The new owners could afford to maintain the properties the way the old owners no longer could. It was new money, which the aristocrats looked down on. They had no titles unless they bought them, which some did. Some of the more desperate landowners sold their titles along with their estates, but the Markhams were commoners and didn’t mind it. They made up in wealth what they lacked in blood and ancestry. But Lucy knew she trumped them all. She had a royal princess as a daughter, and her grandparents were the King and Queen of England. It didn’t get better than that, even if no one knew it. Lucy did, which was all that mattered to her. It always thrilled her when she thought about it. It was so surreal, and an enormous secret. Her baby was a Royal Highness, and Lucy was going to give her the best life she could, worthy of any princess, to the best of her ability. Working for the Markhams was the first step. Maybe she’d rise to housekeeper one day, with a ring of keys on her belt like Mrs. Finch, who ran the Markhams’ home with an iron hand, but despite her odd, stiff ways and stern face, Lucy liked her. She was from the northern border of Yorkshire, and had the accent that had become familiar to Lucy while she stayed with the Hemmingses at Ainsleigh.
She settled into her job, determined to work hard, and had a letter from the housekeeper at Ainsleigh a few months later. She had let her know where she was, and told her she’d found a good job. The housekeeper from Ainsleigh reported that the estate had been sold to an American. The old servants had all been let go. The new owner was going to spend a year or two remodeling everything and modernizing the place, and would hire a new staff after they did, probably some of them American. They had bought the place for very little.
Her big news was that two palace secretaries and the queen’s equerry had come from London shortly after Lucy left. They had exhumed Charlotte’s casket and taken her remains back to London for a service there, and it turned out that Charlotte had been a royal princess. It had all been arranged very quietly, and the palace emissaries hadn’t said much about it. No one at Ainsleigh had suspected that Charlotte had apparently been a member of the royal family. It made what they thought was her illegitimate love child even more shocking. And out of respect for the Hemmingses, sympathy for Charlotte, and loyalty to Lucy, no one had breathed a word about Annie. The housekeeper wrote that they hadn’t asked about the baby, and she had the strong feeling they didn’t know about her, which was probably just as well. Henry and Charlotte were both dead. Annie was illegitimate and she was in good hands. The whole matter was better left buried and forgotten. There was no point maligning the dead and causing a scandal. She also mentioned that they had taken her big horse back to London with them.
Lucy still believed she had done the right thing, taking her because she loved her, particularly since they didn’t know about Charlotte’s clandestine marriage to Henry Hemmings. It would all be forgotten now, and she and Annie could go on with their lives. She had left just in time, which was providential. She didn’t write back to the housekeeper, and didn’t want to pursue a friendship with them and maintain a connection. She wanted to put Ainsleigh behind her. It was history now. And they could have exposed her. Fortunately they didn’t know about the marriage, which would have changed things if they did, Lucy had turned the page and started a new life where no one knew her. At the Markhams’， she was just another war widow with a child. There were thousands of them all over England, some of whom had truly been married, and some not and only claimed to be. There were too many of them to ask questions or garner much interest. The Ainsleigh servants were happy for Lucy and Annie.
And no one at the Markham estate had questioned Lucy about Annie. They just thought she was a pretty little thing, and they never commented that she looked nothing like her mother. Lucy was a tall girl with a big frame, and despite her size at birth, Annie already had the delicate frame and features of her natural mother. Lucy could already see how much she looked like Charlotte. She had the face of an angel and white blond hair, with sky blue eyes. She was going to be a beauty one day, and she was already small for her age, which Lucy blamed on rationing and how little food they’d had in Yorkshire at the end of the war. The restrictions of rationing hadn’t been lifted yet, but they ate well at the Markhams’， who managed to feed their employees plentifully. And Lucy gave whatever treats she had to Annie. She never minded depriving herself for her baby. Lucy had convinced herself by then that Charlotte’s family would have rejected her because of how her birth came about, and everyone at Ainsleigh believed it too. Annie would have been the child of a regrettable mistake, a disgrace they would have buried and probably put her somewhere with people who didn’t love her as Lucy did. Lucy had no trouble justifying what she’d done by taking her. Her love for the child made it seem right to her. In her mind, love was stronger than blood or ancestry. She might not have a royal life, or live in a palace, but little Annie had a mother who loved her deeply. What more could she want or need? Lucy had no regrets. She never let herself think about it now. Annie was her baby. And anything she’d had to do to become her mother seemed right to her. And like Charlotte, she would go to her grave with her secrets.