“Please, Papa,” she said.
It occurred to Gabriel that he might have tried to insist upon speaking to her privately. But he was not sorry he had not done so. His own anger had been suppressed for years, only to be aroused again now. They had been sweethearts, he and Penny—and yes, it was the most appropriate word to use of two young innocents who had rarely been alone together and had never done anything more daring than hold hands when they could and twice share a very brief, chaste kiss. She had been seventeen, for the love of God, he nineteen. They had been children.
“The boy you called Kendall is your son?” Gabriel asked. “Who is his father, Penny?”
She made a sound of distress deep in her throat. Ginsberg took a menacing step forward, only to be stopped by her raised hand.
“I never said it was you,” she told Gabriel. “I let it be assumed that it was. It seemed . . . preferable. I thought Papa would persuade you to marry me, and I did not believe you would really mind. I thought you liked me and would do that for me when I explained.”
Good God!
“What thedevil!” Ginsberg bellowed. Again, her raised hand stopped him.
“And then everything got out of hand,” she said. “Orson went stalking off in a rage to find you and hold you to account—or what he thought was holding you to account. And then you killed him. Oh dear God, I was beside myself. I did not know what to do. I wasseventeen. Barely that even. Did I cause my own brother’s death, Gabriel, as surely as if I had fired the gun myself? I have always believed I did and that I was responsible for you becoming a killer. But I know it must have been an accident. He was shotin the back. There is no way you would have done that deliberately. Oh dear God.”
“I did not kill Orson,” Gabriel said.
She looked at him with eyes suddenly grown wild, her teeth sunk deep into her lower lip.
“What—” Ginsberg began.
“Who is your eldest child’s father, Penny?” Gabriel asked again.
She huffed out a breath, closed her eyes again briefly, and spoke. “I was going to Brierley with a cake Mama had baked for your aunt,” she said. “She had been feeling poorly.Theywere in the park too. I think they must have been coming from the tavern. They looked . . . drunk. They were weaving and laughing and . . . I could not hide fast enough. One of them . . . He tried to flirt with me, but when that did not work, he started to kiss me while the other one laughed and told him I was your girl—Gabe’s girl,he said. And then the first man laughed and told me what I needed was a real man. And then he . . . And the other one would not stop him. He just laughed. He was married. I mean the one who . . . He would not have been able to marry me.”
“His name?” Gabriel asked softly. But of course he knew.
His cousin Philip had been a man of loose morals and a frequent drunk all the time Gabriel had known him. It was said—and Gabriel believed it—that no female servant or farm girl was safe from him when he was in his cups.
Manley had been just such another. He was all of five years older than Philip, but they were friends and he had come to Brierley frequently and stayed, often for weeks at a time.
By the time Gabriel went to America, both men were married, with children, but those facts had not changed them. Manley’s child had been left at home whenever he brought his wife to Brierley, and the two wives had been left at the house to amuse each other while the men drank in the village and went shooting out of season and ogled the local young women, married and single, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Lords of the manor. Entitled to whatever or whoever took their fancy.
Gabriel had always heartily disliked both of them, a sentiment they had made no bones about returning. They had always derived great pleasure from blaming him for some of the idiotic things they had done—grown men acting like bully boys. And his uncle, stern and autocratic, but as thick as a brick, Gabriel had often thought, had been unable or unwilling to see his son and his cousin’s boy for what they were. He had been ready enough to take their word and punish Gabriel.
“His name, Penny?”
Ginsberg looked as though he were about to explode, but he held his peace and stayed where he was, staring at the floor.
Penelope drew a deep, ragged breath. “Mr. Manley Rochford,” she said.
Ginsberg’s head snapped back as though he had been punched hard on the chin. His eyes were fast closed, his face chalk white. “He came to Orson’s funeral,” he murmured.
“You have told no one this until now, Penny?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I told Mr. Clark—my husband—before I married him.”
“But he did not deem it necessary to have Manley Rochford taken into custody and charged with ravishment and probably murder too?” he asked.
She frowned. “But you killed Orson,” she said. “It was you he went to confront.”
“He did not find me,” he told her. “I was with Mary Beck. She had been brought a fawn with a broken leg, and I was helping her set and bind it. When I finally arrived home, I was confronted with three things. You were with child. Orson was dead, shot in the back. And I was guilty on both counts. You had admitted the first, and Philip and Manley had witnessed the second from a distance. They had been too far away, of course, to prevent the shooting. My uncle, his house threatened with terrible scandal, advised me to run while I could. And I fled before I could give myself time to think. It was not the wisest thing to do, of course, but I was nineteen. And there were people to swear that I was guilty of each charge—you on the one hand, Manley and Philip, my own cousins, on the other.”
Ginsberg had groped his way to a chair and sat down heavily upon it.
“I am so sorry, Gabriel,” Penelope said. “So very sorry. But theysawyou kill Orson.”
“Two men,” Gabriel said. “One of whom had raped you, the other of whom was present when it happened but did nothing to stop it. Yet you took their word for what happened to your brother—andmy friend? You have believed ever since that Ishot him in the back?”
