Page 103 of A Stolen Heart

“What? But I took them to her. I brought Marie Anne and John here, to London. I turned them over to the Exmoors.”

“You gave them to the Countess?” Alexandra had the sinking fear that Rhea had come completely unhinged.

“No, not directly. She had taken to her bed, they said, stricken by grief at what had happened to her family. I believe they said that her husband had died, too, poor thing. She refused to see anyone. When I told that woman who I was and who the children were, she said that the Countess could not come down and see me. So I gave the children to her.”

“Who? Who is she?”

“Why, that young woman. She wasn’t a servant. She was a cousin or something, a poor relative who lived with the Countess as her companion. That woman—that woman who’s been here watching me!”

“What!” Alexandra exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “You mean Willa? You gave the children to Willa?”

“Yes, Miss Ward, that is exactly what she means,” a woman’s voice said.

Alexandra started and whirled around. There was Willa standing in the doorway, as composed and quiet as ever. She walked into the room, closing the door behind her, and came to the other side of the bed.

“I was afraid that you had recognized me,” Willa told Rhea conversationally. “I had a suspicion that you were only pretending to be unconscious the last day or two. Did you follow me last night?”

Rhea’s eyes skittered away from the woman, and she did not answer. Alexandra stared, hardly able to take it all in. “Follow you! You mean to my room? It was you who—” She stopped, too stunned to complete the thought.

“Yes, it was I. It was obvious that you were never going to give up. At first I thought it would be all right if I simply got rid of Mrs. Ward, but then you kept on asking questions and digging. You had even gotten Lord Thorpe on your side! I knew that if your mother died, you would still manage to dig out the truth somehow.”

Willa grimaced, looking more exasperated than anything else.

“You were willing to kill me just to keep me from finding out that Mother had given my brother and sister to you?” Alexandra asked. “Why?”

Willa looked at her as if she were a dim student. “Are you mad? What would have happened to me if the Countess found out? She would have turned me out. After all these years, all the devotion I’ve given her, she would have cut me off without a farthing. What would I do if the Countess turned me out? I would have nothing! No one!”

“But why did you—what happened to John and Marie Anne? What did you do with them?” Anger rushed through Alexandra, sweeping away the shock, and she started around the bed toward Willa.

But Willa struck as quickly as a snake, pulling her hand from her pocket, a long, sharp knife gleaming in it. With her other hand, she grasped Rhea’s hair and jerked her roughly, the knife coming to Rhea’s throat. Alexandra stopped abruptly, her eyes on the deadly knife.

“Wait,” Alexandra began shakily. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Maybe if you told the Countess what happened…There must be an explanation.”

Willa let out a short, harsh laugh, her face contorting and her eyes glittering. “Oh, yes, there is an explanation, all right. Its name is Richard! Not much chance the Countess will approve of that.”

“Richard? You mean the Earl of Exmoor?”

“Yes, the Earl,” Willa agreed bitterly. “I was mad to do it! Mad with love for him. I would have done anything he wanted. I risked my position, everything, just to be with him—the Countess would have thrown me out on my ear if she had known that I was sneaking out to lie in his bed. And when that American woman came that day with the two brats, I knew what it would mean to him. He was the Earl, or would be once John and his father were declared legally dead. Everyone was already treating him as the Earl. After all, Bertie Chesterfield had come home and told everyone that Chilton and the children were dead. With the old Earl dead, the title was his. The estate, too. I couldn’t let that be taken away from him. I couldn’t!”

“So when Mother came to you, you didn’t tell the Countess about her visit. You never told her that her grandchildren had been spared.” Alexandra’s eyes flashed, and her fingers itched to grab for that knife. But she knew that it would be madness to do so. Willa could slice Rhea’s throat before Alexandra’s hand wrapped around hers.

“I wanted to help Richard. I thought—I thought I would keep his love forever if I gave him the children. I thought he would even marry me. Ha! I should have known the snake would cast me aside. He knew I could never tell the truth, never reveal what he had done, because it would have ruined me, too.”

As the words spewed out of her, Willa let go of Rhea’s hair, and the hand that held the knife trembled, falling a little from Willa’s throat. Her gaze was fastened on Alexandra, and she did not notice Rhea’s hand slide ever so slowly up. But Alexandra saw, and her stomach tightened.

To keep Willa’s attention focused on her, she said quickly, “Then it was Richard who was the bad person, not you. It was Richard who took the Countess’s grandchildren away from her. She will understand. She’ll see that—”

Willa laughed, hysteria creeping in around the edges. “Understand? No one could understand that—or forgive it! Do you think I’m a fool?”

“No, of course not.” Alexandra nervously eyed the knife that trembled in Willa’s hand. “Normally perhaps one could not forgive that. But given the circumstances—I mean, the Countess will be so happy to know that I am really her granddaughter that she will be in a forgiving mood. Don’t you see? And the other two children, John and Marie Anne—if you could tell her where they are, what happened to them…”

“That will get me no favors from her,” Willa snapped, and Alexandra’s heart sank. Did this mean that her sister and brother were dead?

“Why? What happened to them?” Alexandra asked, paling. “Where are they?”

“Why should I tell you?” Willa demanded scornfully, unconsciously swinging her arm forward.

Suddenly, moving faster than Alexandra would have thought possible, Rhea grabbed the other woman’s wrist. Willa let out a shriek of outrage, jerking her hand. But the movement had given Alexandra enough time to race around the bed and throw herself at Willa just as Willa lashed out with her knife at Rhea. She aimed for her throat, but Alexandra knocked her arm aside, and the knife slashed down across Rhea’s arm, laying open a long, red cut.