It was one of half a dozen such cottages in a row, all neatly whitewashed and newly thatched, each with its own croft and toft. The young Baron—or at any rate his sober, middle-aged steward—obviously took good care of the estate’s tenants.
She reined in before the open front door of one of the middle cottages, where a towheaded child of four or five who’d been playing in the dirt beside the step looked up at her in openmouthed awe. “Good morning,” said Hero with a smile, dismounting without her groom’s assistance. “Is your mother or father around?”
The child gaped at Hero a moment, then pushed to her feet and darted inside, screaming, “Mumma, Mumma! Come quick!”
A slim, pleasant-looking woman appeared in the doorway, her flaxen hair in striking contrast to her still smooth, sunlit skin, the child now balanced on one hip and sucking her thumb.
“Mrs. Moss?” asked Hero. If this was Sybil’s mother, she must be in at least her mid-forties by now, and she was still startlingly beautiful.
“Aye, milady,” said the woman, sinking into a deep curtsy.
Hero found herself hesitating as she looked into the woman’s faintly smiling but puzzled face. How do you tell a mother you want to reopen the wounds of the past? she thought. How do you gracefully bring up the death of one of her children? How do you ask her to confront, in daylight and before a stranger’s eyes, a pain normally kept tucked out of sight and revisited only in solitude during the darkest hours of the night?
“I need to talk to you about the death of your daughter Sybil,” Hero said bluntly, and watched the smile fade from the older woman’s soft blue eyes, leaving them stark and hurting.
“She was my firstborn,” said the woman who introduced herself as Anne Moss. They were seated beside the cottage’s cold hearth, a nearby casement window thrown open to the cool summer breeze. She held the little fair-haired girl in her lap and kept touching the child’s cheek, her arm, her leg, as if to reassure herself of this living child’s presence. “She was so pretty, my Sybil. As pretty as any angel in one of those Popish holy pictures.”
Hero wondered where the cottager’s wife had seen such an image but kept the thought to herself.
“Barely sixteen, she was. She’d always been such a good child. But you know what girls of that age are like—willful and feeling their oats.”
Hero found she could picture Sybil Moss quite clearly: a younger version of her mother, beautiful and nubile and joyously aware of her ability to turn heads and attract men. Lots of men. She would know she was desirable, know that her youth and beauty gave her a special kind of power—fleeting, perhaps, but rare and valuable.
“Is it true she was with child?” Hero asked, because she suspected the mother would not voluntarily betray her daughter’s condition.
A faint line of color appeared high along her cheekbones. “She was. But she didn’t kill herself over it. I don’t care what that high-and-mighty coroner from Ludlow said. She didn’t throw herself off the cliffs of the gorge because she was with child. She was happy about the baby.”
“Do you know who the father was?”
Anne Moss shook her head. “She wouldn’t say. It was something she hugged to herself, a secret. But it was a secret she was proud of; I’m sure of that. She weren’t ashamed of it.”
“How did your husband feel about it?”
Anne Moss hesitated, then lifted the little girl off her lap and said, “There now, Lizzy; run along and play.”
She watched the child dart out the door, and sighed. “To be frank, I don’t think John was surprised. She was so very pretty, our Sybil. He was hoping she’d take up with one of the more prosperous farmers hereabouts, someone who could give her a good life. But . . .”
“But?” prompted Hero when the woman lapsed into silence.
“I worried. She was so pretty—prettier than I ever was, and she knew it. Gave her grand ideas, I’m afraid.”
“Who do you think was the babe’s father?”
Anne Moss brought up one hand to rub her forehead. “I don’t know. But she let slip a thing or two, enough to make me think he was a gentleman. Someone she should’ve known better than to go lying with.”
“You mean, someone like Lord Seaton? Or perhaps the old Squire?”
Sybil Moss’s mother nodded, her lips pressed into a pained line. “I even wondered about Major Weston or maybe—God forgive me—the vicar himself. Man of God he might be, but it never stopped him from having an eye for the pretty ones.”
Was it a coincidence, Hero wondered, that Sybil Moss’s mother had named four of the seven men on Emma Chandler’s mysterious list? Somehow, she doubted it. “What about Samuel Atwater?”
The older woman’s face lightened with unexpected amusement. “Oh, no chance of that. Samuel Atwater’s never had eyes for anyone but Lady Seaton. He’d marry her tomorrow, if she’d agree to it.”