Page 7 of A Treacherous Treasure

As she thought of what she would do now, she thought of all the people she could help. Her mother-in-law hated that she took food baskets to the poor, but would she continue to make hostile, barely-veiled remarks now that Rebecca was inheriting everything her mother-in-law once called hers?

Rebecca did not look forward to living with her mother-in-law now that Arthur was gone. But she couldn’t cast her out either. Perhaps the woman would go live with her stodgy brother in Cornwall.

Rebecca only knew that she was bone weary of feeling rejected and betrayed by her husband, and rejected and despised by his mother.

Her mother-in-law had already mentioned Rebecca getting a new husband. But how could she ever marry again? The thought made her feel sick to her stomach.

She’d been so sure that Arthur loved her before they married. He’d even had his will changed so that, if he died, and if they had no son, Rebecca would inherit his entire estate. That proved he loved her, did it not? His mother would be provided for by a jointure his father had set up long ago, and to which Arthur had added a small annual sum. Mrs. Heywood would also be entitled to live in the cottage near the main house, the Dowager Cottage, in which Arthur’s grandmother had resided until her death.

She could still see Arthur’s face when he said the doting and sweet things he used to say. But he had ceased to say those things to her, his love hardly lasting a few months into the marriage. His feelings had gradually shifted to indifference and then cold resentment. Resentment for what? She’d done nothing except love him. He resented her for existing, she supposed, and for being so uninteresting that he had to go and chase other men’s wives.

She’d been reassured by more than one woman that it was not her fault that her husband strayed.

“They all do it,” Lady Broadhurst told her. “It’s in the nature of a man. He wants to think he is irresistible to every woman he sees. He wants to think he can conquer this or that man’s wife, to make himself feel superior. It has nothing to do with the wife.”

But Rebecca didn’t possess such a universally dim view of men. Her father, after all, was not the sort of man to want to “conquer” other women in order to “feel superior” to other men. However, she did feel a strong aversion to marrying again. How could she ever trust another man enough to marry him?

She was better off alone. Now she was free to do what gave her joy, which was to spend time with her sisters and her mother, and to take gifts to the poor. Just a month ago she had learned that one of their tenants had a broken plough and couldn’t afford a new one. Rebecca secretly had her servant purchase a new one and deliver it to them. Rebecca had rarely ever felt such excitement and joy, especially when the tenant’s wife sent her a note of profound gratitude, saying she was sure Rebecca had been the source of the gift.

Why should Rebecca not do what gave her pleasure, now that she was a wealthy widow?

As she continued on her walk, she made note of the trees. Though they were not very beautiful this time of year, she liked the starkness of the limbs against the gray sky, and she could imagine them on the cusp of summer, when they were the most beautiful. On her walks, there were certain meadows where the wildflowers were breathtaking. Whether they were on the Heywood estate or the Westbrook estate that was adjacent, she wasn’t sure. She’d never been told where the Heywood land ended and the Westbrook land began.

Wyghtworth was the neighboring estate belonging to Thomas Westbrook, a former lieutenant who had recently come back from the war when his father died. He was a gentlemanly young man, but Arthur had told her once to stay away from him, that there was bad blood between the two of them.

“Because of a woman you took from him?” Rebecca had asked. It was just a guess, and she said it partly to goad him, as she was still upset by the rumors circulating about his latest conquest.

Instead of getting angry, as she half expected, Arthur simply arched his eyebrows and said, “How did you know?”

At the time she didn’t feel much of a reaction to his words, but the memory suddenly made her blood boil. How dare he be smug about something despicable that he had done? And how could she ever have been fooled into thinking he loved her, that he was at heart a good man? How could she have been so naïve and imperceptive?

She plucked a leaf from a hawthorn tree and shredded it between her fingers as she walked, taking deep breaths as painful memories flooded her thoughts one after another.

She’d tried to keep herself as resigned as possible about her marriage and her husband, resigned to the way things were, while still hoping that her husband would change his philandering ways. But now that all hope was gone, the pain was suddenly coming over her in waves.

But she would not let it. She would not let herself think about it. Someday when it was not so painful, then she would think about it. But now she had to survive the next few days, the funeral, the people expressing their condolences, the hypocrisy of society’s death rituals. How she hated them. But she had to survive them without drawing attention to herself, so she must stuff her feelings as far down as possible, out of sight and out of mind.

Clouds were gathering overhead, but it didn’t look like rain just yet, so she kept walking.

She filled her lungs with air, breathing in deeply and letting it out slowly, gazing around at the flowers as she walked through a meadow between two small groups of trees. Truly, it was a lovely place, the flowers, the weeds and grasses, the trees on either side. She let the breeze flow through her hair and closed her eyes, imagining she was happy and at peace, surrounded by people who cared about her, without a trouble in the world.

A bee buzzed by her ear, waking her from her daydream. She shook her head at her own foolishness and continued toward the stand of trees, unwilling to turn back.

Just as she was about to enter the tree line, she saw a man to her far right, bent over with a shovel, digging in the ground next to a large rock.

She stared but couldn’t see his face, and he was turned with his back to her. Who could that be? And why was he digging? She shuddered as a picture came to mind of the coroner saying that they found where someone had been digging a hole next to her husband’s body. They’d assumed he was digging a hole to hide her husband’s body. Was that what this man was doing? No, no, her husband’s body was at home, in the drawing room, awaiting his funeral and a Christian burial.

So, who was this, and what was he doing?

The man lifted his head and turned toward her. He stood motionless, staring back at her, but with the position of the sun, his face was shadowed and she still could not see his face.

“What are you doing there?” Rebecca called out, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare. “If you are one of the servants—”

The man threw down his shovel and picked up a gun, a long one. He swung it around, pointing it at her. Then he fired, the gun jerking back in his hands as a loud boom sounded and sparks came from the gun’s barrel.

Rebecca’s heart slammed against her chest. She ran for the cover of the trees.

How dare that man fire a gun at her?