"Josephine. Josephine Sellar. A lass from my childhood years."
The older woman shook her head and held up a wrinkled hand before either of them could ask more.
"I'm sorry, m'lady. But it's all just an old woman's fancy. She can't possibly be any relation of an English lady. Can't possibly be. Never mind my foolishness. Till tomorrow, then."
Without another word, she hurried off and disappeared through the door, ignoring Wynne's entreaties to stay.
When he looked back at Jo, tears were running unchecked down her face.
Chapter 17
Josephine Sellar.
She had a name. Her mother had a name.
Josephine Sellar.
Her mother had a village. A family. People who cared for her. They remembered her.
Jo's eyes burned from her tears. Locking herself in the room Wynne had taken for her, she gave way to the rip current of emotion that she'd stifled for so much of her life. She cried for herself. And she cried for the young woman who'd not lived to hold her daughter past the first day.
Josephine Sellar. Seventeen years old when she gave birth. Frightened, hungry, sick, alone.
The women and girls who arrived at the Tower House were often broken, solitary, and afraid. For Jo, every one of those women was her mother. She sat with them. She cried with them. She listened as they gradually crept past their shame and their fear, and revealed to her the details of their lives. As they spoke, Jo wondered which painful journey ran parallel with her mother's path. And as she listened, she silently swore the same oath to each of those women-not one of them would die as her mother had, clutching her newborn in the mud while an unfeeling world looked away.
She paced the room-cold and shaken, recalling the insinuations, lamenting the lost years when she'd failed to fight for her mother. Guilt squeezed her heart and choked off the very breaths in her chest.
She thought of the grave in the Melrose churchyard. The grave she visited every Sunday when she was at Baronsford. The only true connection she had with the past.
JO. Two letters and the date her mother died. Nothing else. No acknowledgment of a life, only a death. No reference to when or where she was born. No family name. No husband. No parents.
But now Jo knew more.
A maid knocked at the door, saying the captain sent her up to help her get ready to retire. Jo sent her away. Sometime later, the same young woman came up to check on her. The captain was worried and asked if she needed anything. Jo sent her away.
She didn't know how long she sobbed in misery before the realization came to her. Sellar. Sellar. Why was she sitting here? She had to see the family now. She wanted answers that only they could give.
With no care about how she looked or the disheveled condition of her dress, Jo left her bedroom and rapped on Wynne's door. He appeared in the doorway immediately as if he'd been expecting her.
"Take me to them," she demanded, his face a watery blur. "Please take me to the Sellar farm. I need to speak to them."
"My love, I understand," he said gently. "But the hour is late. Tomorrow-"
"I'll go by myself," she exclaimed, turning on her heel. She didn't make it more than two steps down the hall, however, when Wynne caught her and drew her back to him.
"I need to do it, Wynne. I need to go now." She struggled to free herself. "I need answers."
The sound of boots coming up on the stairs startled her, and Jo let him pull her into his room and close the door.
"I know you need answers. And you'll have them. I swear to you. But not tonight," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "Tomorrow, we won't leave Garloch until you meet and speak with everyone you need to. I promise you that. I give you my word."
"But tomorrow might never come," she sobbed as he pulled her tightly into his arms.
The rush of tears, the pain rising from the cracks in her battered heart, the need to empty the boundless well of sadness was like no grief she'd ever experienced.
He whispered soothing words, tried to wipe away the tears, and as she felt calmer, another wave would begin, overwhelming her, drowning her.
"Talk to me, my love," he murmured against her ear. "Tell me what you're feeling. Perhaps it would make this heartache easier to bear."
She pressed her face against his chest. The steady beat of his heart, the warm strength of his arms around her, made her troubles fade for a moment. For just an instant, the pain was gone. She tried to pull away, but he held her there.
"Stay. Let me."
Jo's tears soaked his linen shirt, and she realized he wasn't wearing his coat and waistcoat. His hands massaged her back. His lips pressed kisses into her hair. He enveloped her with his soothing warmth. She didn't know for how long they stood there, but gradually the sobs lessened. The tide of tears ebbed until only a few runaway drops were left.
"What happened?" he asked softly. "I thought the discovery of your mother's family name would be cause for celebration, but your reaction breaks my heart."
It was some time before she could trust her voice.
"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 my real mother?"
"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."