An Anne Perry Christmas_ Two Holiday Novels - Anne Perry [35]
“Mrs. Naylor?”
She turned. “Yes?”
“What is it in this place that holds you?” It was an impertinent question, yet she wished to know so intensely that she defied all the rules of courtesy to ask.
“It is a place of rest on my own journey, Lady Vespasia. Perhaps after I have bidden farewell to my daughter, it may even prove to be the end of it. Why or how is not your concern.” She walked to the door, her back ramrod straight, her head high.
Vespasia did not need to be told that the value of Glen Orchy had much to do with Finn, but she was still turning over in her mind the nature of Mrs. Naylor's journey. They had been speaking of the road to answer for mistakes, a nicer word than sins, but it held more than the suggestion of mere error. They both knew they were speaking not merely of judgment, but of morality.
She sat in bed sipping her tea and thinking of Kilmuir's terrible death, and the rumors that Isobel had heard, and the gardener's sudden silence at Muir-of-Ord, and most of all of Gwendolen's face when Isobel had suggested obliquely that she could have been attracted to a footman, had he the social position to offer her.
Was Kilmuir really so desperate for children he would have put Gwendolen away by slandering her so completely that society would accept his act, and then marrying Dolly Twyford, leaving Gwendolen an outcast, branded a whore?
Her imagination raced! The possibilities were hideous! She thought of her own children, still little, but one day they would grow up, marry suitably, one hoped with love. What would she do if her daughter faced such ruin of her life? She pictured Kilmuir out driving in the carriage with Mrs. Naylor, the horse taking fright, Kilmuir overbalancing and falling, his wrists caught in the reins. The answer was there in her mind. She would have seized the chance and pushed him and whipped up the horses; at least, she would have thought of it! Whether she would ever have done it she could not know; please God, she would never find out.
Was that what had happened? And Gwendolen had seen it? That was the estrangement between her and her mother. Either she had never realized Kilmuir's plan, or she had refused to believe it. Or perhaps she had willed herself to forget it afterwards, to imagine that somehow he would change his mind, and it would all be all right. He would love her again and deny the rumors. Dolly Twyford would recede into the past. Maybe one day she would even have the longed-for children herself!
And then Mrs. Naylor had ruined it! That would be an estrangement sufficient to send Gwendolen to London, and keep her mother in the farthest reaches of Scotland, farther even than Muir-of-Ord. Perhaps only Glen Orchy would answer that guilt, and maybe even the fear of exposure. Who else might know? Only the staff of the house where it had happened, and they would keep silent, if not from loyalty, then at least for lack of proof. But Mrs. Naylor would no longer wish to live there.
And if she had not done it, would Kilmuir have gone ahead and first slandered Gwendolen and then cast her aside, destitute, and with no home, no friends, no reputation, no skills to earn her own way, except to sell her body on the streets, or more probably, to take her life—as in the end she had done?
Was that what she had heard in Isobel's remark—a beginning of the old accusation again? Was it history repeating itself, and Bertie Rosythe believing just as Kilmuir had pretended to? That might indeed make her despair and embrace death of her own choosing before ruin should overtake her. There was no mother to defend her this time.
How desperately alone she must have felt—a second time falsely accused, and no denial would help. How can one deny something that has only been hinted at, never said? Some people might have attacked in return, but where would