“Roe?” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
Only one person had ever called her that—one little mop-haired blond child with his toys and his books and his healing kisses. This man—
“Colin?” Her fingers curled into her palms at her sides.
His eyes stilled on the left side of her face and then focused on her own eyes. “Roe,” he said again. “It is you. It is you?”
Wren felt as though the blood were draining from her head. She felt as though she were gazing down a long tunnel. A warm hand grasped her firmly by the elbow.
“I have brought Lord Hodges to meet you, Wren,” Alexander said.
Lord Hodges? He was not Papa. He was not—no, surely he was not Justin.
“Yes, I am Colin,” he said, crossing the room toward her in a few long strides and taking both her hands in a bruising clasp. “Roe. Oh, good God, Roe. I thought you were dead. I thought you died twenty years ago.”
A little six-year-old. A happy little boy with his toys and books and get-better kisses who always seemed to skip happily wherever he went. The only person who had loved her during her own childhood.
“Oh, God,” he said, “they told me you were dead.”
If he squeezed her hands any more tightly, he was going to break a few fingers. “You used to kiss my face to make it better,” she said. “Do you remember, Colin? You did make it better. See? It never did go quite away, but it is better. And everything else got better too. Except that you were lost to me. And I have always wondered … My heart has always ached.”
“I survived too,” he said, and when he smiled, she could see—oh, surely she could see that radiant little boy, though she had to look up an inch or two at him now. “I still cannot believe it, Roe. You are alive. All these years …”
I survived too … A strange choice of words.
“Perhaps we should all sit down,” Alexander suggested.
He poured them each a glass of wine while Wren sat with Colin on the deep leather sofa that faced the fireplace. He took both her hands in his again as soon as they were seated, as though he feared she would disappear if he did not hold on to her. Alexander sat in one of the armchairs flanking the hearth.
“No, it never did go quite away,” Colin said, tipping his head to look at the side of her face, “but it does not matter, Roe. Riverdale was right. You are beautiful. And you were the fortunate one. If you had not been blemished, she would have kept you. Did Aunt Megan treat you well? Riverdale says she did.”
“She was an angel,” Wren said. “And I use the word with all sincerity. So was Uncle Reggie, whom she married. But, Colin—Lord Hodges?”
“Were you cut off from all knowledge of us, then?” he asked her. “Papa died seven years ago of a weak heart. Justin died three years before him. There is an official story of the cause, but the truth is that he drank himself to death. You probably do not know anything else about us either, do you? Blanche married Sir Nelson Elwood. They live with our mother. There are no children. Ruby married Sean Murphy when she was seventeen and went to Ireland with him. She never comes back, but I have been there a few times. I have—you and I have three nephews and a niece. I have rooms here in London, where I live year-round.”
“Not with … Mother?” she asked.
“No.” He released her hands and reached for his glass of wine. “I suppose you were not sickly as a child, were you? That was not why you rarely came out of your room.”
“No,” she said.
“I suppose you were kept there,” he said, “because you were a blemish upon her beautiful world. Young children are very gullible. They believe everything they are told. I suppose that is natural. They have to grow gradually into discernment—and cynicism. I was proud of myself when I learned to turn that key. I can remember turning it so that I could come and play with you. I never thought to question why a sickly sister had to be locked into her room. But, Wren, you were able to escape when you were still young. If you had not had that strawberry blemish, you would have been sucked up like the rest of us, for you are beautiful and probably were even as a child. But forgive me. Nothing must have seemed like a blessing in those days.”
“Oh, you did,” she told him.
Both he and Alexander smiled at her, and she looked from one to the other of them and felt a great welling of love.
“The rest of us had identity only as her beautiful offspring,” Colin said. “I had a bit of a lisp as a child. I was not allowed to grow out of it until I almost was unable to do so. And I was not allowed to cut my hair in what I considered a decently boyish style because it was blond and curly and people used to pat me on the head and coo over me. And I was told you had died. I can remember going to your room the night after I heard and tucking my favorite cloth tiger beneath your bedcovers to keep you warm and putting the book you most liked me to read on your pillow to keep you company. But it seems I stayed there to do both myself. I believe I fell asleep crying. There was a bit of a hue and cry the next morning when I was not in my own bed.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Even though I did not know it, thank you, Colin.”
“Why Wren?” he asked her.
She smiled. “It is what Uncle Reggie called me the first time he saw me,” she said. “He said I was all thin and big-eyed and looked like a little bird. Soon Aunt Megan was calling me Wren too and I liked it. When they adopted me, I became Wren Heyden, the name I bore until three days ago, when I became Wren Westcott.” She glanced at Alexander and smiled again.
“I do not believe I could get used to saying it,” Colin said, “though it is pretty.”
“Oh no,” she said. “You must always call me Roe. Only you have ever done so, and I associate it with brightness and comfort and love.”
He sighed and looked from her to Alexander. “I want to know so much,” he said. “I want to know everything. And I suppose I want to tell you everything. There are so many missing years. But I must not take up more of your time today. Riverdale, I owe you a debt of gratitude I may never be able to repay. I would never have known. I read your marriage announcement, but the name Wren Heyden meant nothing to me. I would not have known even if I had seen her, for her face is different now from the way I remember it. I would have gone through the rest of my life believing my sister to be dead.”
“But you must stay,” Wren said, forgetting her earlier longing to be alone with Alexander for the evening. “Stay for dinner. Meet my mother- and sister-in-law and cousins. I daresay you know some of them already.”
“Alas, I cannot,” he said. “I have an engagement I cannot break. A friend of mine has a sister who needs an escort to Vauxhall, and I am he. She is a shy girl and has not taken well with the ton so far this year.”
“Then you certainly must go,” Wren said as he got to his feet and offered both his hands to draw her up before him.
“Roe,” he said, tightening his grip, “stay away from her. She is my mother—our mother—and I would not utter one disloyal word about her to anyone outside the family. I said the same thing to Riverdale earlier about staying away from her, but only after he convinced me that he was indeed my brother-in-law. She is poison, Roe. There is only one person in her world—herself. Everyone else is part of a stage set about her or the audience to gaze upon her with wonder and awe. She can be vicious to anyone who will not play his or her appointed part. I am almost choking on such disloyal words about my own mother, but she is your mother too and she will not be happy if she comes face-to-face with you. She will fear exposure as someone who is not quite perfect after all. Stay away from her. Forget about her. But I daresay you already intend to do just that.”