The Mistress of Trevelyan (44 page)

His fist tightened beneath my hand. "I refuse to believe that. I have let society determine what I can and cannot do with my life for too long. I thought I could not marry without bringing dishonor to my bride because of the rumors. I will never send any member of my family to the gallows, so I will never press to answer the questions behind Francesca's death." He unclenched his fist and caught my fingers with his, pulling me toward him. "But I want you in my life, Titania. The circumstances of your birth and your station in life do not matter to me."

Tears of love filled my eyes even as my heart broke. I pulled my hand from his and turned to gaze out at the turbulent waters of the bay. "You do not understand. They matter to me. I am not willing to burden your sons with the scandal. Their hearts are just now starting to heal. I will remain here long enough to see them healed, but then I must go. To be able to do that, I can no longer share your bed."

He grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him. His eyes were as stormy as the clouds. "No. That isn't how things are going to be. This isn't a choice between you and my sons' well-being, or my family's honor."

"Yes, it is, and you cannot change it. Can you guarantee me Justin and Robert will not suffer ill from the scandal? They already have too much to face. I will not be responsible for adding to their burden." Fresh tears stung my eyes. "Just as you can never answer the question of whom you protect, I can never cross the lines that would bring harm to you, to Justin, and to Robert. Don't ask me again." I pulled from his grasp and ran from him, up to the field, past Odin grazing, through the trees, and back to the dark brooding shadows surrounding Trevelyan Manor and my room. No sun would shine through the stained glass this day, for only the lashing of the coming storm lay ahead—a storm that was no match for the sorrow churning in my heart. I loved him, could never have him, and would have to leave him. I loved Robert and Justin, too. And when I left Trevelyan Manor, I'd leave my heart behind, buried in the cold mist, far from the light and the warmth of the sun. I went over and picked up a thorny stem Justin had given me last night I wrapped my hands around it, heedless of the pain cutting my hands; then I cried, for all that I'd been given and for all that I would leave behind.

The storm came with the night, hitting Trevelyan Manor with a ferocious malevolence that had my nerves completely on edge. I couldn't stay alone in my room, and I stole out to check on the boys, only to find their beds empty. Their favorite wooden horses lay mangled on the floor.

Panicked, I pounded on Nurse Maria's door, but only the echoes of my knocks answered me between the roar of thunder. Her door was unlocked, and when I opened it, I found the room empty.

Where were Robert and Justin? If they'd awakened afraid, surely they would have come to me. I hurried out into the hall but found it dark and empty. All I could think about was getting to Benedict. I gathered an oil lamp from my room and rushed down the stairs, going directly to Benedict's door, and knocked hard. "Benedict! Benedict!"

I got no answer. As I opened the door to his room, a heavy hand fell upon my shoulder. Crying out in fright, I turned around. Dobbs stood there, his disgust leaping out at me.

"Whatever do you think you are about, Miss Lovell? I will not allow you to sully Mr. Trevelyan's reputation with your scandalous manipu—"

I grabbed his stiffly knotted ascot and shook him silent. "Robert and Justin are not in their beds. Where are they?"

"What do you mean, not in their beds?"

"Just exactly what I said! They are not in their room, not in the schoolroom, they are not upstairs, and Nurse Maria isn't either. Where are they?" I shouted. "Where is Mr. Trevelyan?"

"He and Master Stephen left here about an hour ago. I expect the storm will delay their return."

"Wake everyone, even Mr. Henderson. We need to find Robert and Justin. I will go back and check the schoolroom again, just in case." I didn't wait to see what Dobbs would do. I turned and ran back upstairs and searched every nook and cranny between my room and Nurse Maria's. Nothing. I heard voices downstairs and went back to the landing. But before I could call out, Constance came running from the opposite hall. She wore her robe and bed slippers, and her hair was mussed as if she'd been pulled from her bed. But her eyes were wild with terror. She grabbed my hand.

"Good, you have a lamp. Come with me. The lock on the tower door is broken. I think Justin and Robert have gone up there."

"Surely not," I said, even as my heart raced and my feet ran to the door that had been bolted shut. Just as Constance claimed, the wood around the lock had been splintered, and the door hung ajar. A sick feeling knotted my stomach. Why would Justin and Robert go up there alone?

