“What?” Lilah asked when they separated.
“I don’t blame you fer trying to become a nob. You got blood of yer father, and why not make the best of it?”
Lilah’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I did.”
“You did, but now you’ve remembered your mother.”
“I never forgot her.”
Margarite leaned forward. “You mean you never forgave her. You think I don’t remember what you said when we were kids? How you wanted a real father, a real family. And you cozied up to your father and begged him to take you in.”
“I didn’t make him!” Lilah cried. “I wanted him to love me.”
“And he did love you. And you got him and his family, right and tight.” Margarite’s expression sobered. “An’ once you left, you never looked back. Not until today.”
“My family loves me. Even Lady Byrn in her own way. They love me!”
“Of course, they do, but your mom loved you too. And we loved you here. And I loved you—”
“I wasn’t allowed back here. You know that. Lady Byrn said I’d never get married if I associated with—” She cut off her words. She didn’t mean to insult Margarite for her lifestyle. Her friend had had little choice in her upbringing or how her future played out.
“With the likes of me,” Margarite finished for her. “But you didn’t get married anyway, did you?”
Lilah looked down at her hands. “No, I didn’t.” She didn’t explain that Aaron had asked her. How could she tell Margarite that she’d been offered everything a woman was supposed to want—marriage to a peer—and yet turned it down? But Margarite seemed to understand her unspoken thoughts.
“And now you see that you’ve a place in this world and it ain’t such a bad one. Just like your mum. And you’ve got a trade you like, right?”
She did. She’d barely started to do what she wanted with the registry office, but it was still rewarding work that she enjoyed. “Yes,” she said softly.
“An’ now you have a man that you love, an’ no harm done.”
Did a broken heart count as harm? “What if I’m pregnant?” she whispered, her thoughts and her emotions spinning at the thought.
“Your mum didn’t mean for you to happen either. These things don’t always work.” She gestured to the various methods they used to prevent babies. “But it came from love. Surely you remember that. If I can remember, you can too, yes?”
Yes, she remembered. Her mother and Lord Byrn had loved one another. And they’d created her out of that love. She knew it because her father had said so several times. Her mother too before she’d died.
“And now that you see how it happens, you can forgive her? Yes?” Margarite was pressing Lilah’s hands as she spoke. There was something more to her words than asking for understanding about Lilah’s mother.
“What are you trying to say?”
Margarite bit her lip and looked ashamed. But even as her cheeks turned ruddy and her gaze would not steady, her hands remained strong where she gripped Lilah’s. “You understand about your mum now. About how she loved where she loved, and you’re doing the same with your gent. You love where you love.”
She did see that now. And with that realization came an easing. She hadn’t even realized that she’d been angry with her own mother for birthing her. But how could she hate her mother when she might have made the same mistake? “I don’t blame her for making me,” she said softly. “I came from love.” How freeing those words were.
“Then you understand about me,” Margarite said.
“You?”
Her friend tsked and tilted her head. She was jerking it toward the dresser where her cosmetics sat. Her cosmetics and several knives. LiIah’s gaze traveled the room then and picked up details she hadn’t noticed before. She saw Margarite’s costumes intermixed with a man’s clothing. Her slippers with a man’s boots. And not just any man.
“You’re with Jamis?”
Margarite shrugged and released a nervous giggle. “He’s not like we thought as kids. He can get mad sometimes, but he’s never hurt me. And he’s got a way of saying things that only I understand.”
“You love Jamis.” It was a statement, but Margarite acknowledged it with a grin. “Does he love you?”
“He says so. An’ he treats me well.”