Chapter 115: A Wife’s Heartache

Leanne stared blankly at him.

"No."

The word escaped almost instinctively.

"No..."

She shook her head harder.

"That’s not possible."

She stood abruptly, backing away from them.

"No!"

Her voice cracked.

"You never betrayed me. I know you. I’ve known you almost my entire life. You would never...."

Her words died in her throat.

Julian’s eyes reddened.

"I didn’t mean it. It was unintentional."

"You expect me to believe that?"

Tears welled in her eyes.

"A child doesn’t simply appear out of nowhere after twenty-three years, Julian!"

"I know. I lost my memory at that time. I had forgotten about you and Morgan and Judy."

His voice broke.

"It was that time twenty-three years ago."

Leanne froze.

The kidnapping. The nightmare she had spent years trying to bury.

She remembered searching every hospital. Every police station. Every morgue. She remembered praying until her knees bled against the chapel floor. She remembered Morgan and Judy, who were old enough to understand, asking every night when their father was coming home.

And then...Julian had finally returned. Broken but alive. His body still bore the many scars of his injuries.

He was unable to remember parts of what had happened, unable to recognize her and his children.

The doctors had warned them. Trauma could erase memories and some might never return.

She had accepted that explanation.

"It is okay." She said half-denial and half-accepting. "As long as he is alive."

She never imagined those missing months had hidden an entire life.

Julian slowly stood.

"There was a woman."

Leanne instinctively flinched. He noticed, and his heart shattered.

"I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I had forgotten about her, but she saved me. I only remembered after seeing Isobel. I remembered her face...and her name."

"Rosella," Leanne whispered hoarsely.

Julian froze.

He looked at Leanne with guilty eyes. "How...how did you know?" His voice was almost a whisper.

"The night you were brought back, at the hospital bed, you murmured her name," Leanne said calmly.

"But that was the first and last time I heard you call her name."

Julian breathed deeply.

"I now remember everything. She took care of me in that village at the foot of the mountain."

"I suppose she looked like Isobel, does she?" Leanne asked in a voice that trembled slightly.

"Yes," he replied, and his voice became hoarse. "And she was twenty at that time."

Tears spilled freely down Leanne’s cheeks. Not because Julian had chosen another woman...but because for four months...someone else had loved her husband. Someone else had built a life with the man who no longer remembered her.

Julian slowly sank to his knees before her.

"Leanne..."

She gasped.

In all their years together... he had never knelt before her like the way he was kneeling now.

"I swear I never knowingly betrayed you. When my memories returned... I forgot about her."

His shoulders trembled, and his voice finally collapsed.

"I wronged her, and I wronged you. But the child is innocent."

The room fell silent except for Leanne’s quiet sobs.

Morgan turned away.

Watching his father—once an unshakable pillar of strength—broken by regret was almost unbearable.

Leanne looked down at the man she had loved for more than four decades.

She wanted to be angry. She wanted to scream. To demand how he could love a woman in such a short span of time.

Perhaps it wasn’t love. Maybe, just maybe...what Julian felt was just gratitude and mistook it forlove. This was what Leanne told herself. And it made her feel a little better.

Then she looked down at her husband, who was still kneeling.

She saw only a man carrying twenty-three years of grief that had arrived all at once.

Slowly, with trembling hands, she cupped his face.

"Look at me."

Julian raised his tear-filled eyes.

"I believe you. I believe... that you never meant to hurt me."

The words came out barely above a whisper.

A sob escaped Julian’s lips.

"But believing you...doesn’t stop this from hurting."

A tear rolled down Leanne’s cheek. She rested her forehead against his.

"It hurts so much."

Julian closed his eyes.

"I’m sorry. I’m so... so sorry, Honey."

For several minutes, they remained like that, mourning a past neither of them had chosen.

Finally, Leanne remembered something and wiped away her tears.

"What about Isobel?"

Julian hesitated.

"She doesn’t know, yet."

Leanne looked toward Morgan. His back was toward them, and he was looking out the window.

"You haven’t told her?"

Morgan shook his head.

"No. We wanted you to know first."

Silence settled over the study room once more.

Then Leanne asked the question neither father nor son had been brave enough to voice.

"Does she know who her mother was?"

Morgan slowly shook his head.

"No."

Leanne looked out of the window, her thoughts drifting to the young woman who had unknowingly entered his son’s life months ago.

When she first received the news that Morgan had taken in a live-in wet nurse, she was skeptical. Like the others, she thought that Isobel was just like other women trying to climb her son’s bed.

She asked the maids from the Foster mansion to keep an eye on Isobel. The feedback she received from her people in the mansion had one message — Isobel’s goodness.

The woman is polite and has a gentle smile.

Her kindness is unwavering.

She cared for Morgan’s children as if they were her own.

So all this time...that lonely orphan had been carrying the Foster blood in her veins.

A fresh wave of tears blurred Leanne’s vision.

"Twenty-three years..."

Julian whispered.

"My daughter... grew up believing she had no one. I really failed her."

Before either Leanne or Morgan could respond—

A housekeeper hurried into the living room, her face pale with panic.

"Master... Madam..."

She struggled to catch her breath.

"Miss Isobel is here."

The three of them froze.

"And..."

The maid swallowed nervously.

"...she said she needs to speak with Sir Morgan immediately."