Page 112 of Girl Anonymous

Screams erupted from the gathering. A scattering of people panicked and ran for the house.

Fedelma ignored them and pointed her rifle at Maarja. “But I won’t kill an Arundel. I won’t slaughter my own blood. I’ll killherand stop this marital abomination.”

Maarja spoke right to the atrocity the Arundel heritage had created. “You can’t kill me. I carry the Arundel heir.”

The gasp from the assemblage almost lifted the orange blossoms from Maarja’s head.

Dante gripped her hand and, as if Fedelma wasn’t there and pointing a rifle at them, looked Maarja full in the face. “Truly?”

“Yes.” She brought the peed-on and washed stick out of her skirt pocket and waved it. She nodded at the same time, as if she needed all the ways to assure him. “I don’t know how it works, I’ll have to look it up, because I really did have a period. It was weird, bleeding and wild emotions.”

He took the stick from her and stared at it as if a baby was some unexpected miracle when in fact, all along he’d been insisting on its existence.

Maybe he wasn’t as certain and as powerful as he proclaimed.

She’d knocked him for a loop.

And she was nuts for being thrilled at a moment like this.

“Hey!” Fedelma yelled, wild, impatient, unable to believe the all-important Dante Arundel could ignore her in her big moment. “I’m here and ready to kill…someone!”

From the wall, a full-throated woman’s voice said, “Then kill me, Fedelma.”

Maarja recognized that voice. She turned to see…Raine Arundel tossing her veiled hat aside and, leaning on her walker, stepping away from the wall to confront the woman who had served her for so many years. And deceived her for so many years.

CHAPTER 55

Maarja wanted to rush to Raine and hug her. To dance and laugh with the joy of a life returned to the earth. To congratulate her for being on her feet and ask how it was possible.

Instead she looked, terrified, between Fedelma and Raine.

The breeze waved the willow branches. An incongruously chirping bird broke the utter silence. No one moved or breathed.

“Maarja and Dante, please step aside.” Raine stood upright, barely touching her walker, laser gaze focused on Fedelma. “This isn’t your fight anymore.”

Dante took Maarja’s arm and walked with her up onto the dais. Maarja thought he’d leave her there, return to the battle, but he stood shoulder to shoulder with her and watched the drama. She glanced at him and nodded in satisfaction.

In her ear, he said softly, “So that’s where Andere disappeared to.”

For the first time, Maarja took note of the man who stood beside and slightly behind Raine. Andere, the butler with the lemon drops, the one who had dug Raine out of the rubble of the first explosion, the man Dante labeled as descended from a long line of Arundel sycophants. “That explains a lot,” she murmured.

“Doesn’t it?” Dante answered in the same tone.

“Did you think I didn’t know about you fornicating with my husband?” Raine asked Fedelma. “Did you think Benoit would deign to hide his sexual activities from his wife? He wanted to make me miserable. I didn’t care about him, and he wanted to make me jealous. He bragged about using you to make a bodyguard for my son.”

“He didn’t use me. I offered myself!” Apparently a point of honor to Fedelma.

“He laughed at you for being offended that you hadn’t been chosen as his bride. He wanted a virgin and an aristocrat, and you didn’t fit in either case.” As Raine deflated Fedelma’s confidence, she smiled in bitter triumph. “He also didn’t appreciate that you’d killed your husband. Lambert was one of his trusted officers.”

“He didn’t know that!”

“He did. If there was anything to do with slimy, underhanded tactics, Benoit knew all about them.”

Maarja softly said, “It’s like the shootout at the O.K. Corral…with geezers.”

“Female geezers,” Dante agreed, “and all the scarier for that.”

“He should have chosen me,” Fedelma cried. “He wanted to breed children with the superior Arundel genes. I can scheme. I can influence. I was fertile. I would have stood beside him and served him, and the day would have come—”

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