horse’s neck.
“When was this?”
“The day he died. The twenty-fifth of July. He came home from London that evening in a rage. Swore he was going to reveal my father as a traitor and divorce me. I begged him not to do it, but he called for his horse and rode off.”
It said something about English marriage laws and the attitudes of their society that a terrified, abused woman would be horrified by her husband’s threat to divorce her. Sebastian studied Lady Prescott’s half-averted profile. Most women would suffer unimaginable cruelties at the hands of their husbands rather than face the social stigma and financial ruin that were the lot of divorced women. He said, “So you went after him.”
She nodded. “I thought he was going to London. But when I rode through Tanfield Hill, the moon was full and I could see his mare—Lady Jane—tied up by the charnel house. My husband and his brothers used to play in the crypt as children. He was always telling me stories, bragging about how he would hide things down there when he was a boy. I realized he must have hidden the Alcibiades letters there. I’d looked for them at the Grange, you see, and hadn’t been able to find them.”
They’d long ago stopped walking and were standing on the gravel sweep beside the church. From here they could see the piles of rubble left by the demolition of the charnel house. When the wind shifted around, it brought with it an old, old smell.
Sebastian said, “You followed him down into the crypt?”
She stared down at her knotted hands. “I was still hoping I could get him to see reason. But he was drunk on brandy and fury and a lust for revenge. As soon as he saw me, he came at me. I’d never seen him like that before. He’d hurt me in the past, but this time, I swear, he wanted to kill me.” Her gaze lifted to where the setting sun baked the golden stones of the bridge over the millstream. The boys had gone. “I honestly think he would have.”
Sebastian said, “The silver dagger. You brought it with you from the Grange, did you?”
The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed. “My father had given it to me. He’d brought it back from Rome as a young man, when he was on his grand tour. Sir Nigel had . . . hurt me before he left. When I rode after him, I took the dagger with me. Just . . . just in case.
“When I came down the steps, he was at the back of the crypt. He’d taken a lantern from the sacristy, and I could see the light flickering over the rows of old columns and the stacks of coffins in the bays. He turned when he heard me. I said his name. That was all. Just his name. He started screaming at me, calling me the vilest things. Then he pushed me back against one of the columns and put his big hands around my throat.”
She paused for a moment, her gaze on her own hands twisted together before her. “I could feel his fingers digging into my neck, pressing ever so hard. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to beg, to plead with him to stop. But I couldn’t speak. And I thought,
“So you stabbed him.”
She nodded, her voice an anguished whisper. “Only he didn’t let go. He just opened his mouth and roared and squeezed harder. So I stabbed him again. And again. And then he let me go.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran to the vicarage. I was covered in blood. Most of it was my husband’s, but not all of it. Francis—Sir Nigel’s brother—was the priest in residence at the time. He was a very different sort of man from his brother. While Sir Nigel was away, he and I had become . . . close.”
She stared off down the hill again. Sebastian waited, and after a moment she continued. “They still burn women who kill their husbands. Did you know? It’s considered a form of treason.”
“You killed him in self-defense.”
The ghost of a smile touched her lips. “And what jury of men do you think would have believed that? I stabbed him
“Francis Prescott believed you?”
“Francis knew his brother.”
Sebastian said, “It was Francis Prescott’s idea to seal off the crypt?”
She nodded. “He’d been planning to do it anyway. Between the two of us, we managed to drag Nigel farther back into the shadows. Then Francis locked the gate to the crypt, and took the mare and turned it loose on the heath. By dusk of the next day both entrances to the crypt had been bricked up.”
She drew in a deep breath that lifted the bodice of her black riding habit. Sebastian looked at the gently fading fair hair that curled against her neck, the soft blue eyes that were so much like her son’s, and knew she wasn’t telling him everything.
He said, “Did Sir Nigel know you were carrying his brother’s child?”
He watched her lips part, her jaw go slack. But she recovered quickly, her chin lifting. “I don’t know what you’re talking a—”
“Don’t,” said Sebastian. “Please don’t try to play me for a fool, Lady Prescott.”
She looked away, her eyes blinking rapidly.
He said, “Did Sir Nigel know?”
She shook her head, her voice a whisper. “I didn’t even know at the time. It was . . . It was wrong of us. We knew that. But Francis . . . He was such a good, gentle man. Everything his brother was not. And I was so very lonely.”
Sebastian watched a puff of white clouds near the horizon take on a golden hue, and thought about what kind of good, gentle priest comforted his brother’s sad, lonely wife with the heat of his own body.
A very human one, he supposed.
“It is forbidden for a man to marry his brother’s widow. Besides . . .” She paused, and had to swallow before continuing. “After what happened to Nigel, there was no question of our continuing to see each other. Francis married a young woman several years later, although as Peter’s uncle, he was able to play an important role in the boy’s life.”
Sebastian nodded. What was it the Chaplain had said?
He saw the flare of fury and fear in her eyes. “That beastly man. He kept following Francis. Watching us. He heard us talking one day, after Peter was born. It was right before he killed his wife. Francis went to visit him at Newgate, to pray with him, and Slade said if Francis didn’t petition the court to have his sentence commuted to transportation, he’d tell everyone my son was a bastard.”
“He might not have been believed.”
The coloring in her cheeks darkened. “There were already whispers in the village. Not about Francis and me, but about Peter. No one knew Sir Nigel had been in America, but they knew he’d been traveling until the middle of July. I’d given out that the child was due to be born in April, but . . . Well, he didn’t look like a seven-months child.”
“Did you know the Bishop gave Slade money, after he came back from Botany Bay?”
The light filtering down through the canopy of oaks cast dappled shadows across the planes of her face. She said, “I knew. He did it for Peter. But it troubled him. I think he told Slade he wasn’t going to pay anymore, and threatened Slade that if he tried to do anything about it, he’d have him prosecuted for blackmail. That’s why Jack Slade killed him.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Sebastian.
She lifted her blue eyes to his face, and he saw there a mother’s deepening fear. “Then who did?”
Rather than answer her, Sebastian said, “Did Francis Prescott know about your father’s letters?”
“I told him about them that night. But he never saw them.”
“So what happened to them?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always assumed Sir Nigel had them on him when he died.”
“You didn’t look for them?”
“No. I was . . . I was in such a state. And with the crypt bricked up, what did it matter?”
The mare raised its head, eyes blinking as it swung to nuzzle its mistress. Lady Prescott stroked the horse’s velvet nose. “After Sir Nigel’s death, I went to my father and told him I knew what he’d been doing, and that if he didn’t leave London I would take the Alcibiades letters to the King. He didn’t know I no longer had them. He left for Derbyshire the next day. We have never spoken to each other since.”
