Phoebe, Oswin, Margery, and Lady Tesh sat in silence, their expressions confused. Peter and Lenora clasped hands, worry plain on their faces. They knew some of what was to come. The duchess looked angry enough to smite Clara on the spot.
And Quincy. His gaze was shuttered but unflinching. She looked away from him, knowing she wouldn’t be able to continue if she witnessed his reaction, more frightened of it than of anyone else’s.
“I took him at his word. It was foolish of me; I can see that now. But I was so eager to grow up and start a life of my own. I think I had become a bit resentful of how much I had missed out on after my mother’s death, how much of my childhood I had left behind. I wanted to live for me. Which is no one’s fault but my own,” she hastily explained when Phoebe covered her mouth with a trembling hand. “I wanted you and our brother to have a mother-figure. And I will never regret helping to care for you both, will never regret the close relationship we’ve shared because of it.
“At the time, however, I was maturing into a woman and unsure of my place in the world. And that man exploited that fact. He made me believe I should live for nothing but myself, that my family had been selfish to take so much from me. Which, in my vanity, I allowed him to convince me of, though it was the farthest thing from the truth.”
She paused, curling her hands into fists, her gaze dropping to the floor as she dug deep for strength. “He seduced me, and once he’d gotten what he wanted from me he left. I never heard from him again, though I wrote to him with increasing desperation. Especially after…” She swallowed hard, tried again. “Especially when I learned I was with child.”
She did not raise her eyes to witness their reactions. She didn’t need to. There were indrawn breaths, gasps, cries of disbelief. And then the duchess’s strident voice above the others.
“I knew it!” she crowed. “Reigate, you cannot marry this woman. Think of the scandal. I will not see a loose strumpet as the next duchess—”
“Silence!” Quincy bellowed. He surged to his feet, glaring at his mother. Peter was at his side in an instant, his expression equally furious. Clara rather thought that if she were the duchess, she would keel over on the spot with two such massive, commanding men glowering at her. As it was, her heart beat out a pathetically hopeful rhythm that he did not hate her.
“If you say one thing further against Clara,” Quincy said, his voice dropping to a deadly quiet that did not disguise the danger in it, “you will rue the day.”
The woman stared at him in shock before, her lips pinching tight, she gave a sharp nod.
He turned back to Clara, nodding before he sat once more. Peter, too, nodded her way before taking his place at Lenora’s side. Clara, for all she tried, could not discern a single emotion in their faces save for grim determination.
Her sister’s agonized voice rose up, shattering the heavy silence. “Clara, is it true?”
At the sight of Phoebe, hand to her heart, eyes wide with shock, Clara nearly broke down.
But it was too late to stop now. Keeping her gaze steadily on her sister, she nodded. She expected Phoebe to sob, to break down in tears. Instead her sister lowered her hand to her lap and nodded once, as if to show she was well and Clara should continue.
And she did, letting the rest spill out in a rush, eager to have done with it. “When my father and I told everyone that I was traveling to visit with my old nurse up north, in reality she came here to stay with me, in a cottage close to Swallowhill. I hid away from the world, hid the truth from you all, to give birth to that child.”
Not a one of them spoke, shock and grief and devastation all filling their faces, seeming to register them mute. The only face she refused to look at was Quincy’s. She could not bear it if he were disgusted by her.
The seconds ticked by, the silence stretching. She bit her lip, her nerves beginning to fray.
Finally Aunt Olivia spoke—of course it would be Aunt Olivia. Though it was not with her usual brusqueness. No, her tone was gentler than Clara had ever heard it.
“What happened to the child, my dear?”
That one question did more to undermine the careful control she’d spent so long building up than anything thus far. “He did not make it,” she managed through a throat tight with tears. “Not even long enough to take his first breath.”
The last thing she saw before tears blurred her vision was Quincy’s face, stark with shock.
***
Quincy had expected something painful in Clara’s past, but he had never imagined something so devastating. To be a young, unmarried woman, seduced and abandoned, and then to find out she was with child…she must have been terrified. Worse, to have to hide away, to spend nine months growing a life inside you, only to lose that precious life in an instant. No wonder she had become so upset when he’d first suggested they marry. She must have thought him just like that coward who had used her, offering her false promises to get her to his bed.
Which brought him to the stark realization of just how much she wanted him, how much she must care for him, in order to ignore her fears and come to his bed.
At the sight of the tears welling up in Clara’s eyes, however, at the sound of a sob quickly stifled, he forgot about everything else but comforting her.
Before he could so much as rise, however, Phoebe leapt to her feet, rushing to Clara and enveloping her in her arms. The rest of them hurried forward, until a veritable sea of Ashfords crowded her.
“My poor, dear sister,” she crooned. “Why did you hide such a thing from us?”
Clara’s voice rose up, muffled against her sister’s neck. “Because I knew you would all despise me for it. I’ve threatened our family with a devastating scandal. It could ruin us all if it got out.”
“Ruin us?” Lady Tesh scoffed. “My girl, none of us will speak a word of it, I assure you. And if a certain someone does”—she gave the duchess a furious warning glance—“they will regret it. Besides,” she continued, turning a tender smile on her great-niece, “if you don’t think we haven’t weathered worse storms, you are a greater innocent than I thought. There are scandals aplenty in our history, and we’ve come through each one. Mayhap not unscathed, but stronger for it.”
“She’s right,” Margery said with a soft smile, running a gentle hand over Clara’s back. “And we could never despise you, dearest. You shall always be our darling Clara, who we all love so very much.”