“Yes. My mother said she had sacrificed everything, her family and a better marriage, to be with him.”
“She must have loved him in the beginning then,” he suggested. A marriage of unequal status was often plagued by strife.
Aurora wrapped her arms about herself again. “I waited by the door every-night for months for my father’s return, but it became clear he wasn’t ever coming back. Mother was a beautiful woman, always complimented. She started going out without me long before I ever gave up waiting for my father to come back, making calls, and writing letters in a fever of excitement she’d never explain. She would always say to others that my father was traveling for work, not that he’d left us to fend for ourselves.”
“I can understand why she’d do that. To say your father was gone would be to admit that you were both vulnerable and without protection.”
“It didn’t work.” Aurora sniffed. “One night, I heard a man’s voice in our home, and I imagined my father had finally returned. I rushed from my room to find a neighbor entering my mother’s bedchamber, taking off his coat and cravat. My mother agreeing to something he said to her before they kissed.”
So her mother had taken a lover behind her husband’s back. But the child Aurora had been should never have known about that sort of thing. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I went back to bed, and when I asked my mother about the visitor the next morning, she slapped me across the face and told me I should be grateful for the sacrifices she made to keep a roof over my undeserving head.”
Drew reared back, shocked to hear of a mother speak that way to their child. It was not Aurora’s fault that her father had left.
“I did not understand until much later what she meant by that…but I learned the hard way. I was a pretty child, an early bloomer, as some call it. That man was our neighbor and landlord, a widow with a grown son. The neighbor came and went as he pleased from our cottage often. Always at night. Others came, too, I think, and I stayed in my room, covering my ears to block out the sounds. Sometimes my mother cried at night, but during the day she carried on as if nothing had changed, and I started to forget the way things should be.
“When I was thirteen, my mother disappeared. She had become restless and critical of everything around her, especially me in the weeks before I found her gone. I went out and looked everywhere for her, but soon realized her best gowns had gone away with her. The widowed neighbor called a few nights later, expecting to share Mother’s bed again, and he found me alone.”
Aurora inhaled, sniffing back tears. “He cursed when he realized Mother had abandoned me. She owed him money, he said. Mother owed a lot of people. She’d not paid any bills in some time. I was young, and had nothing to live on and no one to take care of me. I didn’t know what to do about the debts. The neighbor told me I would live with him. I was so hungry, I was grateful to go with him.”
“It was good of him to take you in.”
She inhaled sharply. “I shared his bed from the first night, taking Mother’s place. Settling a debt that was never spelled out in any terms of value.”
All the air rushed from Drew’s lungs. He couldn’t help but draw back from her in his shock.
“He never forced me.” Aurora winced. “The widow was gentle with me, really. But it was made clear I had to earn my keep, to keep a roof over my head and Mother’s debtors at bay. I was so young, I didn’t quite understand what I was doing with the farmer was even shameful for a long time. You have to understand, I had nothing and no one but him I could turn to. No money, no education. I did what he wanted, every time he asked. But I had no say in anything to do with my life. I kept house for him, managed the few outdoor servants he employed, slept in his bed, and endured my midnight duties without complaint. I never had any friends. I never left the farm. I depended on my neighbor completely and lived in fear of disappointing him.”
Drew was revolted—but not by her. He captured Aurora’s cold hands again, enveloped them in his warmth, trying to instill some of his love and support through their joined palms. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like. You must have always been terrified.”
She nodded. “But I was warm, fed. He protected me from others.”
Nausea rose up in Drew’s throat at the way she’d accepted all that had happened in her young life. “He took advantage and robbed you of your innocence before you even knew its value.”
“I know that he should have left me be…now. But I wasn’t knowledgeable then. I was treated no worse than any servant, but I was never paid for my work in or out of bed. Living there wasn’t all bad. I had farm animals to tend—chickens, ducks and geese that made each day worth getting up for. They were my world. My responsibility.” She licked her lips, swallowed, and kept her eyes lowered. “I was with him for nearly six years before a letter from Sylvia found its way to my hand. A letter years too late to save me from the shame of being a farmer’s whore.”
“You are not—”
“I am a whore even now, though you don’t want to admit it. But being with you was always my choice,” Aurora whispered.
Drew gulped. Had he known of Aurora’s past, he would have never made his scandalous offer. He would have waited forever for a marriage instead, no matter how long it took.
She shrugged her shoulders again, straightening. “You have no idea what it felt like to know you had not been utterly forgotten by your family, even ones you cannot remember meeting. My mother was dead by that time. Mr. Hillcrest, her father, had helped her annul her first marriage, the marriage I had been born into. She had remarried quickly after that, and her years away from the family were hushed up.
“I was not mentioned for a long interval. Not until a spinster aunt’s will was read and my name revealed as a beneficiary. Sylvia remembered meeting me, and she set out to find me. She told me I had some money to inherit, if I would only answer her letter and prove my existence. It was a small amount, but I thought I could give it in marriage to a husband. I even foolishly thought the farmer might marry me.”
“But he didn’t, and you came to London instead.”
She shivered. “Not straight away. I had a home already, and a man I’d become fond of, in my own way. He was all I had known for so long. I hid the letter and went on as if it had never arrived. Waiting for the right moment to speak with him about my future, and the money. I remained with him for another six months, and he said nothing about the future.
“I was nineteen when he started leaving the farm. There was another close by that had caught his eye. He said he was in negotiations to buy the place, but they wouldn’t sell at a reasonable price at first.
“One morning, as he was getting out of bed and dressing, I saw scratches up his back. Marks I’d not seen the night before as he made love to me. When I asked him about them, he merely shrugged and turned away. But before he could leave the room, I found the courage to ask if he would marry me…and he started to laugh. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him of my inheritance, but then he called me a slut and told me to change the sheets on the bed and move to the servants’ quarters. He then informed me he was marrying that very day. He would have the property he wanted—at the high price of putting a ring on the finger of the widow who owned it. The banns had already been read, but I never knew that because I was so cut off from the world.
“So, I found myself in the servants’ quarters in short order and watching the cook slave over the wedding feast. Cast aside. No one thought it important to soften the blow when all of my pets were slaughtered for the event. They didn’t deserve such a fate.”
Drew closed his eyes, utterly shocked by a past he’d never imagined she’d suffered through, and that her greatest sadness was reserved for the farm animals she’d loved.