Amelia – or Charity – or both and neither – spent the evening changing between giving comprehensive accounts of her adventures in London and sitting in stony silence refusing to speak for several minutes.
"So," Judy began as her daughter curled into herself, "when will you be seeing your friends in London again?"
"I'm not. I'm staying here," her daughter replied monotonously in a tone so cold it scared Judy. "That was the plan."
"But if they're nice, it would be good for you to have friends."
"They think that I'm family because I stole all of their money."
Judy was struggling to recognise the young girl, the lady, in front of her, and she knew that this wasn't helping her daughter at all. She had spent months lying to everyone, even herself, hellbent on protecting their fortune, but something had happened to make her reconsider her decision.
Being without the real Marchioness, her daughter's closest companion, had been harder on her that she would ever admit. She knew her daughter was listless with nobody to entertain, nobody to care for, nobody to cherish. Judy worried that she believed the money could fill the void, but it never would.
"Come, you do not want to be lonely in this old house."
"I was never happier than when I was lonely in this old house," the girl grumbled into her empty bowl.
Judy removed the bowl and cleaned out the remains of the humble stew that her new Marchioness daughter had greedily swallowed. She peered out of the window above the kitchen sink, watching Paul feed the chickens and pigs. As expected, the moment her eyes found him in the darkness, he turned to smile and wave at her. Judy could always feel when her fifty-three-year-old husband's eyes were on her, and it was an unspoken rule that no matter what, if you felt their eyes, you turned and waved.
After all of her mistakes, Judy had a beautiful home, a caring husband, and a...uniquely brilliant daughter. She wanted the same for her child – this scheme did not have to be a trap.
When she turned back, her daughter was staring vacantly at the spot where the bowl had been. She stepped towards her tentatively. "I know I was...doubtful of this scheme at first-"
Her daughter snorted.
"-but now that I have spent all these months waiting for you, for your letters... I remember when you left me in Saint Peter's church with some apples and bread rolls and you were gone for weeks. I remember feeling so terrified that I would never see you again – I couldn't move for fear that if I did I would miss you and lose you. But this time...knowing you were safe, that you were coming home to me, that you could write to me of everything because I was secure here... I understand what you were so afraid of going back to. What Paul was so afraid of. What I ought to have been so afraid of.
"I will love you forever. And every day I grow prouder and prouder of what you have done to take care of us. No, it is not fair on the Warstones, and we will never be completely safe from the threat, but...everything you did, you did to build us a home."
Finally her daughter smiled. It was not as bright as the one she showed when describing a certain picnic, but it was a smile.
Judy took her daughter's hand and squeezed it twice sharply. "You have a life in London. I saw it in your letters. Do not abandon it."
In spite of her mother's encouragement, she could not go back. Not to London. Not to him. She did not quite know what the 'something truly wicked' was – kissing him, lying to him.
Edward was a passionately determined man on his way to betterment, and she was sure he would be the great man he strove to be. He made her believe that she could improve, that she could be good one day.
He made her feel warm everywhere. She had not felt that in a long time, and never in a way that was not quickly forgotten. When Edward had run his fingers into her hair, he'd pushed a piece of himself into her mind, something she had to bury.
That was the truly wicked thing, the choice she made herself make. She could live forever with the temptation, the desperation to find him and lead him to a dark corner and never act on it, or she could return to him and lie to him for the rest of her life. He could recover from his infatuation, but he would never look at her the same way again if he found out the truth. The first option may hurt more, but instead of feeding on his attention like a parasite, she could live on her dreams of him.
"I would sacrifice all of this to make you happy," Judy muttered as she drew circles into her daughter's palm.
Her daughter surprised herself when she replied, "So would I," because she knew it was true. If giving up everything she had worked for was enough to make this pain go away, she would do it, but she knew she would always carry it with her.
Judy flicked her head back and grinned. "I would have liked to have met some of the friends you met out there. The new Lord Warstone seemed...gentle enough. And I like the sound of your Lady Maldon. Though I'm not sure about this Lord Herriot – he seems a bit too involved in the Warstones if you ask me, probably looking to make mischief with one of the young ladies. Or the maids."
Her daughter stilled immediately and her eyes bore straight through her as though Judy didn't exist. She wondered if she might say something to defend him or lash out from exhaustion, but she said nothing and instead rose to her feet.
Judy felt like a true fool when, after she had spent the day preparing the mistress' bedroom to be perfect for her baby's arrival, her daughter whispered a 'Goodnight' and slumped off into her old bedroom in the servants' quarters.
*
The Howells did not have a normal routine anymore, but whatever life they had crafted, their daughter slotted into it nicely. They lived to look after themselves. They completed chores at a far more leisurely pace – Paul only took the laundry down to the river when he was in the mood for a walk, and Judy happily left furniture crooked until she felt up to correcting it.
Eventually they convinced their daughter to move into one of the guest rooms in their wing of the house, and they fell into the habit of using the kitchen for dining and the small parlour for sitting together by the fire in the evenings, or sometimes wasting away the whole day with novels, naps, and card games. Every other room in the vast manor was well-maintained by Judy, but they had no use for it.
The Howells had started venturing into town more often, which their daughter did not join them in. Every three or four days, an errand would call for one of them to go to the shops and the other obligingly accompanied them. They bought bread on one day and fish and meat on another so they had more opportunities to enjoy their time outside of the hall. They had even started to make friends with the villagers and were invited over for dinner by the milliners. They would never be accepted by everyone, but at least they could step out into the world more than they had in the past decade.
Their daughter was more enthusiastic to do housework than ever. They wondered at first whether owning her own house had instilled a sense of duty to the manor, but when they watched her scrubbing the same floor over and over and over again with a determined glare, they realised that she needed distraction.
