“No, please don’t go.” Mrs. Robbins turned to Michael. “I was the one who made Madame promise that she would not tell you the truth.”
Michael paled. He stared at Mrs. Robbins as if he did not know her.
Mrs. Robbins blinked rapidly, her face lined and gaunt. “We are elderly, homely, and unsophisticated, whereas Madame is young, beautiful, and refined. I was afraid you would not want us as your parents if you knew. I didn’t realize that by keeping the truth from you I’d cause you such pain. I’m sorry.”
Michael said nothing.
Mrs. Robbins patted him gingerly on the arm. “I’ll go up and give you two some privacy.”
There was a long silence after the door closed behind Mrs. Robbins.
“How did she know?” Michael finally asked.
“She suspected, not long after I came here—in those days, as soon as she turned her back, you’d come to visit me.” Verity sighed. “I don’t think she expected her suspicion to be quite so accurate, though. She was shocked when I admitted to it—and a bit panicked. She loved you so, and she was terrified I might take you away from her.”
“I’m sorry,” said Michael blankly. “I was quite rude.”
“Yes, you were. I’m hurt that you’d think I would ever deny you the truth so I could marry better, when—” When all of her life’s choices had revolved around him. “But it’s all right. In your place, I would want to know too.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael said again. He plucked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “So you are my mother?”
He sounded shocked, for all that he’d insisted he knew all along.
“For a very short while, for as long as I could hold on to you.”
He went to the cabinet where Mr. Robbins kept a bottle of gin and poured directly into his teacup.
“Can you tell me anything about my father?” He turned around.
She sat down again. “His name was Benjamin Applewood. He was a groom who worked in the stables at the house where I grew up. A very sweet, unassuming man.”
“Was.” Michael took a gulp from the teacup. “He is dead?”
“He died shortly before you were born, from a fever of the blood.”
They had gone to Southampton to buy passages to America. But Ben’s savings had been stolen almost as soon as they got off the train—he’d never been farther afield than Tonbridge, and the chaos and criminality of the city had been beyond him. Neither of them had had any notion that money needed to be sewn into undergarments or concealed underfoot in their shoes.
Third-class train tickets cost only pennies. They sold the ivory buttons from her dress, bought two tickets, and went to London, where Ben said his foster brother lived. They never located the foster brother, but Ben found work at a place that hired out carriages. They lived at Jacob’s Island, an unsavory rookery south of the Thames, hoping to save up enough money, with Verity doing her utmost to pretend that it was just the scary part of the fairy tale she was living through—that her happily-ever-after was but another day, another week, another kiss away.
Ben’s death had stripped the last bit of romance from life in the outside world. As long as he had been there, she could ignore that she lived at the edge of a slum in a mice-infested room. But bereft of his income and his protection, she became utterly alone, without a single skill that could earn her a legitimate penny.
“Were you married?”
The trace of hope in Michael’s voice made her heart hurt. “I’m sorry. We didn’t have the money to marry. We thought we’d have a proper wedding once we were settled and prosperous in America.”
Michael took more from the teacup. “My father’s family, do they know about me?”
She shook her head. “He was an orphan who was fostered with a clergyman for a while. He came into my family’s employ when he was thirteen, after the clergyman passed away.”
“What about your family, do they know about me?” He must have seen the darkening of her expression. “They do, don’t they?”
“Some of them,” she said.
“Was it because of me that you had to leave your family?”
“Yes and no. Once it was discovered that I was with child, I was taken away and told that I’d spend the rest of my life under lock and key. It was a future that gave me nightmares. So when your father came to rescue me, I went quite willingly.”
He looked at her. Then he drained his cup and reached toward the bottle of gin again.
“Michael, that’s enough.”
To her shock, after a moment of hesitation, he put the bottle of gin back in the cupboard. “At school the rumor has always been that I’m a Very Important Man’s bastard—that’s why they tolerate me, I suppose. I wonder what people would say if they knew the truth.”
“I don’t believe the worth of a man lies solely in his parentage, or even mostly. Of course it is enviable to know with perfect confidence where you belong from the very beginning, but it’s not so terrible to find your own place.”
“You say that because you know where you came from.”