The French Count's Pregnant Bride. Catherine Spencer

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      She’d raced home from school and gone straight to the sunroom where her mother always took afternoon tea. “Mommy,” she burst out breathlessly, “what does ‘adopted’ mean?”

      Even before then, she’d understood that her mother was, as their cleaning lady once put it, “fragile and given to spells,” and she realized at once that in mentioning the word “adopted,” she’d inadvertently trodden on forbidden territory. The Lapsang Souchong tea her mother favored slopped over the rim of its translucent porcelain cup and into the saucer. “Good heavens, Diana,” she said faintly, pressing a pale hand to her heart, “whatever makes you ask such a question?”

      Horrified at having brought on one of the dreaded “spells,” Diana rushed to explain. “Well, today Merrilee Hampton was mad at me because I won the spelling bee, so at recess she threw my snack on the ground, so I told her she was stupid, so then she told me I’m adopted. And I told her it’s not true, and she said it is, because her mother said so, and her mother doesn’t tell lies.”

      “Dear God, someone should staple that woman’s mouth shut!”

      Happening to come into the sunroom at that precise moment, Diana’s father had flung himself into a wicker chair across from her mother’s and said cheerfully, “Who are you talking about, my dear, and why are you ready to string her up by the thumbs?”

      “Mrs. Hampton,” Diana had informed him, since her mother seemed bereft of words. “She told Merrilee that I’m adopted, but I’m not, am I, Daddy?”

      She’d never forgotten the look her parents exchanged then, or the way her father had taken her on his lap and said gently, “Yes, you are, sweet pea.”

      “Oh!” Terribly afraid she’d contracted some kind of disease, she whispered, “Am I going to die?”

      “Good heavens, no! All being adopted means is—”

      “David, please!” her mother had interrupted, her voice sounding all funny and trembly. “We decided we’d never—”

      “You decided, Bethany,” he’d replied firmly. “If I’d had my way, we’d have dealt with this a long time ago, and our child would have learned the truth from us, instead of hearing it from someone else. But the cat’s out of the bag now, and nothing you or I can do is going to stuff it back in again. And after all this time, it can hardly matter anyway.”

      Then he’d turned back to Diana, tugged playfully on her ponytail and smiled. “Being adopted means that although another lady gave birth to you, we were the lucky people who got to keep you.”

      Trying to fit together all the pieces of this strange and sudden puzzle, Diana said, “Does that mean I have two mommies?”

      “In a way, yes.”

      “David!”

      “But you’re our daughter in every way that counts,” he went on, ignoring her mother’s moan of distress.

      Still unable to grasp so foreign a concept, Diana said, “But who’s my other mommy, and why doesn’t she live with us?”

      At that, her mother mewed pitifully.

      “No one you know,” her father said steadily. “She was too young to look after a baby, and so, because she knew we would love you just as much as she did, and take very good care of you, she gave you to us. After that, she went back to her home, and we brought you here to ours.”