paler than she had been. “I, too, loved you for who you were, Jack. I didn’t care who your parents were. But…Aunt Eliza? You are Jack’s real mother? I…I don’t understand?”
It was almost too much to comprehend. Diana was his daughter, and Eliza Patmore was his mother. He’d learned both these facts in the space of five minutes. He had kin. A real mother, and a real daughter. And both had been kept from him for seven years. He stood up. He didn’t know if he could remain.
“Please, Jack! Understand here what’s important, I beg of you!” His mother tugged at his coat. “I did what I did to protect you and keep you safe. Katherine did what she did at great self-sacrifice. It’s not like you to think only of yourself.”
His mother’s anger snapped him back to reality. He sat down with a thud. It was not often he was berated by anyone, but wasn’t it so true that he’d been treated with loving kindness and respect his entire life? Despite the fact his origins were mired in obscurity.
“Forgive me,” he muttered. “We all do what we think is right at the time.”
“Of course we do, Jack. And I was prepared to marry George’s uncle—commonly referred to as ‘odious George’ so his cousins, Ladies Quamby and Fenton tell me.” Her mouth quirked, but she went on quickly to answer his look of enquiry, “You were Young George’s playmate, and George Bramley was in residence with his uncle, Lord Quamby. I recognised you when I dragged you from the lake after all you children nearly drowned. I recognised the tiny sixth finger on your right hand. And I knew the only way I could be reunited with the child I’d had out of wedlock and that had been taken from me was to marry George Bramley. Odious George.” She paused. “So I thought at the time.”
“But you married Uncle Rufus instead…and he accepted me as his own.” Jack was struck by wonder at such generosity. “Why did you never tell me, Mama?”
She shook her head. “You grew up such a lively, happy child. And suddenly you were eighteen and about to cross the seas to make your own way in the world.” She looked down at her fingers intertwined in her lap, the knuckles white. “I never found the right opportunity,” she said, looking up. “You knew you were loved. And that seemed all that mattered.”
“It is all that matters.”
Katherine’s lashes were wet as she echoed his mother’s words.
And as Jack looked from Katherine, the girl he’d adored since she’d pledged her friendship to the foundling home lad, and his mother whom he’d loved as deeply as any son could, biological or adoptive, he knew there were no truer words.
Epilogue
Jack leaned down to pat Diana lightly on the back as the eight-year-old was about to run to the tea table that had been set up beneath the apple tree in honour of her birthday.
“Be nice to Uncle George, now, won’t you?” he cautioned. “He’s very proud of his new lavender coat that I heard you making fun of earlier, and I can’t tell you strongly enough how unkind it is to taunt people—for any reason.”
He smiled as Katherine glided up to his side, slipping her hand into his and resting her head on his shoulder to look down the grassy slope to where Aunt Antoinette had organised the family gathering.
Diana, who had paused at this instruction, put her hands on her hips. Her dark hair was brushed back and tied with a pink bow and two lace-edged pantalettes peeked beneath her new flounced pink and blue checked dress. The fashions were different but to Jack, his daughter was the image of her mother when she’d been a child.
“Can I tell him what I think about his new side curls, then?” Diana asked.
“Not if that means speaking the truth, darling
,” said Katherine causing Jack to raise an eyebrow as he waited for her to go on. Throughout the eight wonderful months of their marriage—which had taken place the day after Katherine’s twelve months of mourning had come to an end—she’d never ceased delighting him with her acute observations and candour.
And the depth of her love.
Diana looked puzzled.
“It’s called tact, darling,” her mother explained, glancing from Diana to Jack then back to Diana again. “Your father has always had so much more tact that I have. Tact is a skill and I suspect, if you’re like me, you’ll need to work on that skill for it might save you a lot of heartache throughout your life.”
Jack understood Katherine’s veiled meaning. If she’d not wounded George, how different things might have been.
“What is tact, Mama? Is it lying?”
“Only if it's to be kind. Yes, tact means being kind to people, even if you think they’re…”
“Silly? I think Uncle George’s side curls look very silly but Miss Burnside thinks he cuts quite a dash.” Diana’s eyes sparkled with mischief.