"Justin? Robert?" I called, pushing the door open. I thought I heard something at the top of the steep spiral steps, but it might have been the sounds of the storm. At any rate, I detected the glow of a lamp from above.

"Where's Nurse Maria?" I asked Constance.

"Isn't she looking for the children? We must hurry, Ann. I have this awful feeling inside. My sister died on a night like this, during a storm. What if... what if... she's come back for her children ... to take them with her?"

I wanted to slap Constance. "That's utter asinine nonsense." I held up the lamp and started up the stairs, determined to show an unruffled, practical face in response to her ludicrous words. But a sense of dread filled me. The sounds of the storm seemed to be amplified in the tower, and it wasn't until a wild breeze whipped down through the tower, followed by what seemed to be a misting of rain upon my face, that I realized the tower's windows must be open.

"Robert! Justin!" I quickened my steps, nearly tripping on the steep stairs.

Reaching the top floor, I opened the door and came to a halt. Maria sat in a rocking chair, swaying back and forth, back and forth, as she stared out at the storm. Wind and rain blew into the room through the open windows. Justin and Robert were nowhere in sight.

Constance pushed me into the room and slammed the door behind her.

I heard the scrape of a key in the lock as I grabbed her shoulder and forced her to face me. "What are you doing?"

She smiled slowly, and her eyes darkened with satisfaction. "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
F
IVE

Constance set her hand on my shoulder. "I am sorry, Ann, for I really like you. You are so much more like me than Francesca. If you and I had been sisters ..." She shrugged. "Who knows, maybe the past might have never happened the way it did. But it did, and this is the way it has to be, no?"

I backed away from her, my skin crawling with disbelief and fear. "Where are Robert and Justin?"

"Maria has them locked away."

"They ran from the bad witch," Maria said tonelessly, staring at the night. "I couldn't catch them."

Constance laughed. "Silly Justin. He's been talking about the bad witch since his mother died. You and Francesca are so predictable. Francesca came to the tower, too, worried that Justin and Robert had come up here when they were not in their beds. She checked them every night just like you do, Ann. All it took was an extra dose of laudanum to confuse Francesca, and she followed me right up here." Constance frowned then.

Nausea and horror churned in my stomach as she continued to talk. "You know, I heard Stephen and Benedict fighting over you tonight. It was rather violent and moving. When they left, I knew you would have to die tonight. You should have heeded the knife I stabbed through your picture and left here. I would have let you go. But now it is too late. My sister's ghost has come to destroy what Benedict and Stephen have grown to love, just like she promised in her curse. A good story, no? The curse I wrote seemed to be working well until you came."

She stepped closer, peering at me intently, and continued to talk. "I have been here for years, and no one has paid the slightest attention to me, other than to humor my shopping desires. You are here two months, and both Benedict and Stephen are so enamored of you they are at each others' throats." She cocked her head. "I do not understand it. You are not beautiful. You do little to make yourself appealing. So why do they love you?"

"They do not," I told her, backing to the center of the room. There were windows all around the top of the turret.  I could see the lightning flash across the midnight sky, lighting the angry waters of the black bay. Rain blasted in with the wind, dampening my robe and gown.

"They do. But that isn't the main reason you need to die, Ann. You need to die because you are not going to stop searching. You are not going to stop asking questions until you get the answer to Francesca's death, are you? I know that is what you and Mr. McGuire are doing. It is a shame that he will have to die tomorrow. Perhaps he will break his neck falling from a ladder. Or maybe he will be robbed and then shot." She held up my mother's pistol and stroked the barrel.

With her every word, my horror grew. I knew I had to keep her talking, keep her distracted until I discovered a way to escape. "Mr. McGuire does not know anything."

"Yes, he does, Ann. Do not lie to me. I know many things about everyone. I even read your mother's journal. She was weak, Ann, not strong like I am. If she had killed her father rather than run away, she would have had all his money, and would never have been taken advantage of."

"You are the person who kept going through my things." Forcing myself to stay calm, I took another step back and shot my gaze to Maria, assuring myself that she was still seated.

