“Back to the knife?” Nate said. “Did you leave it in his chest?”
“Yes. Imagine my shock the next day when he was found with his heart cut out. It seems there was more than one person who wanted George Otis’s heart.” She giggled maniacally.
“So, Rupert was telling the truth,” Nate said. “And what about Lady Matheson? Did you kill her too?”
“Indeed, I did. I couldn’t stomach the way she spoke about George to everyone, as though he were a hero. And then she talked of erecting a monument to him by the lake, so people would remember what a great poet he was. It made my stomach turn. That’s when I decided to mix some arsenic into her nightly laudanum supply. I wanted to eliminate all trace of George from this world.”
“All trace of him,” Bridget said, looking sadly at Jane.
“That’s right. All trace. And now that my work is done, I am ready to go to my sister.”
Just as she said those words, the chamber door opened, and a breathless Mr. Harley entered with Magistrate Hunt.
“What is going on here?” the magistrate demanded.
Miss Jennings stepped forward. “I just confessed to killing Mr. Otis and Lady Matheson. Take me to the gallows and let me rot for all I care.”
Magistrate Hunt looked from Nate to Dr. Elias. “Is this a game?”
“It’s no game,” Dr. Elias said. “We all heard her confession. She killed Mr. Otis. But it seems young Rupert was the one who took the man’s heart, just as he said.”
“Well, I never.” Magistrate Hunt looked down at the petite Miss Jennings. Then he took her by the arm and led her out of the room.
As he did, she shrieked, “I killed George Otis, and I want all the world to know it.”
The sounds of her crazed laughter echoed through the hall.
Epilogue
Summer 1821
Nate held EdmundGroby close around the waist as he dipped the little boy’s feet into Lake Windermere. The child giggled and screamed with delight each time his toes touched the water.
Bridget sat on a blanket next to Jane, now big with child, and Alice, who held her daughter on her lap and watched Nate with a smile on her face.
“I shall miss this place,” Jane said mournfully.
“And I shall miss you,” Bridget said, turning her attention to her friend. “I do wish you didn’t have to go to London.”
“I know. But Lady Darby insists. She says if we want her money, then we must return. She won’t have her grandnephew growing up so far from proper society.”
“What if you birth a girl?” Alice asked.
“I shouldn’t mind a little girl.” Jane smiled at Alice’s cherub-faced daughter. “But I’m afraid it would mean that Lady Darby would cut us out of her will.”
“How awful,” Bridget said.
“Perhaps you will be like me and have one of each,” Alice said.
Jane dropped her gaze and caressed her stomach, and Bridget knew what she was thinking. With a barren husband, this babe was likely to be her only child. Only Bridget, Nate, Mr. Harley, and Dr. Elias knew that George was the father of Jane’s child—aside from Miss Jennings, of course, and she’d been lockedaway in an asylum with no hope of ever being freed.
“Mr. Squires will make a good papa,” Alice said. “I wonder why he does not marry.”
The comment shot through Bridget’s heart like an arrow. Despite being unmarried, Nate was not free. Lady Luxton had left him at the altar, but she had him in her control. Bridget watched Nate play with Edmund in the water, and she knew how painful it was for him now that Lady Luxton had taken Henry back to Scotland. There was no doubt in her mind that Nate cared for her as much as she cared for him, but if they were ever to marry, Lady Luxton would cut him off from Henry. She’d have no reason to ever visit Villa De Lacey again.
“You must come and visit me in London,” Jane said, interrupting Bridget’s thoughts. “It’s a shame you never had a Season. You would have been—would be—hailed as the greatest beauty of London.”
“Would be? What are you implying? I am two-and-twenty and too old to debut into society.”
