The Knight (Endgame #2)(35)

I’m pleased at the small show of her old spirit. I perch on the other armchair. “Are you sure it’s a good day to visit? I’m sorry I dropped by unannounced. I really can come back.”

“Nonsense. A child of Helen Lancaster is always welcome here.”

My mother’s maiden name. A smile touches my lips. “You were the best of friends, weren’t you?”

She nods toward the leather-bound book clutched in my lap. “If you’ve been reading that, then you know as much. There was no better woman than your mother.”

Grief weighs down my heart that I didn’t know her better. She was the person who cuddled me when I got sick, the person who taught me how to apply lipstick when I begged at age eight. I knew her as a mother, but I never got to know her as a woman.

“Can you…tell me about her?”

A sigh of acquiescence, fond and sad. “Of course she was beautiful. I’m sure people have told you.”

I nod. “We had her portrait above the fireplace.”

“You look like her. I’m sure people have told you that, too.” She studies me with a critical eye. “You’re softer than her. Sweeter. She had a hardness about her.”

I remember that much, the way she could be kind and stern at the same time.

Nina’s dark eyes turn distant. “She was smart, which you weren’t supposed to be back then as a girl. Maybe not even now. With a sharp wit. You didn’t want to get on her bad side.”

That makes me laugh unaccountably. That there was some fault of hers, something still endearing to those who loved her. “Were you ever on her bad side?”

“Oh, plenty. Her family didn’t like me. Said I was a bad influence. They were right.” A husky laugh. “I was what people called a hell-raiser back then.”

“I bet you could still raise hell if you wanted,” I say kindly.

She grins, unrepentant. “True enough. But I think Helen wanted to break out, you know? She had been good for so long, done all the things her mother asked. And she was looking down the barrel of a life as a society wife. When would she have time to be herself except right then? About the same age you are now, I think.”

An ache beats in my heart, steady and familiar. I know what it feels like to do what’s expected of me, to see the future stretch in front of me. To have fleeting moments of freedom.

I hold up the diary. “I read about the canoe.”

“Oh yes. Her father was furious when we dragged ourselves out of the lake, dripping wet and laughing. Who ever heard of a canoe catching fire? In the middle of the water, no less.” She shakes her head, chuckling. “At least it destroyed the evidence of what we were doing.”

Hesitation traps my next words, but I need to know. “There was a man she talked about. Someone who wasn’t my father.”

Grief presses down on her. “Yes, dear.”

“Do you know…do you know who it was?”

Nina studies the fire, rubbing her hand as if her joints ache. “Are you sure you want to go down that path?”

“Daddy warned me away, too. Told me not to read the rest of the diary.”

And now that I think about it, Gabriel Miller had warned me. Did you consider that I might be protecting you? You might not like what you find inside. I hadn’t believed him then, but he might have been telling the truth. What poison does this book hold inside?

Nina’s dark eyes reflecting the flames. “Do you know that I loved your mother?”

That’s what Charlotte said downstairs. “I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do. I loved her. Not as a friend.”

My heart beats faster. Not the way that I care about Harper. “You mean, romantically?”

She nods.

“Did she love you back?”

“I think she did in her own way.” Her gaze is direct. “We were lovers. It would have been scandalous back then, but no one suspected. Not even her parents thought we were anything but friends.”

I don’t think Tanglewood high society has changed that much. It would be scandalous now. “Wow. I never knew that. She didn’t—”

She didn’t mention that she was intimate with Nina, but maybe she was being careful. But then again, she said things her parents wouldn’t have approved of. So why hadn’t she mentioned it?

Sorrow and acceptance flit across Nina’s face. “It didn’t mean the same thing to her. It was a way to rebel against her parents. Something to do for fun.”

“No, I’m positive she cared about you.”

“Oh, she did. But I loved her with all my heart and soul. I knew we’d both have to get married, but we’d still be friends. No one would suspect what we did after, either, and I wanted it to continue.”

I blush, feeling strange talking about my mother’s private relations. Love is one thing. Sex is something else. Gabriel Miller taught me that. “She didn’t?”

She gestures toward the diary in my hands. “Not once she met your mystery man.”

“She loved him?”

A nod. “All the way. She thought about running away with him.”

“And he wasn’t my daddy.” I already know from the diary entries, but I need to be sure. This must be what Daddy didn’t want me to find. I know she didn’t run away with him. She married Daddy, after all. But something happened to make her stay.