“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it might make it easier for him, to know they could never have married, even if she had lived. But then I think, the woman he loved is already lost to him; what good would it serve for him to have to live with the horror of knowing he’d desired his own sister? Perhaps it would be best after all to leave him with the memory of his lost love intact.”
“How well does Lord Seaton remember his father?”
“Hardly at all. He was very young when his father died. And Leopold never had any interest in what he used to call ‘snotty-nosed nursery brats.’”
“Does he know what his father was like?”
“You mean, does he know Leopold had a nasty habit of slaking his lust on the village girls, willing or not? I don’t believe so, no. But I must admit, I hadn’t thought of what it would do to Crispin, to learn such an ugly truth about his father.”
“He may eventually hear some of it anyway, from someone in the village.”
“Yes.” She searched his face, and he wondered if she saw there the traces of his own long-ago, secret anguish that their conversation had dredged up. “So what are you saying? That I should tell him?”
“You’re the one who must bear the burden of keeping this a secret for the rest of your life.”
“I would do it for Crispin, gladly. If only I could be certain it was right.”
“There’s no denying secrets can be dangerous. Yet some secrets . . . I believe some secrets are best left unknown. It would be different, had she lived.”
“Yes. Yes, it would.” She gave him a faint, tremulous smile. “Thank you, my lord.”
He watched her walk away, her head held high, her back rigorously straight, her features carefully schooled into an expression that betrayed not a hint of the turmoil in her heart.
Or the admirable strength of her will.
Friday, 13 August
The next morning, Sebastian had two obligations to fulfill before he left the village.
First he climbed the lane to the vicarage, where Benedict Underwood was supervising two workmen repairing a gap in the orchard wall. Taking the vicar aside, he warned Underwood that if he ever laid a hand on his cousin Rachel Timms again, Sebastian would not only make certain he lost the living of Ayleswick, but see to it that he was never given another parish.
The Reverend’s practiced benevolent smile remained firmly in place.
Sebastian said, “And if you think Rachel Timms is too afraid of losing Hill Cottage to be honest with me, then you should know that I’ve promised her a cottage on my own estate down in Hampshire, should that come to pass.”
Underwood’s smile slid away.
Sebastian touched a hand to his hat. “Good day to you, Reverend.”
After that, he walked out to the little whitewashed cottage beside the stream.
He found Heddie Kincaid dozing on a bench in the warm sunshine. And there, hat in hand, he expressed his sorrow for the death of her son.
She lifted her blind face to him, showing him the ravages left by another unbearable loss. “I don’t blame you for it,” she said, her voice breaking. “Maybe if Jude’d had a better da, things would’ve turned out different. But . . .” She paused to draw a painful breath. “I was always afraid he’d end up being hanged. So in a sense I suppose you could say I’m grateful to you for sparing us that.”
She asked him then to sit beside her, and he spoke to her of Jamie Knox and of the child the ex-rifleman had had by the barmaid, Pippa, and how much the boy resembled his dead father.
As he talked, he was aware of Jenny watching him through the window of the cottage. It wasn’t until he rose to take his leave that she came to stand in the open doorway, her arms crossed at her chest. Her face was hard, her eyes red and swollen from her own grieving.
“I didn’t send him after you,” she said. “Jude, I mean. I wanted you to know that.”
Sebastian paused beside her. “But you did speak to him after I left.” It was more a statement than a question.
She stared across the stream to where Jude’s three orphaned sons were playing with a puppy. “I was hoping Jude’d tell me I was wrong about him. But he didn’t, and in the end all I did was warn him that you’d figured it out. For that, I am sorry.”
Sebastian nodded, although he wasn’t sure if she was sorry because she’d put his life and Hero’s in danger, or because Jude had ended up dead.
She said, “His father, Daniel Lowe, was without a doubt the meanest man I’ve ever known, and even worse when he had the drink in him, which was often. I’m not sure who he beat more, Jude or Jamie. But after Jamie left, Jude was the only one he had to use his fists on.”
“Daniel Lowe died in ’ninety-seven?”
Jenny nodded. “Fell off a haystack onto a pitchfork. I always figured Jude did for him, although Jude never admitted it. I think maybe he was the first person Jude killed.”