Her spinning mind suddenly recalled that she was not without a means of defending herself. As she’d paced the Axminster earlier, she’d discovered Sebastian’s forgotten knife on the floor and had slipped it into the pocket on her robe. If she could distract Abigail sufficiently, she had a chance of striking with the knife and knocking the gun from her hand.
Yes, she had to distract her. Keep her talking.Think, Daisy. Think.
“What do you know of my mother?” she asked.
“She didn’t deserve your father,” Abigail snapped. “She never loved him as I do. Now get moving to the door. We haven’t much time.”
Daisy hesitated, grappling with the elder woman’s revelation. “You love my father?”
“I’ve loved him for years.”
“And yet he turned you out without reference,” she was quick to point out.
“You believed it so easily, didn’t you? You ruined our plans by eloping with that blackguard duke, and I needed a reason to stay close to you.” Abigail’s eyes narrowed. “Now to the door with you! No more tarrying.”
Daisy feared she was going to be ill. “What plans?”
Abigail struck her head with the butt of the pistol. Pain laced through her. She stumbled, losing her balance, crying out. Tears stung her eyes. The woman before her, wild-eyed and stern-faced, was not the woman she had known for her entire life. It was as if a stranger had come to inhabit her body. But that was the gift, she supposed, of evil. It could hide in plain sight, waiting for the right moment to strike and lay low the innocent.
“Walk to the door,” the woman gritted, “or I’ll hit you even harder next time.”
Daisy forced herself to move. One foot in front of the other. Step by step.Think, Daisy. Distract her.
“What plans?” she asked again.
Abigail grabbed her arm and settled the pistol into her lower back, urging her to move faster. “You were to marry Lord Breckly to solidify your father’s position in the Irish Nationalist League. It would have been the perfect foil. Your father would have been rid of you at last, and his influence and power would have grown immeasurably. But you couldn’t obey him, could you?”
Dear God. Her father was a Fenian, and so was Abigail. It all began to make horrible, sickening sense. Why had she failed to see it before now? Sebastian’s government had suspected Daisy, and all along, the true conspirator had been her lady’s maid, the one woman she’d trusted more than she’d even trusted her own aunt.
She forced her dazed mind to churn up more questions, more diversions. “Why are you doing this, Abigail? What use has my father for me now that I’ve married another?”
“You’re leverage, of course.” Abigail pushed her forward so roughly that she stumbled again. She righted herself, the gun jamming into her back. “Wasn’t hard to dupe the English fools into believing I’d serve as an informant. They already suspected your father, and we knew it and used their suspicion to our benefit. Did you know they paid me five hundred pounds to tell them that you were colluding to gain Irish independence from English tyranny?”
They’d reached the chamber door, and Daisy’s heart hammered in her breast, a combination of what Abigail had revealed to her and the realization that she needed to act now to save herself. Whatever Abigail and her father intended for her, she knew without question that it wasn’t as harmless as Abigail would have her believe. Marrying Sebastian was the first time she had ever gone against her father’s edicts. She recalled all too well his red-faced rage the morning after her wedding. How furious he’d been that his bargaining chip had been stripped from his grasp.
No, she couldn’t wait any longer. The time had come.
She’d never considered herself brave. For so many years, she’d endured her father’s brutal beatings. She’d learned not to defy him, to conform to his wishes, to please him so that he wouldn’t strike her. She had played the part of doting daughter for his friends and business associates, and she had never once gainsaid him. Sometimes, he had hit her anyway, for perceived infractions. Afterward, he had always rewarded her with diamonds and kindness. It was a vicious cycle, and Daisy was going to end it.
Here. Now. Today.
She’d never been brave before, but now she had an innocent babe growing within her, and she loved that life more than she loved her own. She would protect her child with everything in her, fight until the last breath escaped her if there was no other way.
“Open the door,” Abigail commanded. “We’ll go to the servant’s stair. You’ll say nothing. If anyone sees you, you will smile and tell them that I’m ill and you’re seeing me to my rooms to make me a poultice. Belowstairs, they already think you’re an angel, so it won’t be hard for them to believe it. If you say even a word, I’ll—”
Daisy reached into the pocket of her gown with her left hand, her fingers finding the hilt of Sebastian’s blade. It was time. With as much speed as she could manage, she yanked her right arm from Abigail’s grasp and jammed her elbow into the other woman’s midsection. She withdrew the knife, raising it high, a primal scream tearing from her. At the exact moment that her blade connected with the meaty flesh of her opponent’s upper arm, the pistol fired.
Agonizing pain shot through her, but her knife had done its work. Abigail’s sleeve was torn, blood gushing forth from the rent fabric. Her pistol clattered to the floor. Daisy dove for it, knife still in hand.
Sebastian sat at the desk in his study. The flickering gas lamps illuminated the letters he’d only just begun to read. All of them had been penned in Daisy’s neat hand, forwarded from his various estates. Dozens and dozens of them. She must have written until her fingers ached.
How had he ever doubted her? Each fresh line he read was like a booted kick to the stomach. How deeply he had wronged her. By the morning’s light, he couldn’t blame her for telling him to go to the devil the night before. He was everything she’d accused him of and more. Worse. He had married her in lies, cleaved her to him in deception borne of his own inability to resist her, had left her without word or explanation in the name of duty, and had returned believing her in the wrong.
When the only person who had ever been in the wrong was Sebastian Fairmont. Eighth Duke of Trent, First Marquis of Selfish Arsehole. Daisy had always been true and good and undeserving of the situations in which she’d found herself. She’d been used, and everyone had taken advantage of her. First, her father, abusing her and using her as a lure for suitors who would better himself and increase his wealth, then her would-be suitors, and the League by ruining her, forcing her into a falsehood of a marriage. But finally, there had been Sebastian. He’d not only taken advantage of her every weakness, he had stormed past her defenses. She’d told him that she loved him.
And what had he done, coward that he was? He’d disappeared from her life.
As he flipped through her letters, he could sense her mood shifting. Her epistles began with hesitation and hope. As time went on, she began to enumerate all the things she knew would enrage him. Here, in black ink and paper, was all the proof anyone could require. Yes, these letters proved to him that Daisy had only ever been honest with him.
