Page 12 of Marriage Most Scandalous
She rushed on, determined to intrigue him before he got out the door. “I heard them fighting once when I lived there, your brother and his wife. I didn’t hear all the words, only a few here and there. You were mentioned, and ‘friend.’ But I did hear Denton clearly say, ‘didn’t have to kill him.’ I must say, I was aghast. But try as I might, I couldn’t figure out who he was talking about. Now, I didn’t assume they killed anyone. No indeed. What I heard was out of context, so it could have been anyone they were talking about, not themselves. However, it bothered me ever since. And I began to watch them after that.”
It worked! He turned around to ask, “And what did you ascertain?”
“They really don’t like each other. I can’t imagine why they married.”
“Who did Denton marry?”
“Giles’s widow, Juliette. I thought I’d mentioned that.”
“No, you did not!”
Margaret winced at his raised tone. For a brief moment, she saw just how livid he was. But he got his anger under control so quickly that she had to wonder if she’d imagined it.
“Why search for me now?” he asked, his tone merely curt. “Why not sooner, when you first suspected something?”
“Because I had nothing really to point to, just feelings of unease. Until the accidents began.”
“What accidents?”
“Your father’s. But I did try to find you sooner. Last year I hired men to locate you. They cost me a lot of money and ended up telling me what I’d already suspected—that you’d left England for the Continent. So I tried to find you myself. I’ve been in Europe now for four months looking for you. I’d given up, though. I was on my way home when I heard of The Raven. Coming here was a last resort.”
He shook his head. Not in amazement. Oh, no. She sensed he was about to tell her to leave again. It wasn’t in his expression, which was utterly inscrutable. But she knew instinctively. The facts hadn’t stirred him. Perhaps guilt would...
“I’ll tell you up front, Sebastian. I don’t like you. If you hadn’t killed Giles, I think he would have come to his senses, divorced that French tart, and married my sister as he should have. It’s your fault he’s dead. It’s your fault Eleanor ran off and married a poor farmer, then died in childbirth—”
“How in the bloody hell can you blame that on me?” he snarled.
“You weren’t there to see what Giles’s death did to my sister. She loved Giles dearly, you know. She mourned him till the day she left. She was sad and angry by turns. Sad mostly. Angry every time she encountered Juliette. But she cried every single day from the day you killed Giles. My home became quite maudlin, I don’t mind admitting. It was actually a relief when she took herself off. I’m guilty of having felt that way. I think my father felt the same way. We weren’t happy that she was gone, but then we—were. Very uncomfortable feelings.”
“Where did she go?”
“We didn’t know for the longest time. She left a note, but it was so tear stained it was illegible. We worried ourselves sick over her whereabouts. I think that contributed to my father’s decline. He died several years later.”
“I suppose you blame his death on me, too?” he asked sarcastically.
She scowled at him. “I could. It’s all related, after all. But I don’t.”
“I won’t bear the guilt for your sister’s death either,” he insisted.
“I’m not surprised. You’ve obviously divorced yourself from all meaningful responsibilities,” she said derisively. “But as I was saying, Eleanor finally got around to sending a letter, explaining that she just couldn’t bear to live with us anymore, so close to Giles’s home, visiting his grave every day. It was killing her, she said.”
“Yes, but where did she go?”
“Not very far, actually, to live with a distant cousin on my mother’s side who settled in Scotland. Harriet was her name and she was a bit of a wild card, if you know what I mean. She married down, which caused a scandal in her day and was why my father would have nothing more to do with her and made sure I had a guardian before he died. He greatly admired your father, you know. Anyway, Harriet was a bad influence on Eleanor, apparently, since my sister married down as well, then died in childbirth because there were no doctors nearby to deal with the complications of that birth.”
“Which could have happened regardless of where she was or why she was there.”
“Yes, but she was there because you killed the man she loved.”
“A man who’d already married someone else,” he reminded her. “Why the devil do I get the blame here instead of Giles?”
“Because he would have come to his senses.”
“Supposition.”
“Hardly,” she replied dryly. “You made Juliette an adulteress, if you’ll recall. D’you really think he would have stayed married to her—if he’d survived that duel?”
She’d gone for blood and had succeeded in drawing it if his expression was a guide. The blasted man deserved it, though. Why was he being so stubborn about this? She couldn’t have made it more clear that he was needed at home.
