Free Moondrops (Love Letters) by Sarita Leone

point, Hugh nodded.
    “Why?” Leave it to Emmaline to be so direct!
    “I am not sure,” he answered honestly.
    “She is pretty.”
    “Many women are attractive.”
    “She is intelligent.”
    “Intelligence is not required for most of my dalliances, Emmaline.”
    A second toast triangle received a generous dollop of orange marmalade. Then, a small bite and careful chewing before the comment, “She does not throw herself at you. In fact, Elise seems annoyed by your presence. That is something you are not accustomed to from a woman, Hugh.”
    “Thank you for pointing it out.”

Chapter 7
    “Ancient Arabian legend? You expect us to believe you kept the truth from us because of an ancient Arabian legend?” Elise could not help herself. Composure was nowhere to be found and keeping her voice down was out of the question.
    “Legend be damned,” Louise declared. Her hair, once so neatly secured in a braid down her back, had come undone sometime during the long, difficult night. Her fingers had swept through the strands so many times they tangled around her shoulders in untamed waves. She looked as if she’d had a wild night filled with dreamy adventures.
    “Louise! I will not tolerate that kind of talk beneath this roof!” Motherly instinct survived, despite the torturous sob-punctuated explanations that had filled the past hours.
    Genevieve looked worse than either of her daughters did. Red-rimmed eyes alternately held their gazes or stared off into the darkest corners of the room. Now that daylight had broken, she had nowhere to look away from them so she concentrated on the fingers she clasped in her lap.
    Only the epithet brought her attention back to them. “I am still your mother, regardless of the mistakes I have made in my lifetime. You will not speak so deplorably again. I forbid it.”
    Louise stuck out her chin, the spoiled child in her surfacing yet again. She’d shown her indulgent nature so often during the past hours Elise was ready to strangle her sister.
    “Deplorable actions breed deplorable deeds. I should think you have only yourself to blame if I do not measure up, Mother. I am, after all, a bastard. Oh, but I am ruined—a bastard is so much less desirable than a dressmaker’s daughter, don’t you think?”
    “You are not illegitimate.” Genevieve’s voice broke over the last word. “I told you—a hundred times, it feels like—that you and Elise were conceived after I married your father. Just because he left me—”
    “To live with a whore, apparently,” Louise interjected.
    “The point is that you are not illegitimate. Neither of you are.”
    Genevieve’s hand, when it reached across the kitchen table for Elise’s hand—which she freely gave—was damp. Her cotton nightdress, wrinkled from sitting so long, made her seem small and, not for the first time, Elise felt sorry for her mother.
    She had been deceived, and in turn deceived her daughters, it was true. But had the man she married not left her for another, the deception would never have been necessary.
    Elise gave her mother’s hand a fast squeeze. Relief shone in Genevieve’s troubled eyes.
    Time to diffuse the situation. They were all tired, worn to the bone from revelations long overdue. It would not help anyone to keep pointing fingers and making accusations. What had been done was done. There was no turning back the clock. The future was all that mattered. And that, as far as she could see, had not been altered.
    Elise faced her sister. “You have got to get away from considering Emmaline Byrd at all. She does not matter to us. So she lived with our father. So what? Mother told us he went away on a ship and never returned; that was not the case. Living in London with Emmaline or gone by sea—who cares? He left us, which is what is important. He abandoned us, something men have been doing since the dawn of time. No need to blame Mother—or ourselves—for something a man does as part of his nature.”
    “I