Anteaus nodded. There wasn’t much more to say to that other than he agreed, and Bowen already knew that.
Some things were better left unsaid.
All they could do was carry on and hope they were wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After the discussionwith Creston in the morning, Ophelia had gone up to rest as she had told him, but what she was really doing was plotting.
She needed a plan.
Too many men were in jeopardy because of her, because of what her grandfather had done, and the animosity she felt toward Oscar, something she’d managed to forget over the past six months, came roaring back to life. That evil, bitter man was content with ruining everything that was good in her life, and she wasn’t going to let him. She’d spent her entire existence being apathetic to him until the time between Cecil abandoning her and Creston marrying her. She’d had to accept the cruelty, the starvation, and the emotional abuse because she had no choice. Not until she married Creston did she have a choice.
And she was going to make the only choice she could.
She was going to stop him.
Short of murder, she wasn’t exactly sure what she could do to stop him, however. That was the rub. She’d never killed anything larger than a spider in her life, but as she lay there in bed and felt the child in her belly move around, she was increasingly convinced that Oscar’s death was the only thing that would saveBlackchurch. She was damn protective over this life she’d built with Creston, and as she’d told her husband, it was worth more to her than flesh and blood.
Damn that old man.
Damn him to hell.
Creston hadn’t come back to the cottage the entire day. Ophelia assumed that he’d gone off to teach his recruits, as he did every day, so she simply lay in bed until early afternoon, until her body was aching from lying around so much that she had to get up and stretch. She wasn’t at the terribly uncomfortable stage in her pregnancy yet, but she was at a point where her body ached for strange and unknown reasons. It was better to move around. Therefore, she stood up, put her shoes on, and went downstairs.
There were still dishes, unwashed, in the kitchen so she resumed cleaning up after the morning’s meal. She had never actually had any of the egg dish that she’d given the men, and when she picked up the bowl to wipe it out, she could smell the garlic. It was so strong that it had bled into the porous wood of the bowl, and no matter how much she wiped it, that garlic smell wouldn’t go away.
When she realized how she’d over-garlicked the eggs, it made her love Creston all the more, because she had fed the man a vile creation and his only reaction had been to suggest maybe a little less garlic next time. That was it. No anger, no insults. If the bowl smelled like garlic, then the eggs must have been absolutely flaming with it.
That sweet, sweet man that her grandfather wanted to destroy.
Somehow, murder to protect her husband didn’t seem so outlandish anymore.
Her thoughts, her ideas, grew darker.
When Ophelia finished with the kitchen and opened the rear door to sweep out the floor, she happened to glance at the yard where her cats were playing in the grass. She paused a moment, watching the felines as they chased bugs around, but then she saw one of the cats run to an outbuilding and disappear inside. It was an outbuilding that was never really used for anything, just one of those structures left over from when the village was a bustling center of commerce many years ago, so she didn’t think much of it until she saw what she thought was a shoe. Someone had left a shoe right outside the structure—and then the shoe moved. It took her a moment to realize she was looking at a boot, and that boot belonged to her husband.
Puzzled, she went to the outbuilding.
Creston was there, sitting on the floor of the little structure with an empty bottle of wine in his hand and his head against the side of the building. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and he just seemed to be sitting there, sleeping peacefully. Ophelia wasn’t sure why he had been sitting there, drinking, but she was fairly certain it had something to do with her and the misery she had brought down upon Blackchurch.
The man had been forced to get drunk to deal with it.
And then it hit her.
She knew what she had to do.
Returning to their cottage, Ophelia flew upstairs and yanked open the doors of the wardrobe in the hunt for her traveling clothes. She was going to Sidmouth. She was going to confront that bastard who called himself her grandfather and she was going to confront him on his plans for Blackchurch. If he didn’t admit his nefarious scheme and promise to cease all aggression, then she was going to drive a dagger into his belly.
There was no other choice.
She was going to kill him before he killed the man she loved so well.
It had come down to that.
As she pulled forth clothing, all she could see was red. All she could feel was anger. Anger at her grandfather, anger at herself. She couldn’t believe what she had done to these people who had been nothing but kind to her, but she was going to rectify it.
She was going to end it.
