The Last to Know by Posie Graeme-evans Page A

She won’t settle for second best, and that’s a tough call in her society and ours, but I actually quite like her for making that choice.
    I think she became quite a formidable old lady. I find I like formidable in women. There’s not enough of it around.
    Posie Graeme-Evans
    Tasmania

The Last to Know
    All Hallows Eve—October 31
    My dearest Louisa,
    Forgive this directness in writing to you of tragic events from long ago, but I am close, now, to the natural term of my days. That being so, there are matters of which I wish to dispose, and this letter to you is one of them.
    Further, I have chosen this day of all days in the year, for, traditionally, the Eve of All Hallows is when the dead are said to rise from their graves to haunt the living with knowledge of past sin.
    I shiver when I think of such judgment, for once I was forced to become part of something that the world would certainly consider sinful. However I now believe that I have come to a different understanding of what transpired then, though, sometimes, when I am alone and the night is very dark, I still experience doubt. Perhaps this letter will allow me to resolve my lingering uncertainty . . .
    Do you recall, dear Cousin, the question so persistently asked of me at our second London season? I am certain that you do. My friends, and you were amongst them, implored me to say why I had changed so suddenly from the carefree, ardent spirit I had once been to the quiet, reflective person I became, the girl who no longer cared to dance. And I have always resisted giving an answer—which you must have wondered at.
    However, as I shall relate, a recent communication permits me to lay down the burden of certain appalling secrets, secrets that were not mine to share. And perhaps, in so doing, I may find a measure of peace, since I am haunted still by the sadness of the terrible things I saw and heard.
    One thing I ask. Refrain from judgment if you can until all the facts have been laid out before your eyes; then you may make of them what you will. Custom binds us still, I know, and society turns on those who flout its laws. Therein is much human happiness destroyed.
    But, as the common saying has it, to begin at the beginning. Permit me to take you back, in mind at least, to when you and I were girls of but eighteen.
    One afternoon in late September of that year, I received an unexpected invitation. An invitation that was to alter the course of my life and was, perhaps, the principal cause of my never marrying, though, as you know, I have been most frequently asked.
    A girlhood friend of my mother’s—a famous hostess but a lady whom I had never met—had suggested that I, as my mother’s eldest child, might enjoy visiting her family’s seat in the North. In short I was invited to be her guest and companion for a month before the rigors of the London Season commenced.
    If it seemed a slightly odd request, arriving unsought and unexpected, that was soon explained away. My mother remembered her old friend as a generous and charming person who had famously married into a wealthy and ancient Yorkshire family. No doubt this kind invitation to me was intended as a way of rekindling their formerly close relationship. And if that were so, I was delighted to be singled out as the means to that end.
    In town, as I am certain you will recall, ours was a busy household. And, with a constant round of entertainments to organize—my father’s political career was then at its zenith—and a large establishment to supervise, my mother must have been very glad of an offer which would remove even one of her children from beneath her roof for some few weeks. Thus, in short, my father dispatched an acceptance by the fastest post that could be arranged, and I became the envy of my younger sisters and brothers, since I was so favored by our mother’s mysterious friend.
    However, I believe that the story truly began, as many odd things do, in a way which seemed entirely trivial, if