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When she looked around these rooms, scores of memories swarmed her mind’s eye.
The scuffs on the floor near the armchairs from scooting them closer to the fire each winter as she and Robert shared a cup of tea and talked in the evenings.
The patches on the quilt that she had mended near the window because the light was best in the kitchen, and how Robert had laughed when he had seen her stitching while sitting on the counter.
The faint stain in the rug where Fraser had spilled gravy one night when they had too much whiskey while laughing over their exploits from when they were twenty and new to London.
Letty’s heart was full, but she felt bittersweet as she dished out portions of tansy pudding for dessert. The reality was that there wouldn’t be too many more nights with Fraser, who was settling down with Marcus soon enough, or with Robert, who would be looking toward a family of his own.
Trying to keep everything the same was like grasping at moonlight.
She had to accept that things were changing and allow herself to be swept up in the current of her own life, or else risk being left behind and drowning. Alone.
Her home wasn’t this suite of rented rooms, and it wasn’t Hawthorne House.
The home she wanted was quite simply wherever Anne was, whether it was gliding on ice skates on a wintry pond, or laughing in bed with a towel-wrapped brick at their feet, or dining at a table built for two dozen and smiling over a shared piece of cake.
She wanted a home made of intimate moments where they whispered truths to each other, where touches sizzled between them, and where the gentleness of their embrace eased them into sleep.
They belonged together, no matterwhere.
That was why she had never bothered renovating her rented rooms here. She hadn’t needed to. All she had needed was family, and that was exactly what she had with Fraser and Robert.
It was what she wanted to create with Anne.
How could she have expected Anne to make room in her life for her, when she had been too afraid to ask for it? Why had she been so hasty to assume that a duchess couldn’t change her ways, that she wouldn’t welcome Letty and her family? Hadn’t she witnessed Anne change so much over the months?
Why had she let herself be bound by fear, when she had refused to let fear dictate anything in her life?
Robert and Fraser were laughing together.
“Working with you isn’t the hardship I thought it would be,” Robert said cheerfully.
“Ah well, such is life. Sometimes you’re up, and sometimes you’re down. You’re naught more than a day laborer now instead of working to be a fancy solicitor with an office in Chancery. It’s a sad downgrade indeed.”
Robert laughed. “I have plenty of time to turn my fortunes around,” he said. “Maybe I can marry an heiress. Would you help me find one?”
Fraser rumpled Robert’s hair like he had when he’d been a boy. “I would indeed, if one would have you, lad. We will always be family, blood or no.”
“I wish you had been my father, Fraser.”
“Aye, I felt enough like it when I taught you how to drink whisky.”
“And smoke cigars.”
Letty raised a brow. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
Robert’s smile turned sheepish, and Letty joined in the laughter.
“I plan on going back to Hawthorne House soon,” she said, breaking into the conversation. “I am wondering if perhaps this time…I might stay there.”
Robert grabbed at his dish of pudding as he almost tipped it over, his ears reddening. “I am sorry for the things I said to you and the duchess, Mum. It was wretched of me.”
Fraser glared down at him. “What did you say, young man?”
He wilted beneath the glare. “Unkind things that I will not repeat, sir. Unkind, and untruthful in nature.”
“They weren’t all untruths,” Letty said mildly. “Anne and I have been having an affair. I am in love with her.”
