Page 85 of The Last Debutante
That was Mamie’s way of deflecting questions, Daria realized. The moment Daria asked her something she didn’t want to answer, Mamie would respond with a question for Daria. She wanted the old Mamie back, the grandmother who had taken her for long walks in the garden, and had ladies to tea, and allowed Daria to play dress-up in her silk gowns and pearls. She wanted to tell Mamie about the knots in her belly, the butterflies in her veins. “Actually, I... I have come to esteem the laird very much,” she blurted.
Mamie whirled about, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping in shock. “No,Daria! No, you mustn’t! God help me, when will my daughter come?” she cried to the ceiling.
“What is wrong?” Daria cried, taken aback. “What have I said?”
Mamie lurched forward and grabbed Daria’s face between her hands. “Daria,listento me! Youmustleave here! You must go to England as soon as you are able, do you understand? You should never have come to Scotland! I don’t care if that man has granted you a kingdom, you will not ruin your life with such talk!”
Daria pushed her grandmother’s hands away from her. “Stop it,” she said angrily. “There was a time when I could speak to you about anything, Mamie.”
With a groan, Mamie sank onto a chair and pressed her hand to her forehead. “Dear God, I am so weary. I have done all that I could—I swear that I have. But I cannot keep you from ruining it all.”
Daria’s heart began to beat wildly. “You are mad,” she said, her voice shaking. “My parents will be here today or tomorrow and my ransom will be paid, and they must deal with you. For I swear, I cannot bear this a moment longer.”
“Then please, do not bear it,” Mamie said, lifting her head. “Just promise me you will return to England at once. I want your word that you will! I want your word that you will not be charmed by that Scotsman and ruin everything I and your parents have tried to do for you!”
Daria’s heart had been beating so hard that she could scarcely catch a breath, but those words stopped it altogether. “What you and my parents havedonefor me? What have any of youdonefor me, Mamie? I have putmyselfinto society! In spite of all of you, I have done all that I could to make a decent match. Even my debut was at the behest of Lady Horncastle, and yet my parents brought me home from London as soon as the debut was made! For what? So that I might spend my days watching my parents create orchids?”
“You cannot imagine how difficult it has been,” Mamie moaned.
“Thentellme!” Daria pleaded. “For God’s sake, Mamie, tell me something that is thetruth.Tell me why you dislike the laird so, or why you would shoot him, or why you didn’t tell me that the man you met in the glen that day was an Englishman! Do you truly expect me to believe you don’t know him? That you hadn’t gone to meet him?”
Mamie burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. Daria hurried to her side and fell to her knees, her hands on her grandmother’s knees. “Please, Mamie—what is happening?”
Mamie gulped back her tears. Her hands shaking, she wiped the tears from her face. “I have tried to spare you, darling. Oh, how I have tried. But I always knew you would learn the truth one day.”
“The truth,” Daria repeated. “So that manisknown to you?”
Mamie nodded.
Daria stood and pulled a chair close, sitting directly in front of Mamie. “We will not leave this cottage until you have told me everything, do you understand? Begin with that man. Who is he?”
Mamie drew a deep breath. “It’s quite an involved tale—”
“I don’t care! For God’s sake,tellme!”
Her expression pained, Mamie said, “Do you recall when, a few years ago, the old Earl of Ashwood went missing?”
“Yes,” Daria said. “He drowned. But what has that to do—”
“The truth begins there. You recall he’d gone fishing on a swollen river, and he was never seen again. The only things they could find were a mangled fishing pole and his tackle on the shore. His body was never found. Well, the earl didn’t drown. He duped everyone into believing he had, and he escaped to Scotland.
“He had sizable gambling debts that he couldn’t pay without dismantling Ashwood completely. But if he were dead, his gambling debts wouldn’t be pursued. He had no heirs, and the sort of men to whom he owed money couldn’t legitimately make a claim against Ashwood. So the earl emptied his coffers, staged his death, and disappeared.”
Daria shook her head in disbelief. “Even if that were true—and I can hardly believe that he might have accomplished such trickery—what has that to do withyou?”
“The earl’s thirst for gambling did not end with his supposed death. He continued to gamble here, and he began to lose more money. When he had lost almost all that he had, he needed someone to bring him more. So he chose us,” Mamie said bitterly.
“‘Us’? Who is ‘us’?” Daria cried in frustration.
“The Babcocks.”
Daria blinked. Nothing made sense. “What do you mean? How could he choose us from Scotland? And choose us forwhat,pray tell?” She felt exhausted, emotionally drained.
“Because we have the means to bring money to him—”
“Absurd,” Daria said angrily and stood up. “I won’t listen to more of your lies, Mamie. If you won’t tell me the truth, I’ll go—”
“He chose us to do his dirty deeds because he knows our devastating secret.”
