Page 210 of Snowbound Surrender

No one had known. So how had Meredith discovered the truth?

“Wh-what?” were the only words she could manage to speak aloud, as wild thoughts whirled around her mind.

Was Meredith even old enough to understand the consequences of this for her – for both of them?

“What are you talking about?” Anne managed to say with a little more decorum.

Meredith smiled, and in that moment, she became the very image of Anne herself, at that age. Anne felt she was looking at a portrait taken of her at the age of thirteen.

“I heard someone speaking of it a few years ago,” her daughter was saying hesitantly, her cheeks pinking. “It did nottake too much thinking to understand it fully. Please do not worry. I like having you as both sister and mother.”

Anne smiled weakly. And here she had been attempting to protect Meredith from what she already knew.

“I understand that it must remain a secret,” she was saying, “that I had to remain a secret. But…did Maxim find out? Is that why he has left us?”

Anne swallowed. If Meredith’s true parentage were ever public knowledge, she would experience far worse than Maxim’s confused anger.

But she was too old to be lied to.

Anne sighed. She certainly would not have chosen these circumstances to try and explain this all to Meredith, and if she were not careful, the tears she had not cried for the last thirteen years would all fall at the same time.

“Maxim does not wish to marry me anymore, and that does not mean he did not enjoy your company greater. It is not because of who you are, it is because of…something I said to him.”

Meredith bit her lip, and only in that moment did Anne realise that her daughter looked just like her when conflicted.

“I…I am not ashamed of who I am,” she said simply.

Anne reached forward and pulled her daughter close. “Good. Because you should not be. You are wonderful.”

Meredith’s voice came a little muffled, and jagged with emotion. “I love you, Mummy.”

How was it possible for Anne’s heart to break all over again? This precious child, this unique cargo she had carried through life and now had to watch venture further and further from her safe and loving arms…how would they ever be the same again?

How long they were in each other’s arms, she did not know. In a way, it was their first ever hug as mother and daughter,both of them fully aware of the truth, and Anne had to brush away a tear. Her daughter, and she was not a child anymore.

When Anne finally released her, Meredith’s eyes were a little pink. “I am glad you were able to explain it to Maxim. I would…I would hate for him to have the wrong idea, and for the two of you to fall out because of me.”

Anne bit her lip and tried to smile. It had all happened so fast, that conversation yesterday afternoon. Had she explained everything properly? Had she really listened to him when he had attempted to explain things?

“I know I cannot call you Mummy in society,” the younger girl said wistfully. “I shall have to remember to call you ‘Anne’.”

Anne smiled. “I will answer to either, you know that. I will always answer when you call.”

How could she ever have thought Meredith too young for St. James’ Court? Why, she was practically a young lady, and yet the child she remembered – giggling through the fields behind their home, learning how to play with the cat without getting scratched, the tantrums at the piano – that child was still there, too. In the eyes, perhaps.

“I am going to go open another present,” said Meredith, her voice cutting through Anne’s thoughts, “and I’ll let you wake up slowly. Join us if you feel able.”

She stepped away but paused by the door, looking back at her mother. “If Maxim did not hear the full story, perhaps he misunderstood. Perhaps you should talk to him.”

And with that, she was gone.

Anne fell back into the comfort of her pillows and felt her soul unsettled. Her heart still hurt, and if that was not love, she did not know what was. But was it too late to speak with Maxim? What would she say? She would not apologise for who Meredith was, or what she herself had done in the past.

Was it possible to make peace with a Czar at Christmas?

Maxim sankheavily into the chair, rubbing his sore eyes. His arrival into the room was met with laughter.

“My goodness,” Prince Éduard said, sitting lightly opposite him at the breakfast table. “I would say you were a sight for sore eyes, but I think it is you who has the sore eyes, not me!”