So. She deserved to know the rest of it. And maybe. . maybe it would help Julia to say it all again. Maybe the whole sad ending of the affair would become a little more real, and maybe she could stop grasping at the faint hope that it would all work out in the end.

But it wouldn’t be easy to tell it all.

Julia spoke next to her aunt and sister. “Would you mind leaving us alone?”

Lady Irving began to protest, not wanting to miss the chance to add her considered opinion of the viscount and his moral flaws, but Louisa rose at once to leave the room. The countess looked after her reluctantly for a moment, then also stood.

“Very well,” she agreed. “We’ll wait in the breakfast parlor or some such nonsense. But I’m taking the biscuits. I need fortification after what I’ve been through today.”

Julia rolled her eyes at this statement. She could have done with a biscuit herself, or perhaps a dozen. But she supposed she should just be glad to have her other relatives out of the room. She didn’t want to listen to her aunt rail against James, even though he had failed her. And she didn’t want to talk about the situation in front of Louisa’s bruised eyes. If there was a good side to this at all, it was that Louisa had been able to come home as she wished. Still, Julia couldn’t help feeling that she had added to Louisa’s misery, even though her sister had not only forgiven her but given her blessing for Julia to be with James.

Once she was alone with her mother, Julia again drew a deep breath for courage. She looked at her mother’s sympathetic blue eyes, so much like her own. It was hard to know where to begin. She had always told her mother everything, and her mother had always understood — but then again, nothing had ever really happened to Julia before. She’d lived her life in the country, seeing the same small circle of people over and over again. She’d certainly never been in love before, or publicly humiliated, for that matter.

“My girl,” Lady Oliver began with a soft smile. “It’s good to see you again, no matter what the cause for your return.” She put her arm around Julia’s shoulders and added, “You don’t have to tell me anything else if you don’t want to.”

This permission, this graciousness, freed Julia’s tongue at last, and she was able to tell her mother everything. She spoke for what seemed like hours, as Lady Oliver listened quietly and sympathetically.

She told her mother how she had fallen in love with James almost at once; how guilty she had felt, knowing he belonged to Louisa; how she finally realized she must try to forget him and seek a match with someone else. She described Sir Stephen, how he had pursued her and proposed to her. How Louisa had enlisted her help in delivering the news of the broken engagement. How Julia had gone to James’s home to talk to him.

The next part was more difficult to tell. “I spent time with him in his home, Mama. Of an intimate nature,” she admitted. “And then, as I was leaving, we were seen together.”

Lady Oliver read between the lines. “Oh, dear,” she replied. “That was quite a step to take.”

Julia looked nervously at her mother’s face. “Are you angry with me?”

Lady Oliver shrugged, her expression as untroubled as ever. “It’s not a good idea for a young woman, because of the risk of a baby. But in this case, he wants to marry you, so I think all shall be well, even if there is a baby.”

“A baby,” Julia repeated. She felt numb. She hadn’t even thought of the possibility of a baby.

Lady Oliver noticed her daughter’s thunderstruck expression. “Why are you so worried, my girl? What does it matter if the baby comes a week or two earlier than it might have if you waited for your marriage? Babies always come in their own time; no one will ever know the difference.”

“But, Mama,” Julia insisted, “he won’t marry me.” In a flat voice she assumed to hide her growing terror — dear God, if there would be a baby, how would she care for it, all alone in the world? — she told her mother about the scandal item in the morning paper; the messages sent and received; Sir Stephen’s rescinded proposal and the information about James’s whereabouts.

“So he must have felt that he had been disgraced, and he changed his mind about marrying me, which I thought he had only suggested in the first place because of what we had done, and I felt uneasy about it. And as it turns out, I was right to feel that way, because he never came for me, and I shall have a baby and be a disgrace to you and be cast out alone into the world,” Julia finished. She was wrung out at the end of her tale; she could do nothing but gasp for breath and stare at her mother with haunted eyes.

Lady Oliver stared back at her for a moment, absorbing this frantic stream of words. And then she laughed.

