A False Mirror - Charles Todd [12]
People would say she ought to have known—
Tears ran down her face. She loved him more than she’d ever told him. And if he died, and didn’t know, it was her fault.
She refused to consider Bennett’s claim that Stephen had attacked him. It was too bizarre, too unbelievable. And yet she had almost believed it, in the first shock of hearing Inspector Bennett’s bold accusation. It had torn at her heart and the icy truth of guilt had swept her.
You can’t love two men. Not in the same way. For God’s sake, it’s not possible!
The gates to the drive loomed ahead, small things, decorative, hardly intended to keep intruders out or love inside. She had no recollection of how she had got this far, or how long it had taken her. Her feet had guided her home. That was all that mattered. Had anyone spoken to her? She’d been deaf and blind, absorbed in her own misery.
Home.
The graceful tiled plate on the gatepost mocked her. Casa Miranda. The name of a house where Matthew had lived in one of his postings. He’d liked it, he’d told her, and had carried it with him ever after. She had wanted to name the house on the hill Windsong, but he’d laughed and said that was commonplace and she’d soon grow to like Miranda better. It meant Vantage Point, he said, but it still sounded foreign to her, like a woman’s name. Wasn’t there a Miranda in one of Shakespeare’s plays?
She all but ran up the drive, her gaze on the door, and then stopped short.
Why had she come back to the house? Why hadn’t she gone to search for Stephen?
She didn’t know the answer to that. Except that she’d run home like a hurt child to hide her face in her mother’s skirts.
Or—yes, she did know why she hadn’t searched—she hadn’t wanted to look into his face and read shame and guilt and love there.
For an instant she debated going back to the doctor’s surgery, but her feet were once more carrying her toward the front door, not down the way she had come. After what she’d heard, she couldn’t bear to face any of them. She was sure Granville’s wife had never liked her. This would only give Mrs. Granville more fodder for gossip. What Bennett had said would be all over Hampton Regis before the day was out. If no one believed it before, everyone would believe it now.
Opening her door, she realized it was Nan’s day to clean—she’d forgotten that Nan was here when the constable had knocked. Well, she’d just have to send the maid home, she couldn’t bear having someone there, in the house, moving about. She needed to think.
Stepping from the bright morning into the dimly lit foyer, she once again stopped dead in her tracks.
“Matthew?” she said to the ghost of him sitting at the bottom of the staircase. A sudden fear swept her. Had he died without her there to hold his hand? Had she left him to die and he’d come to chide her?
But it wasn’t Matthew’s ghost, it was Stephen, very much alive.
She watched his face crumple as he read the shock in her face. “How is he?” he asked, his voice husky. “For God’s sake, tell me he’s still alive?”
“He’s alive,” she heard herself saying. “But he’s so—I’ve never seen anyone that badly hurt.”
“Thank God. Bennett told me they’d found a body—I thought—”
Felicity shut the door and leaned against it, her legs refusing to hold her up. “What are you doing here? The police—Bennett’s foot may be broken, did you know that?”
“I’m sorry. He tried to stop me, it was his own doing. I had to come here, I had to tell you that I didn’t harm Matthew. I didn’t touch him, Felicity! I would never have touched him. Tell me you believe me?”
He got to his feet, standing there with such pain in his eyes that she couldn’t bear to see it.
“Felicity—”
He put out his hand, begging.
“Please, Felicity. I didn’t hurt him!”
She took a deep shuddering breath. “I don’t know what to think anymore. If you were innocent, why didn’t you let Bennett question