Page 11 of The Heir
Victoria found she could no longer remain silent. She moved to stand in the threshold between the rooms. “Sir John. Did you speak with Hornsby? What did he say?”
In that moment, Victoria realized she had made a mistake. Sir John was smiling and perfectly at ease as he answered.
“Hornsby, in fact, took me out to the place where you fell. There was nothing there, and he told me when you fell, he saw nothing at all.”
Chapter 4
Mama pressed a hand against her mouth. Pain rippled up Victoria’s back.
“That is not possible. I saw the man.” She remembered it clearly. If she had paper and pencil, she could sketch the curve of the skull, the line of the shoulder in the rumpled black coat, the limp, unmoving hand.
“Then who was he, this man you claim you saw?” asked Sir John.
“I did not see his face.”
“No.” Satisfaction filled that single word. “I expect not.”
“Sir John?” breathed Mama.
He faced Mama and took her hand again. “There was no dead man, your grace. It may have been a hillock, or a pile of stones, perhaps. A shadow on the grass. But there was nothing else there, and I cannot think why Her Highness continues to speak such nonsense.”
“It is not nonsense!” cried Victoria. Startled, Dash barked.
“You will control that creature!” shouted Mama. “Or it will be removed!”
Victoria went cold as ice. She picked Dash up and handed him to Lehzen to take to his basket in the boudoir. When she turned back, it was to see that Sir John had laid his hand on Mama’s shoulder. Together, they looked down at Victoria.
Sir John smiled.
“If your story is not a lie, then what is it?” inquired Mama.
“It is the truth,” replied Victoria.
“The truth?” Mama’s brows arched. Sir John did not move. He stood there, his smile never wavering, his caressing hand on Mama’s shoulder. “The truth is you chose to go for a gallop after being expressly forbidden to do so. The truth is that you lost control of your horse. Then the truth is that to cover over your carelessness, you invented this outrageous story!”
“That is not how it was!”
“Then why does your groom contradict you?” inquired Mama. “Why didn’t Sir John find any sign of this . . . this . . .thingyou claim you saw? Did the dead man get up and walk away? Did he magically turn into a pile of stones?”
It was too much. Words, swollen by feeling and memory, clogged Victoria’s throat. She could not answer quickly enough.
But Sir John could. Sir John always could.
“Your Highness is either lying or imagining things,” he said. “Which is it?”
“I am not lying! I did not imagine it. Isaw—”
“Victoria, stop!” Mama started forward.
“I will not—”
But Mama had her by the shoulders and shook her once, hard. “You will stop! You must stop, or you will make yourself ill!”
Sir John loomed behind Mama. He gazed down at her, entirely satisfied with their work thus far.
And they were not done.
“She cannot stop. She is incapable of controlling herself or her temper. It was inevitable that the breakdown would come sooner or later.”
