Chapter 82 - Eighty Two
The room was dim, the heavy velvet curtains drawn tight against the afternoon sun, trapping shadows in the corners. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying scent of sandalwood incense. An old woman with eyes that’s all knowing sat behind a small, round table covered in a dark, embroidered cloth. This was the parlor of the most famous palm reader in all of Albion.
"I must have been blessed by the fates today," the palm reader said, her voice a low, raspy whisper. "For years, all the great nobles of this kingdom have come to my door to know their fate. But you, Dowager Duchess Elena, in all this time, you never came. And yet, you have finally arrived."
Elena, looking as regal and out of place as a diamond in a coal bin, sat opposite her. "I have never had a reason to come before," she replied, her voice cool and clipped. "But today..." She turned and looked at Delia, who was sitting silently beside her. "Today, I am here because of her."
The palm reader’s gaze shifted to Delia, her dark eyes sharp and assessing. "And who is she?"
"She is to be my granddaughter-in-law," Elena stated simply. " And the granddaughter of your regular patron."
Delia, hearing the words spoken with such finality by the powerful matriarch, let a small, involuntary smile touch her lips.
"Oh, I see," the palm reader said. She took one quick, penetrating look at Delia, then turned her attention back to Elena. "So what is it that you wish to know about her that you would both come here together, Your Grace?"
"I want to know what connection this child truly has with her grandfather, Baron Edgar Ellington," Elena began, getting straight to the point. "Years ago, when his son, Henry, was getting married to his current wife, Edgar made a strange condition. He said he needed to give back to society, to atone for past sins. But his son argued with him. Henry said he would only agree to the marriage if Edgar, in turn, agreed to let him bring his first seed, his illegitimate child, into the family home." She looked at Delia. "That is how she came into the Ellington family. A bargain chip in another woman’s marriage."
She continued, her voice hardening with the memory of her recent encounter. "And now, suddenly, she is to marry my grandson. And the old Baron comes to me, on his knees, begging me not to disapprove, with a sack full of all the money he stole from me, all the money he cheated me out of me years ago in his hands. Watching him act like that, so desperate... it scared me. It was not the act of a man simply wishing for his granddaughter’s happiness. He was not the same greedy, money obsessed man I knew.
"Your Grace truly hates the Baron," the palm reader observed, a simple statement of fact.
"Of course, I hate him," Elena retorted. "He cheated me out of a fortune in our shipping venture. But it was more than that. I almost died that day he almost made me lose everything. My blood, sweat and tears."