The ultimate price for what? What dreadful crime had called for the deaths of two people?
Her father had killed himself for her sake. Without her he might have struggled on. He had kept her after her birth even though he might have sent her to live with his family or her mother’s. He had been too selfish to give her up.
Susanna lowered her forehead to the desk to rest on the open letter.
So many thoughts and emotions to churn around in one body and mind!
But only one thought came at her with any real clarity—or rather the memory of three words written on the paper beneath her.
…my dearest child.
Theodore was going to come back, she thought suddenly, and sat up again. Her father’s letter had raised as many questions as it had answered. Perhaps there were some answers…
She reached her hand toward the other letter, whose seal, she could see, was already broken. But did she want to know the secrets of the man who had been her father? How could shenotwant to know, though, after reading her own letter? Was it really not as she had thought all these years? Wasoneof the impediments to her marrying Peter—though there were a thousand others—to be removed?
She drew Sir Charles’s letter toward her and opened it. Her eyes went straight to the body of the letter, closely written and in just as steady a hand as her own letter.
“You listened kindly to me a few days ago,” she read, “when I told you my sordid, long-held secrets before the Viscountess Whitleaf could do it for me. I have never had a high opinion of blackmailers or of those who allow themselves to become their victims. You were even gracious enough to refuse to accept my resignation—at least until we saw how much the lady talked and what the gravity of the resulting scandal would be.
“The situation has become far graver, however. Now that her original threat to come to you with my story has been thwarted, she plans to go to the world with another story of how I have molested and even ravished her. It would be a silly lie, perhaps, if not for two facts that will surely make her story generally believed. One is the truth of the other story she will now undoubtedly share with the world. The other is the mild gossip that arose around the lady and myself in London last year—and the truth of the fact that yes, for a while wewerelovers. My mistake—one of too many to count in my life—was to try ending our liaison myself instead of waiting until such time as she chose to end it herself.
“It distresses me to have brought so much potential scandal to you and your family and this home. You will not be able to continue to champion me. I am ruined and may even be facing criminal prosecution. I see no way out but to do what will already be done by the time you read this. Perhaps my death will silence the lady and so prevent all scandal except what will be the inevitable result of my suicide.
“But I cannot wait until after I have left Fincham. There is Susanna, you see. She has long been all that is truly precious in my life. Lady Markham and Miss Markham have always been remarkably kind to her, for which I cannot possibly express the full extent of my gratitude. Be kind to her in one more thing, I beg you. Send her to my father with the enclosed letter. He is an honorable and good man. He will give her a home and kindness and even love.
“I thank you, Sir Charles, for allowing me the privilege of serving you…”
Susanna did not read the last few sentences. She set the letter down on top of the other one.
Shehadbeen right, then, though not in the way she had thought. Lady Whitleafhaddriven him to his death. That little snippet of conversation she had overheard between them had meant something a little different from what she had thought, but the outcome had been the same.
Except that he had died not because he loved the viscountess, but at least partly because he had lovedher.
She has long been all that is truly precious in my life.
…my dearest child.
She must have been dilly-dallying a great deal over the letters, she realized, when after a brief knock the door opened and Theodore came back into the room. He had been gone for a whole hour, she saw when she glanced at the clock on the mantel.
“I have brought you a cup of tea,” he said, coming to set it down on the desk before going to poke the fire into renewed life.
“Theodore,” she said, “what had my father done in his past that was so very bad?”
He straightened up and turned to look at her.
“Are you sure—” he began.
“Yes.” She grasped the edges of her shawl with both hands and drew it closer about her shoulders, even though the room was no longer as chilly as it had been. “I need to know.”
“My father had told my mother,” he said. “Your mother was once married to your father’s elder brother, Susanna, but she and your father…loved each other. It seems that his brother confronted him about it and there was a fight in which his brother died. The whole thing was explained away as a tragic accident—and I daresay there was truth in the claim—but your father was sent away. Your mother followed him, though, and they married. Marrying one’s brother’s widow is not expressly forbidden, but it is certainly frowned upon. And this was only a month or so after her bereavement. Both families renounced them.”
He was talking ofher parents,Susanna thought, her hands balling into fists on the desktop as she stared down at her whitened knuckles.
“And one year later she died,” Theodore said. “My father knew her. He told my mother that they were devoted to each other, Susanna. He also said that you looked like her.”
Her mother had died havingher. Susanna bit down hard on her upper lip. She had risked all, even scandal and ostracism, only to die in childbed.
And her father had died by his own hand twelve years later when his past finally caught up to him and a malicious woman was out to destroy him. Susanna could only imagine the enormity of the guilt with which he must have lived all the years she had known him. Yet he had always been quietly courteous, gentle, and affectionate.
