Page 55 of It Happened in the Highlands
“I found her,” she whispered. “I’ve learned her name only to realize that she is truly lost forever. For all of my life, I was told she was gone. Still I looked for her. I searched for someone that I resembled. Creating a world of my own, I imagined a woman who shared my hair, my eyes, someone who spoke like me. Deep in my heart, I carved out a protected space for the belief that she wasn’t really gone. When Charles Barton’s drawings arrived, that belief exploded within me.”
“I can only imagine the shock.” He continued to hold and caress her.
“Tonight, giving her a name, a village, people who knew her made everything finally, irrevocably real. I mourn because she was gone before I ever knew her.”
Jo pulled herself out of his arms. She felt horrified to have fallen apart like this in front of him. Her eyes were nearly shut. The room was small, a bed and a dresser comprised all the furnishings. There was no space for her to pace.
She took his hand and pulled him to the bed and sat on the edge.
He remained standing.
“Sit with me.”
He hesitated. She wasn’t so far gone in her grief not to understand why. He was trying to be a gentleman, even now.
“Hold me, Wynne.”
She was relieved when he sat next to her and gathered her to him.
She was calmer, more in charge of her wits, her mind clearer. She leaned her head on his shoulder, inhaled his scent, took comfort in his warmth.
“When did you first learn that Lady Millicent wasn’t your mother?” he asked.
The leaves of time flew back to a day that she’d never forget.
“Lord Aytoun’s younger brother Pierce and his wife, Portia, were visiting Baronsford. She was with child and close to term. The women were gathered in my mother’s favorite room, the upstairs library in the west wing. Hugh and I were very young. We were playing with some toys on the floor.”
She told him how the golden rays of sun angled through the open windows. The women were laughing happily at the active nature of the unborn babe in Portia’s belly, its movements clearly visible through the material of her dress. Jo walked to her aunt, amazed by the display.
“My curiosity made me ask Lady Millicent, ‘Did I move like that when I was in your belly?’”
To this day, Jo recalled the sudden silence that fell over the library. It was as if the air had been drawn from the room.
“Did she answer you?” Wynne asked. “Did she tell you in front of the others?”
“Before she could say a word, Portia’s mother answered. ‘You aren’t hers, child,’ she said.”
He pulled her closer. “Why people insist on cruelty—”
“It wasn’t cruelty,” Jo told him. “She was battling dementia. She’d become less and less responsible for the things she said.”
She was finished with her tears, but the vividness of that memory wouldn’t leave her.
“I recall throwing a tantrum in front of them all, demanding to know whose belly I grew in. And where was myrealmother?”
“What did Lady Millicent do?”
“If I shed one tear, she shed ten,” Jo told him. “She took me out of the library. She kissed me and hugged me and wept over me. She explained that my mother was in heaven. But that was only the start of my questions.”
Jo told Wynne about the crippling anxiety she felt any time she had to be separated from Lady Millicent as she grew up. She began each day worrying if her parents were going to be gone. Or if she might be separated from her siblings.
“She was my mother as truly as any birth mother could be,” she whispered, sitting straight and pressing her fingers to her swollen eyes. “She and my father were always there. They always loved me. They protected me, even when the rumors during my first Season made me want to run in shame to the Antipodes. They never made me feel like an outsider.”
Jo took some deep breaths, trying to recover from her earlier breakdown.
“My reaction tonight . . .” She shook her head.
“I was telling Cuffe last night that part of knowing who you are is knowing where you came from.” He tucked a curl behind her ear. “Your search has been about finding your history. Histories have a beginning. Today you made a fine start. But I understand your sense of loss and I am sorry for it.”
