The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [173]
“Don’t be fatuous, Deirdra,” Oonagh said bitterly. “The proof is in his face. What is Mr. Monk talking about, Baird? I think you had better tell us all, rather than have some stranger do it for you.”
Baird looked up and his eyes met Monk’s for a long, breathless moment, then he acquiesced. He had no alternative. He began in a low, tight voice, harsh with past hurt and present pain.
“When I was twenty-two I killed a man. He abused an old man I respected. Made mock of him, humiliated him. We fought. I did not intend to, at least I don’t think I did … but I killed him. He struck his head against the curb. I served three years in prison for it. That was when I met Arkwright. When I was set free I left Yorkshire and came north to Scotland. I made my way quite successfully, and put the past behind me. I had all but forgotten it, until one day Arkwright turned up and threatened to tell everyone unless I paid him. I couldn’t—I had barely enough means for myself, and I would have had to explain to Oonagh….” He said her name as if she were a stranger, some figure that represented authority. “Of course I couldn’t. I hesitated for days, close to despair.”
“I remember….” Eilish whispered, staring at him with anguish, as though even now she yearned to be able to comfort him and heal the past.
Quinlan made a noise of impatience and turned away.
“Mary knew,” Baird continued, his voice rasping with hurt. “She knew something was troubling me more than I could bear, and in the end I told her….”
He did not even notice Eilish stiffen and a sudden surprise and pain in her face. He did not seem to realize it was different, no longer an agony for the past, or for him, but a hurt for herself.
Quinlan smiled. “Told her you’d served time in prison,” he said with blatant disbelief.
“Yes.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Alastair looked grim, doubt written plain in his expression. “Really, Baird, that’s asking too much. Could you prove it?”
“No—except that she gave me permission to lease the croft to Arkwright, for his silence.” Baird looked up and met Alastair’s eyes for the first time.
It was an absurd story. Why would a woman like Mary Farraline accept a man with such a past—and even help him? And yet Monk found himself at least half believing it.
Quinlan gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“Come on, Baird, that isn’t even clever,” Kenneth said with a smile, letting his foot slide off the fender and sitting down in the nearest chair. “I could think of a better excuse than that.”
“No doubt you have—frequently,” Oonagh said dryly, regarding her younger brother with contempt. It was the first time Monk had seen an expression of contention or open criticism on her face, and it surprised him. The peacemaker was rattled at last. He looked at her puckered mouth, the anxiety marked deep between her brows, but still could only guess what emotions burned inside her. He could make no hazard as to whether she had known or even suspected her husband had such a shadowed past.
Or was that what she had sought to do all the time? Was that the blindingly obvious thing he had always missed, that Oonagh loved her husband, in spite of his obsession with her younger sister, and that she sought to protect him from both his reckless past and his tortured present.
Quite suddenly he saw her in a different light, and his admiration for her leaped beyond the mere courage and composure she had shown to something of classical magnitude; she was a woman who bore herself with silence and generosity almost immeasurable.
Instinctively he turned to Eilish, to see if she had the remotest conception of what she had done, however unwittingly. But all he could see was disillusion and the scalding pain of rejection. In his desperation Baird had turned not to her, but to her mother. She was excluded. He had not even trusted her with it