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Lavinia’s smile faded. “I feared my wedding night more than I feared sickness.”

At that, her mother breathed in through her nose. As her nostrils pinched, her gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. She looked acutely uncomfortable.

“Brides are always nervous,” she said. “It was my intention to tell you something of what to expect. But I didn’t find the opportunity.” Her head swung down and she sighed. “Really, Lavinia, is that what this is about?”

“No.” Lavinia felt herself flush. “Yes. I was nervous, but . . . because I knew what to expect.”

For a moment, her mother looked blankly. Then understanding sparked behind her eyes. She rose with a jerky motion.

“I thought of him as my husband.” Lavinia’s ears began to ring. Darkness streaked the edges of her vision. Her mother’s face was her focal point. Her mother’s white, frozen face.

“He was going to marry me. He promised he would marry me.”

“Who?” Her mother’s lips didn’t move.

Lavinia gulped the air. “George. I loved him. I would have—”

The force of the slap made her stagger. Pain spread down from her cheekbone, a stinging sensation riding upon a deep ache that made her want to sneeze.

“The Marquess of Stowe.” Her mother trembled. Her mouth made several ugly shapes.

“That family,” she gasped. “That cursed family. They left me nothing. Nothing untouched by their vileness.”

Lavinia stared, pressing her fingertips to her cheek. “Papa robbed them.”

“Because he was obsessed with that madwoman!” Her mother spat the words. “That slut. She started it all.”

Lavinia had never seen her mother’s face twist with such violence.

George’s mother, the Duchess of Weston, had been mad, famously so. George had refused to speak of her. Lavinia had sometimes wondered if she should have spoken, told him that she remembered his mother, remembered her standing in her glasshouse, picking fragrant, glowing fruit. Told him that, in her memory, his mother was beautiful and kind. Not mad. Magical.

Her papa had never spoken of her either.

“I was happy when she went to the asylum, when she died there.” Hectic spots of color mottled her mother’s face. “But it didn’t end. Twenty years on and she’s still blighting my life.”

Slowly, Lavinia bent to pick up the vase, the porcelain cool against her palms.

She’d wanted to tell her mother the truth.

She hadn’t thought what truths her mother might tell her in exchange.

Her papa . . . and the duchess. God above. A wave of horror crested inside her. Had Papa played a role in locking her away, as he had with Effie?

The close friendship between her family and George’s family—a friendship that had predated her birth and lasted until her father’s thefts came to light—it had been rotten from the beginning.

Her papa’s love had been rotten. Had always been rotten.

Or maybe it hadn’t been love at all.

She considered hurling the vase against the marble fireplace, then set it gently on the table.

Everything was different, but nothing was different.

How tired she felt.

She linked her hands at her waist. Managed to regard her mother calmly.

The older woman breathed strangely, as though sobbing without tears.