Page 54 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
Lethington. That was the name the shopkeeper had mentioned just yesterday. But how strange to hear it fall from Hester’s lips. Although she had a strong urge to box Hester’s ears and send her packing, Phaedra’s curiosity got the better of her.
“Miss Lethington? You don’t mean Miss Julianna Lethington?”
“Certainly I do. This here statue was meant for the Emperor of Austria, but Miss Julianna, she vowed to give it to my Master Ewan instead. Only he never got it. He always believed as how someone stole it.”
Despite her anger with Hester, Phaedra felt a tingle of excitement. Was it possible after all that her shepherdess was part of the famous Lethington set? Or was this only more of Hester’s odious tale-spinning?
As she snatched the shepherdess back from Hester, Phaedra said loftily, “I found this in the attic, so I consider it mine now. And if it is the treasure you claim, why on earth would Julianna Lethington have wanted to give it to my husband?”
Greatly to Phaedra’s astonishment, Hester broke out laughing. She could never remember having heard the housekeeper give way to mirth before. It was an unpleasant sound, like the strident cry of a raven.
“I don’t see what is so amusing about my question.”
“Don’t you?” Hester rubbed the back of her hand against her watering eyes. Phaedra marveled that such a mirth-filled gaze could at the same time harbor so much malice.
“I only be surprised, that’s all, what with you not being able to bear having the woman’s cloak about, that ye should so cherish her china.”
Cloak? China? What the devil was the woman talking about? Phaedra stared at Hester.
“Lord bless us, ye really don’t know, do yer?”
Phaedra did not know, but as she glanced uneasily from the housekeeper’s malicious face to the “figurine, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“The gray cloak, my dear Lady Grantham,” Hester purred. “Ye recall it. The one that belonged to?—”
“I know full well whom the cloak belonged to. What of it?”
Phaedra no longer felt disturbed by the memory of Ewan’s precious lost love, Anne, but she loathed discussing her former humiliation with Hester all the same.
“We-e-ell,” Hester drew the word out, obviously determined to savor every moment of the revelation to come. “The lady who owned that cloak is the same who fashioned the china.” She crooked one finger toward the statuette Phaedra cradled so protectively in her hands. “Miss Julianna Lethington was Master Ewan’s lost love.”
Julianna Lethington had been Ewan’s Anne? Dear Lord, no wonder Hester nearly wept from laughing. It was indeed an irony that the figurine that Phaedra so loved should turn out to be but another memento of her husband’s lover.
Phaedra turned the golden-haired shepherdess carefully in her hands, almost able to picture the graceful fingers that had wrought the statue’s beauty. For years, fear, hurt, and jealousy had stifled her curiosity about the mysterious Anne. But she felt far differently now. That likely had much to do with Armande’s whispered words of love. She no longer need feel any envy of a phantom woman whose memory her husband had cherished in her stead.
“So Anne was the daughter of china makers,” she mused. “No wonder Ewan never wed her.” The proud Grantham family would never have suffered one of their members to marry a girl of such low birth and no fortune. Indeed they had been reluctant to accept Phaedra, despite the lure of her grandfather’s money. and the fact that her mother, Siobhan, had been a lady.
“Such a great tragedy it all was.” Hester fetched a deep sigh. “Master Ewan, he loved Julianna Lethington so.”
Did Hester think to wound her still with that sort of spiteful reminder? Phaedra gave her a scornful glance. “And what would you know about it? You were not even employed here at the time.”
“Lord Ewan didn’t treat me with the contempt as some in this house do. Oft his lordship would confide in me.”
“I doubt that. I knew my husband well. He was never the sort to pass his time of day with the housekeeper.” Phaedra placed the shepherdess back on the table and started to stroke the brush through her hair again. She broke off with a gasp as Hester’s hand hooked over her shoulder, the woman’s nails biting through the gossamer fabric of Phaedra’s gown.
“Ye never knew him, nor me, neither,” Searle snarled.”I was more than just the housekeeper when Master Ewan lived. The same blood flows in my veins as any Grantham. Aye, the Searles be just as good, though we fell upon harder times.”
Phaedra struck the woman’s hand from her shoulder. Her flashing green eyes met Hester’s malevolent black ones in the depths of the mirror. “You’d best go now,” Phaedra said through clenched teeth.
“He loved her, he did, not you.” Hester stabbed the words at Phaedra as though she wielded a knife. “Loved his beautiful Julianna. She was as fair and delicate as that there china. He never stopped loving her-no, not even after what her murdering brother did to my poor Master Ewan’s papa, Lord Carleton.”
Phaedra twisted around in her chair. preparing to thrust Hester from her room if she had to. But she blinked as though she had been dazzled by the light of a hundred chandeliers. A light that suddenly made all crystal-clear.
“Lethington ... old Lethe,” she said wonderingly. “The old Lethe who killed Carleton Grantham was Anne’s brother.”
Hester regarded her with the contemptuous patience usually reserved for the village idiot. “That’s right. James Lethington. He be the one. The same tale as I’ve tried to tell you many a day, but ye’ve always been too high-minded to hear it-or perhaps too afraid.”
“I’ve just never had any interest in a past that does not concern me.”
