witless. There was really no one else to be responsible, but I couldn’t bring
myself to believe it.
“You are my uncle, after all. You took both Thomas and me into your home after
our parents were killed. Despite our differences, I believed I was important to
you, to our line. But you changed, didn’t you?
“You did kill poor Caroline, didn’t you? She was unfaithful to you, and so you
killed her.”
“All my surprises,” Lawrence said, and there was petulance in his voice. “I
believed that you were fooled, for the most part, John. I saw you take her side,
saw the way you looked at her, saw the way she looked at you. I laughed to
myself, John. I owned her, she was my life, my chattel, and you would never have
her, never. Would you have tried to seduce her? Would you have eventually
succeeded? Would she, like Caroline, have tried to foist her bastard off on me?”
He was shaking his head and laughing a little. “Ah, but she is so very afraid of
men and what men and women do together. I honestly don’t believe it ever would
have happened, more’s the pity. You would have failed.
“Yes, naturally I murdered the faithless bitch. Caroline was a whore, she
betrayed me, she deserved to die. It was simple justice.”
And there it was, all of it, the betrayal, the lies, and Caroline’s death. No, I
thought, her murder, after she had birthed her child.
“Father,” I said. “You have a daughter. Her name is Judith. I remember now that
when I first saw her, I realized there was something familiar about her. It was
myself that I was seeing in her. It was you. She is lovely. She is bright and
kind. She will become a beautiful fine woman.”
John said from behind me, “I, too, realize that Judith does resemble Andy. I
felt a tug of familiarity after you came, Andy, and it is there, of course. All
these years, Uncle, you have watched and seen the father in the child, only it
was Jameson here, and not you.”
I saw the rage in Lawrence’s eyes, but with John, with his nephew, he controlled
himself. He said nothing at all.
John said, “You did well, Andy. My uncle will wear those scars on his face until
he dies.”
“She will not be around to see the scars,” Lawrence said. “So, did you know of
your daughter, Jameson? Or is this a lovely surprise for you?”
My father said, “Yes, I knew of her, I have always known. Caroline managed to
sneak a letter out to me before you murdered her. I came to Devbridge Manor. I
tried to save her, but I was too late. The story was that she had jumped to her
death from a tower at the Manor. Did I believe that she had killed herself?
Perhaps in odd moments I did. But I always wondered, and now I know that you
destroyed poor Caroline. As for my daughter, there was nothing I could do save
pray that you would not hurt her.”
Lawrence laughed. He was happy now, his face alight with it. “Do you not wonder,
my dear, why I let the child live? The fruit of a whore and your dissolute
father? Well, I will tell all of you. Every time I looked at the child, I
thought of your miserable father, and how I savored thoughts of my revenge. I
knew it would probably take me years to have you in my power. But I knew the day
would come, and it has. Caroline’s death was but half of my vengeance.”
He moved quickly forward and grabbed my arm to pull me from my father. In that
second my wounded father, with strength I would have never guessed he still had,
lunged toward him and grabbed his throat between his two hands. Freeson and
Flynt were on him in an instant, jerking him back, Flynt striking his face, his
wounded shoulder. Now was my chance. I dropped George, jerked the derringer from
my belt. I said very precisely, “I will kill the earl if you do not release my