A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)(65)

“What did you do?” Kate asked.

“We closed up the house. Miss Elinor took the babe and left. Said she’d go back home to Derbyshire.”

Evan leaned toward Kate and murmured, “I suppose she never made it that far, or certainly someone would have heard. If only we could know what happened between the closing of Ambervale and your arrival at Margate.”

A sense of desperate bewilderment settled on Kate. She was heartily sick of lies and deceit. She wanted to do—and say—the right thing. But she didn’t know what the right thing was.

How could she explain to Evan about “Ellie Rose” and the Southwark bawdy house—in front of two solicitors and the housekeeper who’d held her mother in such obvious regard? Did it even matter? Perhaps Thorne’s story was irrelevant. The little girl he’d known might have been someone else.

The most maddening thing of all was knowing that her own brain was holding the truth hostage. The memories were in there. She knew they were. But she could never quite reach the end of that corridor.

“I wish I could tell you,” Kate said. “I wish, more than anything, that I had some clear memory of that time.”

“The good Lord must have taken her to heaven,” Mrs. Fellows said. “I can’t imagine Miss Elinor would part with her child for anything less. I’ve six of my own at home, and I’d go to war with the devil for each of them.”

“Of course you would, Mrs. Fellows,” Evan said.

Impulsively, Kate reached forward and squeezed the aging housekeeper’s wrist. “Thank you,” she said. “For taking such care of her. And of me.”

Mrs. Fellows fumbled for Kate’s hand. “Is it you, then? Are you Katherine? You’re his lordship’s daughter?”

Kate looked to Evan, and then to the solicitors. “I . . . I think so?”

Mrs. Bartwhistle and Mr. Smythe conferred. In the end, Mr. Bartwhistle answered for them both.

“Between the parish register,” he said, “the striking physical resemblance, and the statement of Mrs. Fellows with regards to the birthmark—we feel it safe to conclude in the affirmative.”

“Yes?” Kate asked.

“Yes,” said Mr. Smythe.

Kate sank into the depths of her armchair, overwhelmed. The Gramercys had burst into her life less than a fortnight ago. Evan, Lark, Harry, Aunt Marmoset—each of them had accepted her into the family, individually. But there was something about the dry, actuarial “Yes” from the solicitors that made the brimming cup of emotion overflow. She buried her face in her hands, overcome.

She was a lost child, found. She was a Gramercy. She had been loved.

She couldn’t wait to pay another call on Miss Paringham.

Mr. Bartwhistle went on, “We will draw up a statement for your signature, Mrs. Fellows. If you will be so kind as to offer a few more details. Were you present at the birth?”

“Oh, yes,” the housekeeper said. “I was present at the birth. And at the wedding.”

The wedding?

Kate’s head whipped up. She sought Evan’s face, but his expression was unreadable. “Did she just say ‘the wedding’?”

After Mrs. Fellows and the solicitors had gone, Kate sat with Evan in the small upstairs parlor. The musty parish register lay open before her on the table, flipped to a page just two leaves prior to her birth record.

“Simon Langley Gramercy,” she read aloud in a quiet voice, “the fifth Marquess of Drewe, married to Elinor Marie Haverford, the thirtieth day of January, 1791.”

No matter how many times she read the lines, she still found them hard to believe.

Evan rubbed his jaw. “Cutting it a bit close, weren’t they? Whatever scandal they began in, it seems Simon wanted to make things proper when it counted.”

Kate looked up at her cousin. “Have you known this all along?”

He regarded her steadily. “Can you forgive me? We always meant to tell you, of course, once we’d—”

“We? So Lark and Harry and Aunt Marmoset . . . they all know, too?”

“We all saw it together, that day at St. Mary of the Martyrs.” He reached for her hand. “Kate, please try to understand. We needed to be sure of your identity first, to avoid disappointing you, or . . .”

“Or tempting me to stretch the truth.”

He nodded. “We didn’t know you at all. We had no idea what kind of person you might be.”

“I understand,” Kate said. “Caution was necessary, and not only on your side.”

“That’s why you pretended an engagement to Corporal Thorne?”

She warmed with a guilty flush. How had he guessed? “It wasn’t a pretense. Not exactly.”

“But it was a convenience. Invented on the spot, right there in the parlor of the Queen’s Ruby. He wanted to protect you.”

She nodded, unable to deny it.

“I’ve long suspected as much. Don’t feel badly, Kate. When I think of how we surprised you that night . . . It was the strangest, most unpredictable situation. For us all. Both of us held information back. But we were only guarding ourselves and our loved ones as best we could.”

His words made her think of her argument with Thorne. She’d been so furious with him for withholding what he knew—or thought he knew—about her past. Hadn’t Evan committed the same exact transgression?