They mocked the disgraced sister at the Duke’s wedding—then he stopped the ceremony after learning why she had vanished eight years ago

Chapter 7

The search consumed weeks.

Isabella followed every lead she could find — boarding houses, former employers, old acquaintances who had known her sister before the fall. She asked questions in kitchens and servants’ quarters, where people were less guarded than in drawing rooms. She wrote letters and received no answers. She knocked on doors that opened and closed without help.

Eventually, one inquiry led to London. Another led to St. Catherine’s House.

When she finally stood before the reception desk, her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe. A clerk listened politely to her request, then disappeared through a door at the back of the hall. Several minutes passed. When the clerk returned, the words came out flat and final.

“Lady Emmeline does not wish to see visitors.”

The rejection struck like a blow to the chest. Isabella had expected it — had half prepared herself for it — but hearing it aloud still hurt. She nodded, turned, and walked out into the cold.

The afternoon air had turned bitter. Wind swept through the streets, and dark clouds gathered overhead like judgment. She should have gone home. Instead she remained. One hour passed, then another. Carriages came and went. Nurses entered and left. The temperature kept dropping, and Isabella kept standing, her coat too thin for the cold, her hands trembling, her cheeks pale.

She refused to move.

As evening settled over London and the street lamps flickered to life, Emmeline finished her final duties and made her way out through the front entrance. The day had been exhausting; all she wanted was rest. But as she approached the gate, something caught her eye.

Beneath the lantern light stood a familiar figure.

Her coat offered little protection against the wind. Her hands were shaking. Her cheeks were flushed with cold. Yet she had not moved, had not left, had not given up.

Emmeline stopped walking.

She had been standing there for hours.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The sounds of passing carriages and distant hooves filled the silence between them. Then Emmeline stepped closer.

“You should go home, Bella.”

Her sister shook her head. “I cannot.”

“You have been standing here for hours.”

“I know.”

Emmeline looked away. Part of her wanted to walk past this moment entirely, to protect herself from more pain. But another part of her remembered a little girl following her through the garden paths, begging for one more bedtime story.

“What do you want from me?” she asked quietly.

Bella’s eyes filled with tears. “I want the chance to say I am sorry.”

The words came without hesitation, without excuses, without conditions. And for the first time, Emmeline believed them.

They walked together to a nearby public garden, where iron benches sat beneath bare trees and gas lamps cast pools of golden light across the gravel paths. There, in the cold, with the whole city going about its business around them, Isabella told her sister everything.

She admitted how easily she had accepted her mother’s version of events. She admitted how often she had wondered why Emmeline never wrote, never visited, never came back — and how she had let that wondering curdle into blame. She admitted that she had chosen comfort over questions, that the lies had been easier to live with than the truth would have been.

Every confession seemed to cost her something. Each one peeled away another layer of the armor she had worn for eight years.

Emmeline listened in silence. The hurt of eight years could not be erased in a single conversation. But she could see the sincerity in front of her — the same sincerity she had once seen in a small girl who begged to be read to before bed.

When Bella finally finished speaking, tears were running freely down her face. “I failed you.”

Emmeline stared at the cobblestones. The most painful realization, she understood, was how much had been stolen from both of them. Not money. Not opportunity. Years. Memories. A sisterhood that should never have been broken.

Slowly, she reached out and took her sister’s hand.

The younger woman looked up.

“I forgive you.”

Bella began to cry harder — not because she deserved forgiveness, but because she knew she did not. And that was exactly why it mattered. The sisters embraced beneath the glow of the street lamps while the cold London wind swept around them, and for the first time in eight years, they felt like family again.

The following morning, Isabella made a decision. If she truly wanted redemption, apologies would not be enough. The damage had to be repaired. And that meant confronting the source of everything — Lady Cordelia Ashcroft.