"Oh, please, Jessamine—"
"No, Cecilia, this woman needs to talk to you. I think we should bow to her desires."
"Th—Thank you, Lady Meriton," whispered the woman huskily, tears welling in her eyes.
"Here, now, none of that. Take my handkerchief and dry your eyes," Lady Meriton instructed briskly, holding out a square of linen.
Miss Swafford took it thankfully, dabbing at her eyes as Lady Meriton left the room.
"Would you care for a glass of sherry or perhaps brandy?" Cecilia asked, rising to cross to a tray of decanters and glasses that Loudon had left in the room that afternoon.
"A little sherry, please," she said meekly. "And please, just call me Angel. It's what everyone calls me. My real name is Mary Jane, but that wasn't stagey enough," she confessed. Prosaically she blew her nose.
Cecilia smiled at the action. She handed her a glass then sat down beside her. "All right, Angel. What is it? I have a feeling it is more than my brother's untimely death that brings you here today."
The woman nodded and sipped the sherry.
"Randy—I mean, Mr. Haukstrom—"
Cecilia smiled. "You may call him Randy if that makes it easier."
"Yes, thank you. Anyway, Randy told me earlier this week that if anything happened to him, I was to nip over here and talk to you as soon as possible."
"He foresaw his death?"
The woman looked down at her glass of sherry, seemingly mesmerized by its dark golden color. "I'm not so sure, but that death wasn't a release for him. A release from the hell he lived."
"Tell me," encouraged Cecilia softly.
She took another sip of sherry then licked the remnants from her lips. Her hand, Cecilia noticed, trembled slightly.
"About nine or ten years ago, he bought a young girl from her parents to give to a friend as a gift. He was young, and it seemed a great joke, a lark, and the girl no more important than a snuffbox—less possibly. His gift was a great success, and he was accounted clever for the thought. He preened on such compliments."
"I can well imagine," Cecilia said drily.
"Yes, well, shortly after that, he was approached to provide a similar girl, but this time he was offered money for his efforts. He agreed that time and a second and third time as well. He thought nothing of it. The girls were from the lower classes, their parents desperate for money. He thought it a fair exchange."
"Trust Randolph to be able to rationalize his actions," Cecilia said.
Angel blushed painfully. "He was just like the little boy who didn't understand the nature of his misbehavior or why he should be punished simply because no one ever told him that the specific action he took was wrong."
Cecilia looked closely at her. "You loved my brother, didn't you?"
She nodded, not meeting Cecilia's eyes.
Cecilia laid a hand over hers. "Thank you for that. I shall not make any more disparaging comments. Please, continue."
"Eventually, he was asked to join in a kidnapping. He thought it was to be another drab. To his horror, their victim was from the middle class, a surveyor's daughter. His associates averred that she was no different than the other girls he'd bought. He agreed, but his conclusions differed from theirs. He saw that he was wrong in what he'd done from the first. But it was too late. The money was too good, the evidence against him too damaging should he try to quit the group."
She paused to drain the last of the sherry from the glass and set it on a table. "Then one day, a young girl was described who would be perfect for a discriminating customer in the Mediterranean. She was small with white-blond hair and dark blue eyes. She attended a certain girls' academy in Bath."
"Me," Cecilia interjected.
Angel licked her lips and nodded. "But you see, you were wrongly named. Randy realized that at once. He knew it was only a matter of time before the error was discovered. He convinced Mr. Waddley, whose ships carried the girls overseas, that he needed to marry into the aristocracy to raise his credit and to solidify his cover."
Cecilia covered her eyes with her hand and groaned. "I know the rest of this story. You don't need to go on."
"But I don't think you do. Not really all the rest. Like how Mr. Waddley died."
