Singing quietly to herself, the duchess collected a lily of the valley and added it to the small hole she’d made in the earth. “There,” she said as she made a small circular mound in the soil around the plant. “They prefer partial shade, they do. Of course, it will grow in full sun with water, but there’s no good in forcing the poor thing to dwell in a place it does not wish to be. Don’t you agree?” She gave Julia a look, and Julia froze.
Those words pinning her to the place she sat.
There’s no good in forcing the poor thing to dwell in a place it does not wish to be.
Her Grace may as well have been speaking about Julia herself. And yet…
“I am not who I claimed to be.” She blurted out that truth before her selfish desire for more compelled her to silence.
The duchess continued working, not so much as pausing in the work she’d begun, planting another lily. And Julia was caught between a place of wishing Adairia’s aunt would say something and also nothing at all. And yet, Julia wanted this exchange over so that she could have closure to this situation, even if it meant a stint in Newgate. Anything to be free of the lie she’d let herself perpetuate against Adairia’s family. Taking another breath into her lungs, she spoke again. “I said… I’m not who I claimed to be. I’m not… Adairia.”
The duchess stared at her for a moment and then chuckled. “I’m not so old that there’s a thing wrong with my hearing,” she drawled. “At least not yet.” She held Julia’s gaze. “And I know,” the duchess said simply. A small smile graced the other woman’s lips.
Julia had to remind herself to breathe. She glanced about, more than half expecting the big, strapping footman to reappear with reinforcements and a constable. When none did, and it just remained she and the regal duchess, she drew in a shaky breath. “How long—?”
“Since the moment you arrived.”
“Oh,” Julia said weakly.
Fetching a handkerchief from the front of her apron pocket, she patted at her lightly perspiring brow and then, in a very unduchlesslike move, the duchess joined Julia, sitting beside her on the grass.
“My girl, Adairia had the palest blonde ringlets and the most cream-white of skin.” Lightly touching Julia’s auburn hair, Her Grace gave her another tender smile, and Julia had the first hope that mayhap the other woman wouldn’t turn her over to the law for her transgression.
“She doesn’t,” she whispered, her eyes on a lone sparrow hopping about the emerald-green grass. Periodically, the creature pecked its beak at the earth before coming up as empty as any person in the Rookeries when it came to finding food. Tears stung her eyes. She’d spoken in the present tense, as though Adairia were still alive. And suddenly the words were falling fast from her lips, all rolling together, and she couldn’t stop them from coming. “Sh-she had light skin when we first met. The only people I’d ever known to have skin like lilies was the ladies outside Covent Garden. Before Adairia, I’d never seen a little girl with skin such as hers, but it isn’t like that… wasn’t like that…” Not anymore. Adairia was gone. “We sold flowers together, and being outdoors from the moment the sun began its ascent to the moment the moon took its place high in the sky, Adairia has… had”—her voice broke—“the same tanned-hued skin as me.”
Something wet trickled down her cheek, and she brushed at it, staring at her finger.
A tear.
She was crying.
The duchess dangled a floral-embroidered handkerchief before her nose.
She waited while Julia took the silk scrap and brushed the moisture away from her cheeks.
“You were a friend of hers,” the duchess murmured.
Julia let the scrap fall to her lap, clenching and unclenching it in her fist before she realized just how she’d ruined the fabric. She smoothed it out.
The duchess’ hadn’t been a question, but Julia nodded anyway and added her own clarification. “I was.” Only, the word friend didn’t capture what Adairia had been to her, the bond they’d shared. “She was my sister.” And while she could still get words out through the crushing weight of pain that pressed on her chest, she told the duchess everything, beginning with how she and her mother had found Adairia alone, to the ultimate end the young woman had found. When she’d finished, the duchess sat silent.
“I didn’t come here to… deceive you.” Her lips pulled in a grimace. “Not at first. Rather, I came to see if there was any truth to what she shared with me, and to tell you about Adairia, and to let you know she never forgot her family, and she never stopped b-believing.” Even as Julia had pooh-poohed Adairia’s dream, Adairia had always known precisely who and what she was. She’d made to rise when the duchess put a hand upon Julia’s forearm, keeping her to that spot beside her.
“What will happen if you return?”
If? When. She shook her head.
“What will they do with you now that you know… their role in Adairia’s…” The duchess’ face crumpled, and she looked away, but not before Julia caught the grief that contorted her features. When she returned her attention to Julia, however, a placid mask was back in place so quick, Julia might as well have imagined that crack in the duchess’s composure. “What will they do to you?”
She shivered, her palms coming up to reflexively rub at her chilled arms. Her efforts proved as futile as the sun’s rays in warming her.
“I… don’t know.” She handed the
