Page 60 of Edinburgh Escape
Maggie spent the next couple of hours reading the elegant notes penned by an increasingly bitter woman whose peers pitied her relationship with her husband. She’d felt trapped in her marriage, forced to stay because of her son and the prenuptial agreement Douglas had never failed to remind her of, that she could not claim any of the Drummond fortune if she left the marriage.
He’d flirted in plain sight with the female employees, and she’d been certain he’d “rutted” with them behind closed doors. It was even more sordid than she’d suspected when she found her son’s nanny crying in the garden, half-hidden by her prize roses. The uniform Douglas required nannies to wear had been torn, her hair was in disarray and she had blood on her legs.
At this point, Maggie’s gut clenched, her heart skipped several beats, and more tears welled in her eyes. She wanted to wail aloud, Sweet Jesus, no!
She knew, without Lady E naming it, that it had to have been her mother.
All these years, she’d assumed her mother had willingly engaged in an affair with a married man and had left when she’d gotten pregnant so as not to ruin the man’s marriage. Maggie had assumed her mother had loved the man who’d gotten her pregnant. She blinked back the tears and read more.
Lady E went on to write that she’d helped the nanny into the house, cleaned her up and asked her what had happened. At first, the nanny wouldn’t say anything. Lady E asked if one of the other employees had done this to her. The nanny said no. That’s when Lady E knew.
She’d asked the nanny if Lord Drummond had hurt her, whereupon the nanny burst into tears and told her he’d taken her to the library under the pretext of showing her a hidden passage behind the bookshelves. The passage led to a room with what appeared to be torture equipment. He’d tied her up and forced himself on her.
By the time Maggie read this, the tears were flowing freely. Lord Drummond had raped her mother.
Lady E had asked the nanny to show her where the hidden room was. Later that evening, when Lord Drummond returned home, Lady E confronted him. She knew if the nanny spoke to the police and Lord Drummond was arrested and convicted of rape, the nanny might be vindicated, but she’d be homeless. If a child resulted from her encounter, she’d have difficulty providing for it. And if Lord Drummond knew Lady E had helped the nanny, he would divorce Lady E and take Ewan away from her. He’d do his time in jail and go back to living his usual life.
Lady E had relocated the nanny to a safe location outside the house. That evening, she told her husband that he had two choices: go to jail or pay for the nanny to relocate and hush money to keep her from turning him over to the police. He would pay support for the child, should she be pregnant from his criminal behavior. He would also rewrite his will to leave his estate to be shared equally among his children, even those spawned outside his legitimate marriage.
Lord Drummond had raged and threatened to kill Lady E. She’d told him that should anything happen to her, his victim would go directly to the police and tell them all.
A day later, Lord Drummond conceded and paid for an airline ticket to send the nanny away. Once she was settled and had opened a bank account, he’d started making monthly payments.
Lady E had reviewed the ledger and the bank account each month for years to ensure Lord Drummond lived up to his end of the bargain. Later in her journal, she wondered if she’d done the right thing, allowing her husband to get away with rape. By not turning him over to the police, he had no criminal record. No one knew he was a rapist. He could have done it again, just not in the manor as Lady E had arranged to have the hidden doorway nailed shut.
By the time Maggie finished reading Lady E’s journal, she was gutted, the shock making her shake all over. Her mother had fled Drummond Manor because her employer had raped her. No wonder she’d never said anything about him.
Maggie’s stomach roiled to the point she rolled off the bed and rushed into the bathroom, where she emptied the contents of her belly into the toilet.
She lay on the cool tile until she felt well enough to stand. For a long time, she stared into the mirror at her pale complexion and curly red hair. Now that she knew how she’d come about her genetics, she wasn’t proud. Her mother had had to live with the constant reminder of what he’d done to her every time she’d looked at her daughter.
Yet, Maggie knew without a single doubt that her mother had loved her with all her heart.
She washed her face, brushed her teeth and left the room.
Now she knew why her mother had left her home in Scotland to move all the way to Montana. Her feet carried her downstairs and directly to the library.
Call it morbid curiosity or whatever, she had to see the hidden passage, had to know what her mother had endured. She needed to know if the torture equipment still existed. If so, she wanted it removed and burned so that no other woman ever had to submit to that kind of terror.
Once in the library, she searched the shelves until she found a set that didn’t look exactly like the others. It wasn’t as flush against the wall as the others. Nobody else would have picked up on the difference if they didn’t know it existed.
Lady E had said it had been nailed shut.
Maggie expected that it wouldn’t move when she grabbed and pulled the shelf.
It swung toward her, no creaking metal or resistance, as if someone had oiled the hinges recently.
Despite her trepidation, Maggie pushed the shelf wide and peered into the darkness below.
Her pulse quickened, and her first thought was to go to Callum and have him go with her into the darkness.
However, he was too wrapped up in what had happened in his nightmare to help her now. Maggie couldn’t take the time to find him and tell him what she’d learned from the journal before she stepped onto the stairs leading downward.
As soon as she took the first step downward, she stopped. This was a mistake. She needed a witness, someone to know where she was in case she ran into trouble.
Maggie started to turn toward the entrance.
A hand clamped on her shoulder and shoved her forward, sending her tumbling down the steps into the darkness.
