First rule of bogs: Dinna panic.
“What is it, Madling?” Aunt Thea asked.
Breathe, she told herself.
“I . . . I’m going to have a great deal to say. May I ask you to bear with me until I’ve said all of it?”
“Of course.”
“When I was sixteen years old and came home from Brighton, I told you I’d met a Scottish officer by the seaside.” Maddie swallowed hard. “I lied.”
There it was. The grand confession, in two syllables. Why they’d been so impossible to say aloud for so long, she could not fathom.
But now that she’d said them once, it seemed no trouble to say them again.
“I lied,” she repeated. “I never met any gentleman. I spent the entire holiday alone. When I came home, everyone was expecting me to go to Town for my season. I felt panicked at the thought of society, so I invented this wild falsehood about a Captain MacKenzie. And then I just kept telling it. For years.”
“But . . . unless I’m going demented in my old age, there is a man in this castle. One whose name is Captain MacKenzie. He looks quite real to me.”
“He is real. But I’d never met him before.” Maddie put her head down on her crossed arms. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been ashamed, and afraid of you learning the truth. I wanted to tell you years ago, but you were so fond of the idea of him . . . and I’m so fond of you.”
“Oh, my Madling.” Aunt Thea rubbed her back in soothing circles. The way she’d done when Maddie was a young girl. “I know.”
“You know that I’m sorry? You can forgive me?”
“Not only that. I know everything. The lies, the letters. That your Captain MacKenzie was merely whimsy and imagination. I’ve always known.”
Stunned, Maddie lifted her head. “What?”
“Please do not take offense at this, dear—-but it wasn’t a terribly plausible tale. In fact, it was rather preposterous, and you’re not especially talented at deceit. Without me vouching for you, I don’t think the story would have lasted a month with your father.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me. Do you mean that you never believed me? All this time, you’ve known that my Captain MacKenzie was a complete fabrication, and you never said a word?”
“Well, we agreed that you seemed to need time.”
“We? Who is ‘we’ in that sentence?”
“Lynforth and I, of course.”
“My godfather knew I invented a suitor, too?” Maddie buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Lord. This is so embarrassing.”
Embarrassing, but also oddly freeing. If this was true, at least she did not need to feel she’d inherited this castle under false pretenses.
“Naturally he did. And he understood. Because, my darling Madling, the two of us were close.”
“Close.”
“Lovers for twenty years, on and off. And he knew I’d once lied to avoid marrying, too.”
Maddie thought her brain would twist from all these revelations. “You weren’t debauched by the Comte de Montclair and ruined for all other men?”
“Oh, I went to bed with him. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t magical, either. And no, that night did not ruin me for other men. To the contrary, it made me realize that I was far too young to shackle myself to one man for the rest of my life simply because my parents deemed him suitable, only to learn on the wedding night that he might or might not possess an erotic obsession with feathers.”
“Feathers?”
“We needn’t dwell on that. My point is, the importance of compatibility in the bedchamber cannot be overstated. Anyhow, I loudly proclaimed my ruination as an excuse to avoid marriage. I was able to take lovers when and how I pleased, but for his last two decades or so, I was rather devoted to Lynforth. His passing was quite the blow. It’s why I so gladly came north with you. I was in mourning, too.”
“Yes, but your mourning was real.” Maddie edged closer. “Oh, Aunt Thea. I’m so sorry.”
Her aunt dabbed at her eyes. “We knew it was coming. But one is never truly prepared. Nevertheless, life changes. We discover new passions. While you’ve spent your time drawing beetles, I’ve penned a torrid novel in my tower upstairs.”
“You, a novelist? But that’s . . . Well, that’s perfect.”
When she thought about it, Aunt Thea had been writing melodrama for years, with Maddie in the starring role.
“It’s more of a memoir, really. Or as the French call it, a roman à clef. Nearly everything in the events is true to life, but the names have been changed to protect the wicked.”
Maddie shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why have we been lying to each other all this time?”