I would like to offer you my sincere felicitations on your recent nuptials. I hope you might join me for tea tomorrow afternoon at half past two. I trust you are familiar with the address.
Kind regards,
Mrs. Eudora Templeton
The three simple sentences were innocuous enough. Anyone else who read them would have assumed an acquaintance desired her presence for some harmless afternoon tea. The only trouble was, Mrs. Eudora Templeton did not exist.
Like Jane Palliser, she was a fiction. One invented by John for just such a purpose; to contact her without anyone else being made the wiser. An icy cold noose of doom seemed to tighten upon her throat. Her hands trembled as she carefully refolded the letter, hiding its bold scrawl. John had returned to London, and he had somehow discovered her shameful secret.
He knew she had become the Duchess of Carlisle.
She steeled herself against a sudden clench of her gut, a rush of bile in her throat. Her past had just been resurrected like a specter from the grave to remind her who she was and where she truly belonged.
She could not remain Leo’s wife.
She did not deserve him, and she never had. She was not worthy of a man as honorable and good as he. She was a thief disguised as a guest, lurking through his home, counting the candlesticks whilst he fed her dinner. She was a bad woman, a criminal. Bridget O’Malley did not belong in the splendor of the duchess’s apartments in Blayton House.
The damask wallpaper, thick carpets, polished and gilded furniture, and the handsome paintings on the wall all reminded her of it. Even her gown, borrowed from Daisy, fine navy silk more sumptuous and beautiful than she had ever dreamed of wearing, seemed to mock her.
It was a shell, a disguise. Fine trappings to cover the ugliness that lay beneath, a woman with an inconstant heart, who could not be true to anyone she loved. Not her brother, not her half sister, not her husband, not her homeland. What a pathetic impostor she was, pretending to be everything she was not. Torn in a hundred different directions. Nothing left of her to give anyone.
She had been selfish since marrying Leo. These last few days had been the best of her life, spent in his arms, in his bed, learning the joys of each other’s passion. Simple moments too, such as eating breakfast together. Just that morning, he had forked up a bite of his egg and offered it for her to taste. Reading poetry to him while he laid his head in her lap. Watching him sleep.
He was a beautiful man, and for the charmed span of their brief union, he had been hers, and she had felt like a queen, as if all things were possible. As if there would be a solution she could find that did not involve betraying the man she loved.
But there was none to be had, and she knew it now with the grim evidence of her abject failure folded in her hand, those few words burning into her skin like the devil’s brand. The mantle clock told her she was running out of time. She had an hour to spare until she needed to meet John, and she had yet to contrive a suitable means of explaining her desire to depart Blayton House, which she had not done once during the course of their marriage, and to do so alone.
Leo would be suspicious.
He was not a fool, and though he had proclaimed his love for her, sometimes she caught him watching her when he thought she was not looking, and he wore the expression of a man who had brought a wild creature into his home and remained uncertain of whether or not it was truly tame. Whether or not it—she—could be trusted.
She could not be.
Her decision to heed John’s call proved that. Bridget told herself she owed Cullen her allegiance more than Leo. That she must choose her love for her flesh and blood over her love for the man she had only known a scant few weeks. It was only fair. Only sensible. And besides, John could well have news concerning Cullen. Surely his trial would soon be set, and they would need to take action to free him from prison before his sentencing could occur.
She could only pray John’s price would not be too steep. In preparation of this day, she had sewn a small, hidden pocket into the skirt of the dress she wore. Inside it, she kept the cipher key she had removed from Leo’s waistcoat at Harlton Hall. She had originally sewn it within the lining of her corset, a fortuitous decision, because it meant no one had discovered it on her person and taken possession of it during her wounding and illness.
All this time, she had kept the cipher key. There had been many instances when she had been tempted, oh so very tempted, to reveal her theft of it to Leo. To return it to him. But something, some warning voice in the back of her mind which recalled all too well the sting of poverty and the bitterness of working for a pittance in shops, had not allowed it. That voice had promised her she must keep such a valuable treasure for the day when she would need it most.
And the day had come. She hoped surrendering it to John would keep him content. That it would serve her well enough to at least see Cullen spared from the hangman’s noose. Bridget tucked the summons from Mrs. Eudora Templeton into the hidden pocket along with her other contraband.
How she wished she could reveal all to Leo. But it would be futile, and she knew it well. Even if she confessed to him now, why should he believe or aid her? He had made his opinion of Cullen’s incarceration abundantly clear. He would not help her brother.
Justice must be had for the men whose blood was spilled that day.
She could still hear his quiet assertion. She pressed a hand to her lips to choke back a sob. The worst of it was, she could not argue with him. Those who had plotted and committed the savage murders in Phoenix Park had been wrong. But Cullen was not among their numbers. She knew it with all her heart.
Her husband, however, did not. He had made it abundantly clear to her precisely where he stood on the matter of her brother’s innocence.
I know you want to believe the best of him because he is your brother, but the evidence against him is significant. Even were I inclined to offer him aid, I do not think it would make a difference.
Now, just as it had days ago during their heated conversation, Leo’s words scored her like a dagger delivering painful pricks to her flesh, again and again. Leo did not believe in Cullen because he did not know him as she did. Because he did not love him as she did.
How could she forgive herself if she allowed her brother to go to the gallows? How could she bear to choose between the two men she loved?
She inhaled. Exhaled. Told herself she could do this. She had to do this.
Because she had no choice.