As she scrubbed the floors, she tried to understand how she had let it all go so far. Not just the lies, but the greed. Why had she needed so much control? Was enough no longer a feast? Did she need an empire around her for nothing but to say that she had one?
Every inch of the floor that she scrubbed brought her closer to the person she had been before all this had started. To a person who made right decisions, who had not stolen a fortune from good people, and who had not fallen in love with Edward Herriot.
*
Paul Howell was a man who believed that words were to be treated as a finite resource – he used them sparingly and only used the ones he needed. If his mother had not taught him that, his wife and daughter certainly would have.
He and his stepdaughter had quickly formed a bond before he and Judy had even married. The fourteen-year-old girl would not admit how badly she needed love – she needed nothing else, too adept at looking after herself, but she needed love and respect. As soon as Paul saw her work ethic and loyalty within days of her arrival at Denmead Hall, he vowed to give her as much as he could. It turned out he could give a lot, and he received more love and respect than he ever dared hope for in return.
By the time he reached forty years of age, his life achievements could be summed up to assisting the Marquess for a quarter of a century and nothing else – his position afforded him greater peace than any of his people had ever found but being hidden from society had also meant being starved of company. After long giving up hope of a family of his own, God saw fit to reward him for his service and sent a family to him – all he had to do was let them in.
He was glad in some ways that his daughter and his wife shared a special bond that he would never touch – it made him all the more grateful that they had let him in. He felt a swell of pride whenever he saw one of his beautiful girls, and he felt it when he found his daughter sitting in the kitchen one morning with an untouched glass of water.
"You need to eat," he announced before finding himself the ingredients he needed to make some nice hot porridge. His cookery skills had always been mediocre at best, just enough to satisfy his master in the years before Judy arrived, but he never forgot his mother's porridge recipe.
"I know we may not have all the pork and lamb and fish they have in London, but I'm sure this will do," Paul continued, earning a small laugh from his daughter.
"It'll do nicely," she muttered.
He cooked in silence for a few minutes until the porridge was ready. His daughter finally got up to retrieve their bowls and served them both a generous portion, leaving enough for Judy and a second helping each. After they sat down, she ate a couple of spoonfuls before letting out a deep breath. He did not need to ask – she would speak when she was ready.
"I saw my..." she began, before her voice went quiet. A moment later she tried again. "I saw Lord Harper."
"Your father?"
"You are my father," she snapped hotly before taking another deep breath. "You are the person I wish to become. Not him. Not a liar who tramples on those below him because some title gives him the right. I..."
Paul took her hand, pulling her out of whatever thought she was caught in, clearly not just about Lord Harper. "Just because all of this is new, and you are wearing somebody else's clothes, does not mean that you are a lie."
He could see the tears beginning to gather in the corners of her eyes, the regret and confusion. "My name is a lie. My clothes are a lie."
"But you are not," he affirmed with a smile. "Not in your soul. You did this to look after us. That is as honest with yourself as you can be."
She flinched back. "They saw what they wanted to see in my soul," she said in an empty voice. "That was why they believed it all so easily, even people who had met Amelia. They wanted a pretty lady with a pretty fortune."
Paul rolled his eyes. "With an independent will and opinions and a tenacious strength."
That got a small, sad smile out of her. "They weren't so fussed about all that. Well, apart from..." Her voice disappeared again, but by now Paul had figured out that a certain somebody was the reason why she was avoiding London.
"What about the Warstones?" he asked, trying to keep his eyes on his porridge in case they betrayed his concern. "You were standing in the way of their money. Surely they could not want to believe you."
"They were...kind. Not very sympathetic to Lord Thomas, though. All they wanted was a new member of the family."
"Which they got."
She heaped a large spoonful of porridge into her mouth and swallowed it aggressively. "I do not believe they were thinking of a scullery maid."
"And what did your Lord Herriot want?"
Her head flicked up and she narrowed her exasperated eyes at her father. "Papa..."
"Surely hiding from him now would be the bigger lie."
"I do not know anymore!" she cried, throwing her spoon onto the table. "I am more afraid that it was not a lie. That I am the vicious parasite who toyed with a man for fun because I outranked him."
Paul put his spoon down and took his daughter's other hand. "That is not the woman I see," he said, his voice low and serious. "I see a woman who took on more than she was ready to cope with and didn't know what to do when people began to look at her. Someone who had to find a way to keep people away. Even if it were true, even if you are not perfect, I have seen how hard you have worked since you came home. You can change anything about yourself that you don't like."
"When I am the Marchioness, it does not feel so easy."
Paul brought his hands together, holding both of hers within, and smiled softly. "You know, the happiest years of my life have been when I have been the man you love most in the world. But if there is a man out there good enough for my daughter, I would happily come second."
"I do not-" She stopped suddenly, breathing deeply to hold back the tears threatening to burst. The confusion clouding her, the heartbreak she was harbouring, she did not know what else to do but cry. But she had talked her parents into this for their own good – she could not stop this now. "I don't know what I am. I don't even know what he's in love with. Charity. Amelia. My fortune. Her fortune." After their last conversation, she was not sure he was in love with her at all.
"You are my daughter," Paul said, squeezing her hands. "It doesn't matter what you say or call yourself. I will look at you every day and I will see my daughter."
This earnt him another small smile, more genuine and calmer than the last one. It had not settled her completely, but hopefully she would realise that she was not completely lost. She was still the world to him.
They continued to eat for a couple of minutes, his daughter only stopping at one point to say, "One of the Warstone ladies does not wish to marry. I hope that... I told her that I have enough money to care for her should she wish to be a spinster."
Paul smiled. "That is a lovely idea, my dear. That is exactly what I would have done had I the power."
Again, her smile was just a bit brighter this time. He would keep making her porridge until he found the dazzling smile he knew she had buried inside her.