A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)

“Let’s hope not,” Harry muttered.

Lark confronted her sister. Anger burned red on her cheeks. “Really, Harriet. Our brother defended you when you broke three loveless engagements. He has supported you in your attachment to Ames. And this is how you repay him? By encouraging him to enter a marriage of convenience and hoping he never loves again?”

As she absorbed Lark’s censure, Harry’s eyebrows rose. “My my, starling. You are growing up so fast.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair, then stood. “Very well, I’ll object, too.”

“Your objections won’t be necessary, I hope.” Kate lifted Badger into her lap and drew him close. “I’ve no intention of marrying Evan, if it can possibly be helped. There must be some other way.”

But even as she spoke the words, she doubted them. What other way could there be? All night long she’d been thinking on the dilemma. She’d exhausted all her powers of logic, imagination, and desperation, and still no solution had come to her.

“Harry and I tried appealing to Evan,” Lark said. “If he withdrew his offer to Kate, Corporal Thorne would have to back down. But he won’t budge, either.”

“He feels too guilty,” Harry said to Kate. “He’s determined to give you the life you deserve, he says.”

“But you all have given me so much already,” she said. “You sought me out and welcomed me with open arms, even knowing it would change your lives in uncertain ways. Your kindness and faith in me has been remarkable, and I . . . I love you all for it.”

“Oh, dear.” Across the room, Aunt Marmoset pressed a hand to her chest. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

“Aunt Marmoset, what is it? Not your heart?”

“No, no. My conscience.” The old woman looked to Kate with red, teary eyes. “I must tell you the truth. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault that you were lost, dear. You mustn’t feel beholden to us. I shouldn’t blame you if you took all the family money and cast us out in the cold.”

Kate shook her head, utterly confused. “I don’t understand. Cast you out in the cold? I’d never do such a thing.”

Lark patted her aunt’s hand. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that, Aunt Marmoset.”

“But it is. It is.” The old woman accepted a handkerchief from Harry. “After Simon died and your father inherited the title, I came to Rook’s Fell. My sister needed me. You weren’t even born yet, Lark. But Harry—surely you must remember that time. How difficult it was.”

Harry nodded. “It was the year Father’s illness began. There were so many doctors, coming and going. I remember Mother’s face was always grim.”

“Your lives had changed so much, so swiftly. A new home, new titles, new responsibilities. I took over the running of the household. I oversaw the servants, attended to correspondence. I received any guests to the house . . .” She paused meaningfully. “So I was there the day Simon’s lover came back, babe in arms. And I sent her away.”

“What?”

At the words, Kate felt as though she’d been dunked underwater. The air felt slow and thick around her. Cold. Her vision went wavy and a dull pulse throbbed in her ears.

She couldn’t breathe.

“You sent her away?” Lark’s voice echoed from a great distance. “Aunt Marmoset. How could you do such a thing?”

Kate forced herself to surface, to listen.

“You’ve no idea,” Aunt Marmoset said. She wrung Harry’s handkerchief. “You’ve no idea how many charlatans crawl out of every ceiling crack after a marquess dies. Every day, I was chasing another away. Some came claiming his lordship owed back wages or gambling debts, others said that his lordship had promised them a living. More than one girl showed up with an infant in her arms. Liars, all. When Elinor arrived and claimed to have married him . . . I didn’t believe her. A marquess, marry a tenant farmer’s daughter? Preposterous. I never suspected, until the day we found the parish register, that the girl might have been telling the truth.”

Kate’s fingers went to the pendant dangling at her breastbone. She skimmed her fingertips over the polished teardrop of stone, begging the glossy smoothness to calm her emotions. “So that’s why you had her pendant. You took it from her. You had it all along.”

Aunt Marmoset nodded. “She offered it as some sort of proof. I didn’t see what meaning it should have, just a chip of stone. I did save it, however, in case she came back. But she never did. She never went to the solicitors. She disappeared.”