“She didn’t tell you she was in love with a young man from Ayleswick?”
He read the dawning comprehension and horror in her eyes. “Dear God, no. What was his name?”
“Crispin, Lord Seaton—the son of one of the men who may have raped her mother.”
Chapter 37
Monday, 9 August
Early the next morning, before he left the village of Kirby, Sebastian visited the small fifteenth-century church with its flying buttresses and fan vaulting and soaring stained-glass windows.
Even in death, the grand inhabitants of Pleasant Park refused to mingle with the common folk of the village. Rather than be buried in the churchyard, generations of Turnstalls lay in a private crypt beneath their own chapel in the north transept. An ornate jewel of Italian marble, delicate tracery, and masterfully carved, life-sized effigies, the chapel was crowded with memorials to past generations of Turnstalls, some extraordinarily ornate and pretentious, others less so.
Emma’s mother had warranted only a small brass plaque inscribed, LADY EMILY TURNSTALL, MAY 1775–AUGUST 1792.
Pausing before it, Sebastian ran his fingertips along the engraved letters and felt the tragedy of the young woman’s death hollow him out inside. How many women? he wondered. As one century followed the next, on down through the ages, how many women had seen their lives shattered by an unintended pregnancy that ran afoul of their society’s cruel, unforgiving conventions?
He wondered if Emma Chandler had come here to the church before she left the village. From Sarah Hanson she would have heard the answer to two of the questions that had haunted her since childhood: She would have learned the name of the woman who had given her life and she would know that her mother had both loved her and wanted desperately to keep her.
Yet the discovery would have been bittersweet, for the mother she had sought was long dead, never to be seen or touched. Standing here, reading her mother’s stark memorial, she would have felt the awful finality of it, the inescapable sadness of realizing she would never know her mother’s smile, never breathe in the scent of her skin or hear the sound of her laughter. Never hear her say, I love you.
And he wondered, had anyone ever said those words to Emma before Crispin Seaton? Probably not since she’d been dragged away from the happy farm of the couple who had given her their last name. What would it have done to her to read her mother’s letter and realize that she might lose Crispin too? There were seven men mentioned in Emily’s letter. The odds were slim that her mother’s rapist would turn out to be the father of the man Emma loved. Yet the chance was there.
She could have decided to ignore what she’d learned, turned her back on the past, and embraced the future she surely wanted. Instead, she’d been driven to learn the truth. Disregarding her society’s conventions, she’d disguised herself as a widow on a sketching expedition and gone to Ayleswick.
Had Emma somehow discovered the information she sought? Sebastian wondered. Was that why she had died? Had her reappearance in her father’s life threatened the guilty man so much that he had killed her? Killed his own daughter?
It was possible. Horrifying, but definitely possible.
Chapter 38
Shortly after breakfast, Hero left Simon with Claire and took the shady path that rambled through stands of old-growth oak and beech, to the water meadows.
It had rained during the night. But now the air was clear and fresh with the new day, the sunlight filtering down through the leafy branches overhead golden and warm. Wrapping her arms around her bent knees, Hero sat on the moss-covered log where Emma’s body had been found and stared out at the slow-moving river. Devlin was right; there was nothing particularly picturesque or unusual about this stretch of the Teme. So why had Emma Chandler’s killer chosen this spot to stage her suicide?
Why?
A hawk circled overhead, riding an updraft, and Hero tipped back her head, watching it. The silence and isolation of the place settled heavily upon her. She could hear nothing but the sigh of a faint breeze through the treetops and the whine of unseen insects. Then a boy called to his dog somewhere on the opposite bank, and the moment was broken.
“What happened to you?” she whispered, as if the dead woman’s spirit still lingered there, haunting this place. “What, and why?”
Why would someone kill an unknown young woman? Lust was the obvious answer, except the girl hadn’t been violated and there were no signs that she had been killed trying to resist a sexual assault. Which suggested that either the killer knew exactly who she was and why she had come to this small, out-of-the-way village, or . . .
Or her identity was meaningless and she’d died simply because she’d somehow seen or learned something her killer didn’t want known.
Hero was contemplating this last possibility when she became aware of a strange sensation creeping over her, tense and unsettling.