The Name Buried in His Memory
Thomas took Elena to a private palm room off the main conservatory while a physician checked her lip and the baby. The child was unharmed, only frightened, and that fact alone nearly made Elena cry harder than the slap had.
She refused the brandy someone offered.
She refused to sit until she knew the door was shut.
Thomas stood across from her in his rain-marked ceremonial jacket, the pendant resting in his open palm.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
Elena touched the split in her lip. "It was my mother's. She died when I was nine. My foster mother kept it for me until I turned eighteen."
"Your mother had a name?"
"Marianne Hartley. At least that's the name I knew."
Thomas closed his eyes for a brief second, as if memory had struck him behind the ribs.
"No," he said quietly. "That was the name she hid under."
He crossed to a cabinet and pulled out an old silver frame that had been set aside with the gala decorations. Inside was a photograph from years before. A younger Thomas stood in military dress beside a smiling woman with dark auburn hair and Elena's hazel eyes.
Around the woman's neck hung the same crest.
Elena stared.
"Who is she?"
Thomas looked at her carefully before he answered.
"Lady Marianne Wren. Younger sister to Beatrice. She vanished twenty-nine years ago after a scandal the family never allowed into the papers."
The room seemed to lean.
Elena let out a breath that felt borrowed. "You're saying my mother was... her sister?"
"I am saying your mother was born into the Wren line," Thomas said. "And I am saying I swore to her father that if I ever saw that pendant again, I would bring her child home."
Home.
The word offended Elena on instinct.
"This is not my home." She looked toward the ballroom where Beatrice still ruled with silence and money. "That woman hit me while people watched."
"I know." His voice tightened. "And I think she did it because she recognized you before I did."
Elena's daughter stirred against her chest. She looked down, then back at Thomas.
"If my mother belonged to this family," she said, "why did she die in a one-bedroom apartment in Providence calling herself nobody?"
Thomas did not answer at once.
May you like
When he finally spoke, his face looked older.
"Because someone made sure she paid for loving the wrong man. And I am afraid that someone never stopped."
