The Heir - Catherine Coulter [148]
The earl released Arabella’s fingers. “I had completely forgotten about them. Just a moment, please.” He rose and walked to the small desk that was in the far corner of the huge bedchamber. He came back carrying the emerald and diamond necklace. The green stones glittered in the bright sunlight.
“The necklace?” Arabella said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“That night when we faced down Gervaise I was holding out the emeralds in my hand, taunting him with them. Then I tossed them to him as if they meant nothing at all. Well, the truth is that the emeralds are worthless. They’re paste, as are the diamonds. That is what I should have told him. If he had known that, perhaps he wouldn’t have chosen the path he did.”
“Actually,” Arabella said after a moment, “I don’t think it would have made much difference. I think it would have served only to enrage him all the more, that is, if he had even believed you.”
“You’re right,” the earl said after a moment, his gray eyes brilliant. “He wouldn’t have believed me, not for an instant. Had I been here I wouldn’t have believed me either.”
“Paste,” Lady Ann said. She took the emeralds from him and held them up in the sunlight. “Paste. All this misery over a paste necklace of next to no value at all. Obviously Magdalaine’s parents knew they were paste when they gave them to her to bring back to your father, Arabella. Remember, they were supposedly part of her dowry? And they gave their daughter a worthless necklace to give to her husband. Surely they couldn’t have believed the late earl wouldn’t have noticed. Ah, but the violence was escalating in France.” Lady Ann shook her head as she stared at the emeralds. “Paste. It boggles the mind.”
“And that damned necklace has stayed snug in the Dance of Death panel all these years,” Dr. Branyon said. “Waiting to be found. I wish the damned thing had never existed in the first place.”
Suddenly a tear rolled down Arabella’s cheek. “Don’t, love,” the earl said, and gently drew her into his arms. “Don’t cry. Will you trust me?”
She nodded, gulping back the tears, but still they fell, one after the other.
“Good, I want all of you to hear this. You know that I searched Gervaise’s room that afternoon of the Talgarth ball. I found a letter to Gervaise from his uncle, Thomas de Trécassis, Magdalaine’s brother. Obviously he had no idea that the necklace was worthless. It was in that letter that I learned exactly where the necklace was. But that’s not what’s really important. What’s really important is another letter, one that fell out of Arabella’s slipper when I was undressing her after she’d been shot.”
“No, Justin, no.”
“Please, trust me. There’s nothing for you to fear. Trust me.” She didn’t want to, but he was holding her hand, he was looking at her intently, willing her to believe in him. Finally, she nodded.
“Paul,” the earl said, “please read this letter. It is from Magdalaine to her lover, Charles, the skeleton Arabella found in the old abbey ruins.”
Dr. Branyon took the creased and yellowed piece of foolscap. He smoothed it out as best he could. He walked to the window so that the sunlight poured in on it. He was silent for a goodly amount of time, sometimes frowning, sometimes puzzling over words he couldn’t make out. Finally, he raised his head. “This is incredible, really incredible. Bella, my dear, you have been terrified to tell anyone of what you had found?”
“He was my father. I loved him. I told Justin because I thought I might die. But this paints him as a vicious murderer. Please, promise me that it will not go beyond this room.”
“It won’t,” the earl said. “But it is time, Arabella, for us all to know the truth. Paul, can you tell us?”
“Yes, I can see that it is