Instead of snatching it up, Miss Jennings recoiled. “Get it awayfrom me,” she said. “I cannot stand to look upon his likeness.”
“Why?” Bridget did not move her hand.
“Because he killed my sister!”
*
Bridget curled herfist around the portrait, eliminating it from sight. Then they all waited for Miss Jennings to continue.
“Two and a half years ago, my younger sister was seventeen. She was very beautiful, and Papa had great hopes for her making a good marriage.” She smirked. “I, however, had been a great disappointment. Six years of money spent on London Seasons and no proposals before he gave up on me completely. But Lilian, well, she was different. She was going to save my father’s estate—our home in Cambridge. We were landed gentry, you see, but Papa was fast running out of money. He’d wasted far too much of it on me. Or so he said, though it was obvious he was losing it in other ways. Papa wasn’t a businessman, and he wasn’t skilled at growing an income. Lilian was all he had left. He had high hopes she’d marry a viscount or earl. He wanted both title and money for her. For us.”
“That sounds rather awful,” Bridget could not help saying.
“I thought so too,” she said. “Consequently, I didn’t agree with his plans. All I wanted was for Lilian to be happy. So, when she met George—a man my papa would never have approved of—I kept her secret safe. George was studying to be a clergyman at Cambridge. He seemed to me like a good sort. So, I helped their romance blossom by chaperoning their secret meetings. We both had to wear veils to disguise ourselves. If anyone recognized us and told our papa…well, at the time, I feared it greatly. Now, I wish someone had discovered our secret.”
“You said George murdered your sister?” Nate said, and Bridget could feel his impatience wafting off of him in waves. She wondered ifanyone else could sense it. “Why?”
“As time passed, George would request the meetings be in more secluded areas—the woodland and such. I would accompany her to the meeting place, but then they would go off on their own. By that time, I trusted George, so I’d sit among the trees and the bluebells and read my books while they enjoyed each other’s company.” She inhaled and smiled. “It was glorious for both of us to escape the oppressions of home. I love the peacefulness of the woodlands—the rippling brook and the sweet smell of the wildflowers.” She swallowed. “I didn’t think about what Lilian and George were doing. At that time, I didn’t know about men and women…”
Bridget shifted her stance. The conversation had taken an uncomfortable turn.
“So, when Lilian came to me and told me she was with child, I simply couldn’t understand how. But that didn’t matter. She had to marry George, or she’d be ruined forever. I knew that much. George said he was thrilled about the babe, and I helped them plan their elopement. But on the night in question, he never materialized. At first, we thought something terrible had happened to him, but as the days passed, it became clear that he’d simply abandoned her.” Miss Jennings paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had changed. It was guttural and filled with anger. “Lilian was broken. She couldn’t take the shame. She took hemlock and died the most horrendous death.”
Bridget stifled her gasp with her hand. Miss Jennings’s anger now made complete sense to her. If she were mad, she’d been driven to it by George. He’d driven so many people to madness, it appeared. “Did your sister go looking for George? Did she go to George’s family in Knaresborough and tell them what he’d done? That he’d abandoned her with child?” Bridget asked, recalling the story Mrs. Phillips had told her.
“Knaresborough? No. That’s miles away from Cambridge. Shedidn’t even know George was from Knaresborough. He said his father had a grand estate in Cornwall.”
So, Lilian Jennings wasn’t the only young lady George had ruined.
“How did you come to find George here in Westmorland after all those years?” Nate asked.
“After Lilian died, Papa couldn’t bear to look at me. I think he grew to hate me. So, he sent me away to be Lady Armstrong’s companion. Suddenly, I’d lost my sister and my home, and I was imprisoned day and night in Lady Armstrong’s cold, rambling mansion in Keighley. But all I could think about was George, and how I’d like to cut out his heart.”
A chill ran through Bridget, not because of Miss Jennings’s declaration, but because she understood it. She had felt the murderous desire of revenge that comes after a loved one is taken by someone else’s callousness or cruelty.
“So, imagine my surprise when Lady Armstrong acquired a copy of Wordsworth’sGuide to the Lakesand insisted on coming to Westmorland. Then imagine my surprise when, after our arrival at Villa De Lacey, I saw George playing the part of a poet without a care in the world.” She smirked. “George was no poet. I know more about poetry than he ever did. Why do you think he took an interest in me? It wasn’t because he had a kind heart and wanted to offer solace to a spinster. No, it was because I supplied him with the poems he claimed as his own.”
“What?” Bridget exclaimed. “You wrote all those poems George read to the guests?”
“Indeed,” Miss Jennings spat out the word.
“I don’t understand,” Nate said. “George didn’t recognize you as Lilian’s sister?”
“George never saw my face because I always wore a veil to protect my identity from prying eyes when chaperoning. Nor did he ever ask to see me. I was a spinster and of no interest to him. George only hadeyes for my beautiful sister. And after he took what he wanted from her, he discarded her.”
“How did you kill George?” Nate asked bluntly.
“I had a new poem for him, or so I told him. He arranged to meet me by the daffodils. I was to wait until he finished his walk with Lady Matheson and then slip outside and meet him. All went to plan. He was lying in the daffodils, gazing at the stars, waiting for me as he always did. But this time, when I left the villa, I picked up a rock I’d placed at the bottom of the stairs earlier that day. When I got to the daffodils, I whispered George’s name, and he sat up. But before he had a chance to turn and greet me, I brought the rock down onto his skull. He didn’t even cry out. He just groaned like a wounded animal. But he didn’t go down, so I brought the rock down over and over again, until he stopped his awful moaning and slumped to the ground.” A dreamy smile appeared on her face. “It was picture perfect. George’s blood spilling on the golden daffodils under the moonlight. I think upon it often.” She giggled and spun around in a sort of clumsy pirouette. “‘And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.’”
Bridget swallowed. She wondered what Wordsworth would think when he learned that the meaning of his words had been skewed in such a murderous way.
“What about his heart?” Nate said.
“I tried to take it. I plunged my knife into his chest, and I tried to cut him open, but I didn’t have the strength.”
“What knife?” Nate said. “Where did you get a knife?”
“I took it from the kitchen earlier in the evening just in case the rock failed me. They were used to seeing me down there because Lady Armstrong is very specific about her chocolate and insists that I am the one who makes it for her. She instructed me on how to do it as soon as I became her companion, and she will turn anything back that is not according to her taste.”
