Marian looked away, a shadow briefly darkening her face. “He broke a promise and I lost my temper. I’m sorry about it now. Very sorry. Now, what else would you like to know?”
Ethan put down his cup and saucer and sat back in his chair. “I’d like to know about the books. How they ended up in my father’s study. How he wound up in the middle of it all.”
“He wound up in the middle of it the way he always did, poor man. He was pressed into service.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means he was minding his business one day when a package arrived from London, a book wrapped in brown paper with a note asking him to pass it along to me, unopened. He nearly threw it away. He didn’t trust Hemi, nor should he have after what he’d done to the family. But he sent it in the end.”
“Why send it to my father instead of you?”
“Hemi had no idea where I was living. Almost no one did in those days. Scandal has a way of making privacy rather precious. Dickey was easier to find, because of his writing, I suppose. And there was a bit of history there.”
“You mean the letter he delivered for you.”
A flicker of emotion ruffled Marian’s careful composure, a brief ripple of surprise or discomfort. “Yes. The letter.”
“It was pretty presumptuous to assume my father would do what he was asking.”
“Hemi was nothing if not presumptuous.” Her eyes clouded and for a moment she seemed to lose the thread of the conversation. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear but raw with memory. “He believed the ends justified the means—even with me. How else would he have the nerve to send me that book full of lies? You’ve read all of it by now, I take it? Both of you?”
“Yes,” Ethan replied evenly.
“He called me Belle, but there was no Belle. Certainly not the one he wrote about. She was a figment of his imagination. An invention.”
“And your book was meant to correct the record,” Ashlyn said quietly.
Marian’s gaze remained fixed on some distant point beyond the glass walls, her eyes wide and empty. “The things he wrote,” she said finally. “The distortions and the lies . . . I couldn’t let him remember it that way. He blames me, but he knows. We both know.”
Ashlyn caught Ethan’s eye, flashing him an “I told you so” look. It was exactly the point she’d been trying to make about things not adding up. The more she learned, the less she was convinced that either of them actually knew the truth.
Ethan was frowning, pulling thoughtfully at his lower lip. “I’m still not clear about how both books—Hemi’s and the one you wrote—ended up in my father’s study.”
“I’m getting to that,” Marian replied tightly. She lifted her cup, sipping daintily, then carefully returned it to its saucer. “When I finished Forever, and Other Lies, I sent it to one of those places that will print your book for you. I sent Hemi’s book with it and asked them to make mine look just like his. It cost a pretty penny too. As soon as it came back, I sent both books to Dickey and asked him to mail them back to Hemi—as a set. I’m not sure why. I suppose I wanted him to know I could give as good as I got.”
Ashlyn tried to imagine Hemi’s reaction when he opened the package containing both books. “And how did he respond?”
Marian eyed her without expression. “He didn’t.”
“Not a word?”
She shrugged. “He’d vented his spleen and I’d done the same. What else was there to say?”
Ethan looked confused. “If my father did as you asked and sent them to Hemi, how did they end up back in his study?”
Marian’s expression darkened and she shifted in her chair. “A few years later, Hemi phoned Dickey out of the blue and asked if the two of them could meet for a drink. Dickey should have known better, but he agreed. Naturally, I came up in the conversation. He told Dickey that we’d made plans to run away together but that I’d backed out because I was too proud to marry a man with nothing. It wasn’t true, of course. Dickey, of all people, should have known that. He knew better than anyone what losing Hemi had cost me.” She paused, shaking her head sadly. “Deep down, he meant well. He always meant well.”
“But?”
She shrugged. “But he broke his promise.”
Ethan still looked confused. “What was the promise?”
“Your father and I had an agreement. We made it one day after a ferocious argument. He’d been pestering me about the past, about how things had ended with Hemi. He thought I was being too harsh. Unreasonable, he called me. And cruel. Me . . . cruel.” She paused, shaking her head as if baffled. “After everything, he still believed there was a way to go back and fix things. I didn’t want his opinion, not about that. I told him that if we were to remain friends, he must promise never to mention Hemi’s name to me again. Unfortunately, the promise I extracted said nothing about him speaking my name to Hemi.
“When Hemi called, Dickey let it slip that I was scheduled to speak at a conference in Boston the next day, and that afterward, we planned to meet for lunch. At least he said it was a slip. At any rate, Hemi wrangled an invitation. Your father agreed, promising to bow out when I arrived. I imagine he thought we’d sip champagne, look into each other’s eyes, and live happily ever after, the silly, romantic fool. But when you’re happy in love, you think everyone else should be too. Thank heavens for technical difficulties, or who knows what kind of scene there might have been.”
“What happened?”
“There was a problem with the hotel’s slide projector and we were late getting started. I called the restaurant to let Dickey know I’d been held up. When I asked the hostess if Richard Hillard had already been seated, she said yes, both gentlemen had already arrived. When I questioned her, she described Dickey’s guest as a tall, good-looking British fellow . . . and I knew.
“I asked her to call your father to the phone. He didn’t even bother to deny it. In fact, he tried to convince me to come anyway. I was livid. I never dreamed he would do something so underhanded when he knew . . .” Marian abruptly fell silent, as if she’d said more than intended.
She toyed with a heavy garnet ring on her right hand, spinning it slowly, mindlessly around her finger. “He knew how it was after Hemi left,” she said finally, her voice low and filled with pain. “He knew . . . everything. Which is why I was astonished that he could betray me in that way. He was always testing me, trying to soften the ground, but I never dreamed he’d go behind my back that way. At least I was spared the business at the restaurant.”
“You didn’t go?” Ashlyn asked.