Page 82 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“Nellie, hush. You can’t speak of these things,” her mother said. “Miss, my daughter is barely lucid. She’s… she’s been having dreams, she doesn’t know what she says.”
I glanced over my shoulder to where Mrs. Smythe watched her daughter helplessly.
“It’s okay, Mother. She should know. She should know it all.”
Mrs. Smythe threw her hands up and sank down into a chair on the other side of the room, defeated.
Nellie looked once more at her mother before she turned her full attention back to me. “George came to me the day before he died. Said he was going to talk to her, that he had a plan and that he was sorry that things didn’t work out between us. He’d given me some money. Said it wasn’t much but it would make him feel better to know I wasn’t completely destitute. He also said that if things went to plan there would be more.”
“That was kind of him…”
“Yes, well, that was George. He was a good one, and I knew he’d never marry me. I knew as soon as Sir Edward’s child grew in me that no man would take me to wife. At least not easily.”
I wanted to protest on that score, but it wasn’t important right now. “You don’t think he killed himself…”
“I didn’t know what to think. His words didn’t make anysense.” She shook her head. “At least not until recently, you see…” She tenderly ran her fingers over her rounded belly. “I’d gone up to the house to plead my case to Sir Edward again, see if he’d do the decent thing for his son. He was a miserly sort, wouldn’t give without getting… if you catch my meaning. So we took back up again.”
“Took back up…” I repeated, staring at her uncertainly.
She nodded. “He had food sent over and paid the rent. I’d pop around every few days and keep him company. Lady Chenowyth quit his bed over a year ago and he was a man of… considerable appetites.” Nellie took another sip of water. “He was a talker, Sir Edward was—Anyway, one day he was saying how he was tired of his wife. How he’d divorce her if he knew that the brat—that’s what he called the boy—wouldn’t inherit.”
My skin crawled.
“When was this…?”
She rubbed her hands together as if to warm them. “I can’t recall. Perhaps a month ago, maybe less? He threw me over not long after. I think he may have grown bored with me too. He was like that, you know.”
But I’d already stopped listening. I’d pieced it together, the last little bit tying all of us together. Sir Edward, George, Nellie, and I.
It was Tamsyn.
She was what we all had in common and I had to go.
WITH A VIGORI hadn’t known I possessed, I bolted out of Nellie’s cottage, past Mr. Owen, and straight through the village. I had to get to Penryth. I had to get Ruan. As much as I didn’t want to believe she was capable of murder—that she could do such a thing—there was no other answer. Not now. She could easily put parsnips on her table as she never ate thethings to begin with. I’d been dancing around the most obvious answer since the beginning and felt like an utter fool for missing the truth.
My breath scarcely would fill my lungs by the time I reached Ruan’s cottage. My sides split and my body ached as I crested the top of the hill. Storm clouds loomed overhead, dark and foreboding. The wind had begun to pick up, sticking my blouse to my body.
“Ruan!” I shouted as I burst inside the small dwelling.
It was quiet.
Still.
Not even Dr. Heinrich remained inside. Where could he be? I hurried into the room where my trunk sat and dug around until I found Mr. Owen’s Webley revolver and stuffed it into the waist of my crimson-striped walking skirt. I had to get to Penryth Hall and prayed it wasn’t too late.
“Ruan!” The wind stole my voice as I called out behind the house. Useless. Utterly useless. He’d vanished, without a trace. I ran back around to the front garden, my skirt brushing along the herbs filling the air with their scent, when I saw the very last person I ever intended to see again.
The vicar. The man must have been looking for me ever since I escaped out the window of his office earlier in the day.
His face was redder than I’d ever seen it, his lips pressed into a tight line, and in his right hand he held a riding crop, smacking it against his left with a sickening slap. “How did I know I’d find you here, Miss Vaughn?” He took another step closer, blocking the gate and, along with it, my means of escape.
“I really must ask that you let me leave. I have somewhere I urgently need to be.” I looked past him to the lane, gauging whether or not I could manage to jump the drystone fence without him catching me. Doubtful in my pitiable condition.
“I don’t know why you couldn’t leave well enough alone, Miss Vaughn. A pretty thing like you.” Another meaty smack against his palm. “Should know better than nosing around in things that don’t concern you.”
“I haven’t a clue what you mean…”
“Stop playing coy, Miss Vaughn. We both know what you discovered in the vicarage. You cannot imagine that my curate would fail to identify you? You are a most distinctive woman, even without the bruises.”