And she kept laughing, for what seemed to Julia like minutes on end, her loud peals of amusement finally simmering down into giggles, but breaking out again periodically into another hearty chuckle.

“Oh, my goodness,” Lady Oliver said, wiping at her eyes, as her daughter gaped at her in hurt shock. “Oh, I’m sorry to laugh at you. But you are just so funny.”

“Funny?” Julia was insulted. “What part of my tragic tale was funny to you?”

“Julia, my girl”—her mother smiled fondly, cupping her chin—“I think the world of Louisa, but she has obviously encouraged you to read far too many Gothic novels. You are allowing your imagination to run away with you.”

She looked her daughter full in the face as she ticked points off one by one on her fingers, still smiling. “First of all, you are loved; that can never be a tragedy. Second, if there should be a baby and no marriage, you will always have a home here with us. Third, that will never come to pass, because there will be a marriage, because the viscount is head over ears in love with you.”

Julia stared at her, a faint, eager optimism beginning to grow inside of her. “Why do you say that? Are you just repeating what I told you he said in the past, or. .”

“Please,” Lady Oliver scoffed gently, “allow that your own mother has eyes in her head to see what’s going on in her house, even if your father tends to be, er, a bit too distracted to notice. I was very eager for Louisa’s match to take place, but when I saw how reserved they were with each other and how comfortable James was with you and you with him, I thought there might be a change of bride at some point.”

Julia was stunned. She had had no inkling that anyone else had ever observed her feelings for James. “You thought that all along?”

Lady Oliver smiled again. “It would hardly have been tactful to say anything while Louisa was still engaged to him, would it? I only hoped that, if it should not work out, it would not be a disappointment to Louisa. But she’s stronger than even she knows, and she’s seen to her own happiness in this case.”

“She’s been wonderful,” Julia blurted. “She forgave me in an instant. Once she had given James up, she was more than happy that I should. . well, be happy.”

“So?” Lady Oliver looked at her daughter expectantly. “Are you going to be?”

Julia shrugged. “I don’t know. My aunt says it is for James to make things right at this point.”

“Bosh,” the elder woman replied, and looked startled at her own response. “My goodness, I must be taking on your aunt’s personality.”

She blinked in surprise, then explained, “If you want something, you must go and get it. It may not be precisely the conventional thing to do, but it’s the only way to be sure you’ll have no regrets. If you love him, you must pursue him, and if he loves you in return, then all will work out for the best. And if by some impossibility, he does not — I know, dear; no need to shudder, for it won’t happen — then you will have tried your utmost, and you need never wonder about what might have happened.”

Julia considered her mother’s words. She had been so hurt by the note James had sent — well, it couldn’t really have been James who’d sent it, but still, perhaps it had come on his behalf — that she hadn’t thought about anything beyond escaping from London. She had been devastated. Crushed. Mortified.

She had no desire to experience any of that again. Her mother’s encouraging words had cheered her at first. But now she was being told to take a risk, a very bold and unladylike risk, and take the chance of experiencing another, worse pain than before.

She felt grouchy. What did her mother know about it, anyway? Her mother had a perfect marriage and a husband who loved her even more than he loved mucking about with his animals, which was truly saying something. All right, perhaps she had been a little melodramatic talking about her “tragic tale”—but still, it was too much to ask that Julia risk humiliation again.

“Who would actually pursue a man in that way?” she grumbled. “Women aren’t allowed to do anything. We just have to wait for the men to ask, and then we simply have the choice of yes or no.”

Lady Oliver raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But my dear, that’s not true at all.” She brought a considering forefinger to her cheek. “Did you never wonder why you were named Julia, rather than being named Elise for me?”

Julia hadn’t been expecting that response. “Um. . no. No, I never thought about it, I suppose.”

“Well.” Lady Oliver sat back and folded her hands over her knee, as if settling in for a long tale. “It was, of course, expected that I would name you for myself, as my oldest daughter. But you are named instead for your father.”

Despite the passage of time, the baroness’s eyes grew misty with remembered fondness. “I was only eighteen, even younger than yourself, when I met Julian Herington. I was the daughter of a country squire, and he was the curate.”