Page 89 of The Secret of the Three Fates
She must have misunderstood my expression as she reached out and took my hand. “My mother was extraordinary, Miss Vaughn. You must know that. And he cut her life short. The last time I saw her I was ten years old. She’d left me in Paris with friends of hers. She was always frightened the duke would find us. And every time before when she’d leave me, she’d come back. But not that time.”
“This must have been after that photograph was taken of the two of you.”
She gasped. “You went through my things.”
“It was how we knew where to find you.”
Genevieve shifted, uncertain about my invasion of her privacy. “She told me in Cairo what he’d done to her, she said I was young but I needed to understand why we lived in the shadows. She said if she failed to return then I should go to Hawick. That she’d left him a ring that would be able to keep me safe, I only needed to tell him to look inside the ring. She never once said she was his wife, only that he was the best man she’d ever known, and that he would do what was right.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. “Why did she not come back to Hawick House if she had such faith in him?”
Genevieve licked her teeth and shook her head in anger. “Mother blamed herself for what happened with the duke. Said if she’d not allowed herself to be alone with him, if she’d been more of a lady or not trusted in her friendship with the duke, that perhaps he would not have taken liberties with her. She could not forgive herself for forgetting that he was not the young boy she’d once known, that he’d grown into a man…”
“It is not her fault what happened. It’shis.” I pointed at the duke’s now lifeless body.
“I am glad you killed him. My mother was a strong woman,but strength can only go so far in a world that values a man over her. She had been taught from the cradle that her sole worth lay in her ability to make a man’s heirs, to remain virtuous to the world, and a good wife her husband.” The acid words dripped from Genevieve’s tongue. “It is the same world that made her that destroyed her, allowing a monster to prey upon her fears and get away with his crimes.”
Genevieve was not wrong, nor had the world changed much over the last forty years. I’d long fought against the same expectations of how a womanshouldbe, but even still those claws remained snagged in my own flesh, refusing to let go.
“Aunt Lucy did what she could to make sure I was fed and clothed and cared for, but she was afraid if the duke learned of me that he would take me for his own.”
“A valid fear.”
“I am sorry I did not tell you more—I was not certain I could trust you and I thought—I hoped—that once we’d collected all of my mother’s missing negatives we’d be able to expose him once and for all.” She looked again to Elijah and Ruan.
“You care for him.”
Her expression softened. “We are alike, Elijah and I—becoming someone new because our old lives had failed us. I met him not long after he purchased Manhurst, I’d come to visit Aunt Lucy. He has kind eyes. I always liked that about him. I did not expect to fall in love with him.”
I couldn’t help but smile. It was a lovely thought. Starting over anew. But there would be no starting over, or starting at all until I found the keys to unlock her manacles and get us out of here.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVENAblutions and Absolution
Isat in the bathing tub in the kitchen at Rivenly, washing the duke’s blood from my skin. We’d already filled and refilled one big copper tub, and I was on my second round of rapidly cooling water. I’d killed a man. I drew in a breath and let it out again, allowing that realization sink into my bones. It wasn’t the first time—I’d done it once during the war too—but each time took its toll. And in truth, I worried it took a bit of my soul along with it.
I heard the door to the kitchen and turned, half expecting it to be the young serving girl who had been helping me bathe—or, more likely, making sure I didn’t faint in the tub. Mr. Owen and Ruan had both been giving me wide berth after what happened in the croft, and I couldn’t blame them. My breath caught when I saw Lady Morton enter with the Duchess of Biddlesford at her side. Lady Morton had a towel in her hands and her eyes… God. Her eyes were full of pity.
I was going to vomit.
“Hush, child,” she said as she drew nearer. “You have done what needed to be done. There’s no need to punish yourself for it. Heaven knows someone had to do it.”
The duchess sucked in a breath. “Caroline, you mustn’t—”
Lady Morton turned to the duchess with a raised brow. “She finished what we’d begun and we owe her our thanks.” She opened the towel and gestured for me to stand. I struggled to balance the disapproving Lady Morton from Manhurst with this new woman before me. I stood, water trailing over my body, and stepped out of the copper tub, my feet on the cold flags of the floor. Lady Morton wrapped the towel around my body and guided me to a wooden chair near the fire.
“What do you mean bywhat you’d begun,Lady Morton?” I asked, toweling off my hair as the duchess laid what appeared to be a plain cotton dress and underthings on the chair beside me.
Lady Morton didn’t answer, but the duchess did. She lifted a small enamel box from the table beside her and placed it in my hands. “Open it. I think you will understand.”
What madhouse had I entered? Too tired to care, I lifted the lid and looked down, my breath leaving my lungs in a whoosh. I couldn’t make sense of it. “More negatives?”
Lady Morton nodded. “Yes. I found them in Lucy Campbell’s things the night of the first séance. Unfortunately none of them were enough to implicate His Grace, but I believe now… considering all… that it will be enough.”
The duchess let out a shaky breath as she looked to her friend in disbelief. “Is it truly over, Caroline? Truly?”
Lady Morton wrapped her arms around the duchess and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Yes, darling. You’re free of him as I promised you would be.” She made an odd expression. “Though perhaps not precisely how I intended.”
I could not believe it. I looked from Lady Morton to the duchess. “You’ve been…”
