she tacked on that accidental question mark at the end of her words, she winced inside.
“All right, Mother. Surely you realize at some point we are going to speak of it,” the eldest of her girls said gently.
Lydia’s heart dropped. “It?”
Oh, bloody hell. She resisted the urge to squirm under their stares. In fact, when had they developed those… mature stares? The ones that saw too much.
Oh, dear. Those stares were even more mature than she’d feared.
Caroline opened her mouth to speak, but Miranda lifted a palm and assumed the elder-sister role. “I refer to the fact that you were visiting with a gentleman.”
“Oh, that.”
Her daughters folded their arms across their chests, giving a glimpse of the terrifying mamas they’d one day be to the daughters they would have. “Yes, that, Mother,” Caroline said.
“We knew one another when we were younger. He was a… friend of your father’s.” Until he hadn’t been. Until Lydia had married Lawrence, and the two men had ceased speaking.
“Was he… a friend of yours?” Miranda ventured hesitantly.
Was he a friend of hers?
Lydia’s eyes slid closed. A memory tripped forward.
Her gay laughter filtering around the gardens belonging to Lydia’s now in-laws as Geoffrey had pushed her on a wood-plank swing.
I want to be your friend, your lover, and your partner through life, Lydia.
The echo of Geoffrey’s voice, that deep timbre that had rolled like warm chocolate, came as clearly as it had when he’d first spoken those words aloud.
She’d always loved him. They’d been childhood friends…and then, more. But in that moment, with his profession, she’d fallen—literally and figuratively. Flying forward off the swing, she’d come crashing down, but she hadn’t felt pain and had been overwhelmed only with a dizzying joy and the love—
“Mother?”
Caroline’s quiet prodding brought Lydia’s eyes flying open. “We were friends, too,” she managed to say, her voice hoarse.
“Were you more?” Caroline asked.
So much more.
Lydia flew to her feet and moved to put the rose-inlaid table between her and her entirely too-astute daughters. “You needn’t worry about me,” she said curtly. “I am a grown woman, and I’m capable of handling myself in a way that is respectable and decent. Geoffrey merely came to speak with me about a personal matter involving… his family.” She took care to keep Geoffrey’s confidence. The decision of when to make public the existence of his children was his to make. “There was nothing improper or untoward.” Aside from the kisses and… more they’d engaged in these past two days. “He came to me for guidance on a personal matter, and that is it.”
That was it.
And of all the vagueness she’d settled on with her daughters, that much had proven true. She had an overwhelming urge to cry because of it. Because she enjoyed being with him. Because she felt alive with him. She always had.
Miranda stood and drifted over, and Lydia stiffened. “Mother, I know a rumpled dress and a rumpled gentlemen when I see them,” she murmured.
Lydia felt her face go hot, and she opened her mouth to speak words of denial—lies—but a denial, nonetheless, when Miranda held her other hand up, stopping her.
“We aren’t intending to lecture you on how you conduct yourself.”
“That will fall to Johnathan and Benedict,” Caroline added under her breath.
Miranda pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “Please, as if our two, elder, unmarried, roguish brothers have any leg on which to stand when it comes to matters of propriety. They certainly conduct themselves in their personal lives without consulting Mother, why should Mother—”
“She shouldn’t,” Caroline said.
Lydia’s eldest daughter gave a firm, decisive nod of her head. “Precisely.”
“You aren’t… upset that I was… That we were embrac—”
Miranda winced even as Caroline slapped her palms over her ears and hummed a noisy tune aloud to blot out the remainder of Lydia’s question.
“I’d see you happy in your love life, but we needn’t get specific about exactly what you were doing,” Miranda said dryly. Her daughter’s smile faded as she moved closer, and bringing her hands up, she rested them upon Lydia’s shoulders. “Mother,” she began softly. “Do you truly believe Caroline or I wouldn’t want you to be happy?”
“Of course not,” she was quick to answer. “I never doubt your love or desire to see me happy, and yet… your father.”
Miranda lightly squeezed her shoulders. “I miss him every day. He was a wonderful husband and father. But Papa is gone, and you are here, Mother. You shouldn’t stop living. You deserve to live. You deserve to be happy and… not