“Father,” George tried to intervene.
Inglewood shoved his son away. George stumbled and fell backward. “Stay out of this,” Inglewood growled.
Mr. Altman, the butcher, helped George to his feet.
“Give me that diary!” Inglewood demanded.
“I do not have it upon my person,” James said calmly.
Cecilia stepped closer to her husband. “Why do you want it?” Cecilia asked. “You have the diary she kept in her bedroom. You used to sneak into her room to read it.”
“I am her father!”
“And as her father, you had the right to inflict bruises on her?” Cecilia heard a sharp intake of breath from LadyInglewood, her face hidden behind a veil, and more murmurs from those around them.
“She shamed the Inglewood name. She was a willful whore and deserved what happened to her.”
“Is that why you killed her?”
“I didn’t kill her, you stupid woman?—”
“Easy, Inglewood,” James warned, his voice low, a drawn rapier.
“It was that bloody pennyroyal!”
“Your daughter wrote in her diary that she had emptied the canister of pennyroyal and replaced it with spearmint. She knew the apothecary in Maidstone had sold out his supply of pennyroyal, soyousent your son to Folkestone to buy more there. You put the pennyroyal in the canister. You ordered Mrs. Hester to brew the pennyroyal and take it to her in the old gamekeeper’s cottage while you waited in your garden for events to unfold.”
The crowd of parishioners gathered tighter around them, their voices louder. Inglewood glanced at the growing crowd.
“Georgia had lost the child. She had no need of an abortifacient,” Cecilia continued, “but she encouraged her friends and family to buy pennyroyal for her. That was her drama, for she still hoped to convince the viscount to marry her.”
“It was never going to happen,” yelled Kendell from where he stood with the Earl and Countess of Mortlake. Lord Mortlake shushed him.
“After she died, you refused to let Dr. Patterson examine her body, and you somehow persuaded the coroner to pronounce her cause of death as iliac passion. You couldn’t let her death be pronounced suicide, for that would mar the Inglewood name. You didn’t understand your daughter well. Everyone who knew her knew she was not the sort to commit suicide.”
“But Mrs. Jones knew,” James said, picking up the narrative with strong certainty. “She already knew of the bruises your daughter and your wife bore from your hand.”
“That is family business. That witch poked her nose where it didn’t belong.”
“She started asking questions, difficult questions about the past and present. People confessed to her as they would to her husband. What she learned angered her, and she confronted you.”
“She had no proof, and neither do you. What judge will lend credence to the written words of a mentally deranged young woman?”
“But Mrs. Jones kept pressing, didn’t she? Every time she saw you.”
Inglewood’s hands clenched at his sides.
“One day, you followed her as she went up on the downs to paint. You wanted to talk to her, threaten her, as you did others, to keep her mouth closed. You needed to do this away from a village of prying ears and easy gossip.”
“She refused to understand. She wouldn’t listen!”
“You grabbed her around her neck, didn’t you? That’s when her pin came off. What did it do? Scratch you, and you let her go, giving her time to run away from you. Unfortunately, she ran toward the cliff.”
“No! I wanted her to listen to me. But she kept ranting on about how I was responsible for my daughter’s death. She didn’t understand Georgia had to die!” He pulled a gun from his pocket.
Screams erupted. James pushed Cecilia aside. George leaped for his father’s gun hand as he fired at the Branstokes, the bullet digging a path into the dirt. Lady Inglewood flung herself at her husband. In an instant, his expression changed from fury to surprise. A heartbeat later, Lady Inglewood stepped back, herhand releasing the hilt of a large carving knife. Blood spurted out of his side. Inglewood’s head turned slightly to look at her, then he crumbled to the ground.
Lady Inglewood stared at him, and fainted.
