Which he undoubtedly did. Although Sebastian suspected he didn’t get far.
He stared across the stream at the stile Emma Chandler had climbed the afternoon of her death—but only once, not twice. And the irony of her fate struck him suddenly as both cruel and heartrendingly senseless. She had come to Ayleswick to uncover the truth about her parents in the hopes of better understanding who and what she was. And all she had found was her own death.
He said, “Is there another way to get to the priory ruins besides following the stream here?”
“You can come at it from Northcott. And there’s a footpath starts across from the village church and cuts through the wood.”
“Thank you,” he said, touching his hand to his hat.
“Did it never occur to you,” she said as he turned away, “that if you hadn’t interfered—if you’d let that young woman’s death be ruled a suicide—then Hannibal Pierce, Reuben Dickie, and Daray Flanagan would all still be alive today?”
He paused to look back at her. “Are you suggesting their deaths are my fault?”
“Death follows you,” she said, her hands coming up to grip her upper arms and hug them to her. “You brought it here.”
He forced himself to meet her gaze. “Ayleswick was no stranger to violent death long before I arrived, and you know it.”
He thought she might deny it.
But she didn’t.
Chapter 58
He found Hero and Simon watching the ducks on the village green.
She turned, the child in her arms, her brilliant smile of welcome fading when she saw his face. “Devlin. What is it?”
He stood beside her and watched as their son prattled gibberish at the quacking, waddling ducks. He wanted to say, I came to Shropshire because I can’t seem to let go of this need to know. To know the true identity of my father, to know if I lost a brother the day Jamie Knox died, to know why my eyes are yellow rather than a deep St. Cyr blue. Except, all I’ve found are more questions. More questions, and a murdered young woman on a painful quest so similar to my own. And now, in the process of solving her murder, I’m afraid I’m about to destroy what’s left of a family that has already suffered too much because of me.
But he didn’t say any of those things. Instead, he squinted up at the dark clouds building over the distant hills and said, “Think we can make it out to the priory before the storm hits?”
They left Simon with his nurse, then took the path that led from the ancient parish church of St. Thomas, through a dense wood of beech and elm.
As they walked, he told her of his conversations with Lucien Bonaparte and Jenny Dalyrimple, and of the long-ago, tragic death of Sybil Moss and everything he believed had followed it.
She said, “You think Lucien Bonaparte was lying when he claimed only Flanagan was at the priory that day?”
“I think he believed he told the truth. But that doesn’t mean Jude Lowe wasn’t there; only that Bonaparte didn’t know it.”
The wind was kicking up, thrashing the limbs of the trees overhead, and he saw her tilt back her head, her lips parting as she gazed up at the sky. “Could Jude Lowe really be that evil?”
“I doubt he sees himself as evil. I’m sure he thinks he had a good reason for everything he’s done.”
“He’s evil,” said Hero.
Sebastian shrugged. “As far as he’s concerned, he’s fighting a war—a war against centuries of oppression and exploitation by the likes of everyone from George Irving and Leopold Seaton to the English Crown. He looked at what the revolutionaries were trying to accomplish across the Channel in France, and he wanted those kinds of reforms here. I don’t know how long he’s been cooperating with the French, but I doubt it was before the hangings of 1793. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that spate of judicial murders that initially pushed him toward the French.”
They’d reached the stream at the edge of the wood, and she paused for a moment, her gaze on the ruins of the old priory thrusting up pale and somber against the roiling clouds in the west. “I can understand his killing Seaton and Irving,” she said, “even if I don’t condone it. But there is no possible justification for the murder of Emma Chandler. She was completely innocent of anything.”
“Yes. But that’s what happens when a man appoints himself as judge and executioner of his fellow beings. What begins as a moral, righteous impulse can all too quickly degenerate into what’s convenient for him.”