"Yes. It is time for you to die, Ann." She pointed the gun at me and looked at me sadly. "Do not be afraid. Francesca assures me that all is peaceful after death. No more pain."

I shuddered. "Why did you do it? My God, she was your sister!"

I thought thunder boomed, and it wasn't until the tower's door flew open, splintering on its hinges, that I realized it was the sound of the door being broken down. Benedict, Stephen, Mr. Henderson, and shockingly, Mr. McGuire barreled into the room.

Maria did nothing but rock back and forth in the chair. Constance backed up to the edge of the room. She laughed and pointed the gun at them, making everyone stop in their tracks. "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly." She looked at me. "I thought I was the spider, Ann. I really did. But you must be."

"Why?" I shouted at her again. "Why did you kill your sister?"

Shock covered the men's faces. "Constance?" Stephen gasped, his disbelief evident.

"Look at you men!" Constance said, shaking her head. "Why are you so stunned that a woman would do what she could to shape her own destiny?

"I ask you, what choices does a woman have in this world of injustices? We are prisoners, slaves to our parents and then to men. The fire. My parents. Do you think that was an accident?" She laughed. "They made my life hell. I had no choice but to kill, just as Francesca had no choice but to marry you. See, they couldn't marry me to you to save the business, Benedict, for I had been sullied by the touch of a man my father killed rather than see me married to. He murdered first, made me watch the man I loved die. What is love compared to money and social position?"

Constance smiled at me, waving the gun as she continued to speak. "You know class is more important than love, do you not, Ann? I heard Benedict tell Stephen that you wouldn't marry him. You are smarter than I was. It took me a long time to realize that. Day after day I lived, atoning for my sin of having loved beneath my class, knowing that I killed the man I loved. I served my parents, and I prayed hour upon hour every day for forgiveness, but none came. And poor delicate Francesca, a woman who knew nothing but the fears of a child, had to marry."

She looked at Benedict with hatred. "You knew that before you married her. You knew that she feared you, your size. But you married her anyway. You did it for greed. Our ships, our trade routes, are what your father's company needed. And my father sold his daughter to have a male heir born to run his empire. Women were worthless to him except to give birth to what he wanted. Francesca kept herself drugged with laudanum. It was the only way she could face her marital obligation to produce an heir to a man she feared and did not love. So who killed Francesca? Him for selling her? You for taking her?"

She shot her gaze to Stephen. "Or was it you, Stephen? A boy fool enough to fall in love with his brother's wife, but not man enough to touch her when she came to you for the love her heart craved. How do you think she felt when you denied her, then went calling on your friend's sister just to show her you meant never to be with her? Don't you think that drove her to desolation? To more laudanum for her pain? Does it bother you that your supposed friends have written your pain in a play for all the world to see, only giving it the sordid twist of actual betrayal?"

Benedict looked at Stephen, shocked. "You did not touch Francesca?"

"I loved her. How could I dishonor her? I love you. How could I betray you?" The deep sadness in Stephen's voice resonated within the tower. "My love killed her anyway."

"No, Stephen, I thought you had, but I was wrong." Benedict looked to Constance. "She was three months pregnant when she died. Who fathered that child?"

"Pregnant? Impossible. We never—" Stephen's anguish sliced to my heart.

Constance looked to Mr. Henderson and smiled sweetly at him. "Do you not think it is time you cleared your conscience, Alan?"

Benedict and Stephen both swung around to face their friend, horrified. Alan closed his eyes, pain slashing across his face. "I'm sorry. She was so beautiful. So heartbroken. I held her as she cried. I loved her, too. I tried to give her hope. Instead I destroyed her."

"Yes," Constance said, bringing everyone's attention back to her. "You all destroyed her. And I gave her the peace she sought. We would have both been miserable at the convent where she was determined to go. Determined to spend the rest of her life in penance for her sins. I had already spent years atoning for mine, and I was not going to do that again. Not for her. Not for anybody. I was not going to let Francesca put me back into the hell I had escaped. She calls to me all the time now and tells me about her peace. I envy her, and now I've no choice. The spider and the fly."