Page 81 of A Season for Scandal

“So we just leave her here?” Mr Brown said, eyebrows raised.

“I told you: she’s perfectly fine,” Mrs Brown huffed, already striding to the door that led out to the hallway. “Now come on – there is much to do.”

With that, they both left. I waited for a handful of painfully loud heartbeats until I was certain they had really gone.

I yanked the door open and flew across to Lucy, gently turning her face and brushing the hair away from her forehead. Her chest rose and fell, but she was horribly still.

“Lucy!” I patted her cheek, panic lacing my words. “Lucy, can you hear me?”

After a few terrible seconds, her fingers twitched in mine.

“Lucy?” I said again, and relief rushed through me as her eyelids fluttered.

“Wh-what happened?” she asked, her voice shaky, as I gingerly helped her up into a sitting position.

I hesitated. It seemed impossible to tell her what had happened … that her own mother had knocked her down with such icy ruthlessness.

I didn’t need time to find the right words, however, because her eyes widened in sudden understanding. “My parents…” she said dazedly.

I nodded.

Then another realization spread across her face. “You called me Lucy,” she murmured.

“I did,” I agreed. “Can you stand, do you think? We should get you to the bed. Someone should come and have a look at your head.”

Lucy lifted her fingers to the back of her skull and winced. “Just a bump,” she said, as we levered her up from the floor. She swayed for a moment, but then seemed to gather herself and moved back through to her own room, sitting on the edge of the bed with a sigh. She kept my hand in hers.

“I am glad,” she said quietly, “that you know the truth. I have hated every moment of this deception. I was a fool to let them talk me into it. Foolish and weak.” She closed her eyes briefly and a tear leaked out. “How did you find out?”

“I am not Mr Lockhart’s fiancée,” I said. “Mrs Finch and I work for a … detective agency of sorts. Mr Lockhart and I went to your school. We spoke to Madame Moreau.”

“Madame.” Lucy’s smile was sad. “She was always kind to me.” She looked at me inquisitively. “You are not really engaged to Mr Lockhart? It was … an act?”

“Yes,” I said. “An act. Though that part is not important now. Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked carefully.

Lucy nodded. “Of course. You deserve the truth. You all do.” She let go of my hand and looked down at her own fingers. “Helene and I were best friends,” she said. “As close as you can imagine. Closer than sisters. We called ourselves twin souls. The day she started at Sainte-Geneviève’s was the most fortunate day of my life. We were inseparable from that moment on. When my parents left me at school over the holidays, she would take me home to the Lavignes in Herblay.”

Reaching under her pillow, Lucy pulled out the Bible we had found at Lockhart Hall. Opening the pages, she pulled out the piece of embroidery and spread it gently over the bed cover.

“HL,” I said, the truth dawning. “Not Helene Lavigne at all. Helene and Lucy.”

Lucy nodded, tears in her eyes. “Helene made it for me when we were about fourteen.” She gave a watery chuckle. “She always was terrible at embroidery.”

“But what about the scar?” I asked. “The one on your hand. It is just like Helene’s.”

Lucy lifted her palm. “It is the same as hers. We did it not long after she arrived at the school with a penknife. It was Helene’s idea – to make us blood sisters, she said. A silly sort of ritual that we imagined was filled with binding magic. It bled like the devil, and we had to hide the evidence from Matron. Helene always seemed to be dragging us into scrapes … and then dragging us back out again.”

“How did the plan to impersonate Helene come about?” I asked, and the question jarred us back to the present. Any lingering happiness fled Lucy’s eyes.

“It was my fault, really,” she admitted. “I should have known better than to let anything slip to my parents. I saw the advertisement that Mr Lockhart had placed in the paper – we always have the London papers delivered for news of home – and I realized when I saw the name that it was about Helene.”

“Helene knew Mr Lockhart’s name?” I asked. “She remembered who she was?”

Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “The story about losing her memory was true, but it didn’t last long. Helene began to remember everything while we were still at school, but she never told a soul except me. She was happy in France – and she was so afraid, you see, of her father. Of being sent back…”

I nodded slowly. “So you saw the advertisement…” I prompted her.

“Yes. When we finished school, Helene tried to get me to go with her, but my parents had some scheme running in the south of France, and they swept me along.” She bit her lip unhappily. “Then when that went wrong, it was on to the next town and the next. Helene and I stayed in touch by letter, and I clipped the advertisement to send to her.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I mentioned it over breakfast to my father, that Helene’s brother was looking for her. Silly of me.”