Page 91 of A Match Made in London
Mr. Carlisle looked suddenly weary to the bone. “And how would telling you that protect his memory? For it is a criminal offense, and even in death he would be roasted over the coals should it ever get out.”
“But it cannot be true.”
“I assure you, it is. I am sorry you were misinformed. It was not well done of Guinevere’s friend to implicate Lester, for he was a good man and did not deserve her disparagement.”
“But she was ruined. I know she was.”
“Because her friend told you she went off with Lester?” He shook his head mournfully. “Come now, Miss Merriweather, give your sister the benefit of the doubt.”
“It was more than that,” she insisted.
He ran a hand over his face. “What then? What could make you believe such a thing?”
Her fingers clasped around the locket at her throat. “Because there was a child.”
The change in Mr. Carlisle was instantaneous. He blanched, went pale, then fairly collapsed against the back of his chair. “What?”
“There was a child,” she repeated. Ah, God, she had not ever spoken those words. They clamored out of her now, clawing at her, breaking free with a violence that stunned her.
Mr. Carlisle gaped at her, disbelief and grief swirling in the usually mild depths of his eyes. Such pain there. And yet, she thought mournfully, she was not through with giving it out.
She reached for the ribbon that held the locket around her throat. Pulling the bow loose, she let the small gold circle fall into her palm. It gleamed dully, the delicate filigree work and inset turquoise worndown after years of being worried by her nervous fingers. His eyes fastened on it like a starving man. Wordlessly she held it out to him.
He reached for it with shaking fingers, as if already knowing what secrets it contained. After staring at it for long minutes he opened it.
Rosalind did not need to see the contents. She knew them by heart, the image of them burned into her mind. Inside the small compartment, behind a thin layer of glass, lay a curl of hair of the palest blond.
He gasped. For this was not Guinevere’s hair. She’d had inky black hair, the very shade of a raven’s wing.
“It was the tiniest babe you ever saw,” she whispered, her mind filled with the memory of that small face. “So perfect, with the longest lashes, every finger and toe accounted for.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “The babe did not survive the birth. My sister followed soon after. I think…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I think, when we lost him, she simply gave up.”
A low, involuntary moan escaped the white line his lips had become. “It was a boy?” His thumb caressed the glass window of the locket.
Looking on him, at the grief that etched his normally placid face, she knew. For this was no mere sadness one would expect at the knowledge of an unknown child’s death, even if one knew and loved the mother. No, this was something more, much more.
“It was you,” she gasped.
He nodded miserably.
She did not know she had risen, that her hand had shot out, until she heard the crack of her palm against his cheek. It echoed through the room, ringing in her ears.
He hardly flinched, though his cheek turned a bright red from the impact. “You may do it again,” he said, his voice low and soaked with pain, “as many times as you like. I shall not stop you.”
She shook, her rage was so great. She balled her hands into fists at her sides, ignoring the stinging pain of her palm, pressing her nails into her skin to keep herself from hurling the steaming teapot in his face. “How could you?” she demanded. “You claim to have loved her, pretended to be my friend, came around with your smiles and your memories of her. And all along you seduced her, destroyed her.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, tears seeping from between his lids. “It wasn’t like that. I never meant it to happen.”
“And yet it did,” she said coldly. “And she is dead because of it.”
He looked as if he might be sick. “She swore to me nothing happened. If I had known, I never would have left. I would have begged her to marry me.”
Rosalind frowned. “Explain yourself.”
His hand closed around the locket, his head dropping as if in defeat. She thought he had not heard her. Finally, though, his voice reached her, so brittle, so thin she could hardly make out the words.
“I knew of her love for Lester, of course. She was not one to hide her feelings; rather she wore them on her sleeve proudly for all to see. It brought Lester incredible pain, for he liked her immensely yet knew he could never reciprocate her feelings.
“Then we were invited to a house party. I came upon her the last night. She was distraught, told me how she threw herself at Lester, how he refused her advances. I stayed to comfort her.”
