Twenty-five
DARIA SPENT ANOTHER night tossing and turning in anguish, her heart breaking. But she was smiling the next morning as she waited for her horse to be saddled. God help her, she would be brave and courageous. She would not allow anyone to see how her heart had shattered.
Only she, Mackenzie, and Robbie would ride to Mamie’s. Charity had declined to join them. “I refuse to wear trousers,” she said, gazing down at Daria’s.
“They’re really very comfortable.”
Charity shook her head. “I think your parents will arrive today, and I will be here to explain to them that all is not lost. I think I’ve never been so eager to see anyone leave a place as I am to see you leave Dundavie. I fear if you don’t leave soon, you will be shearing sheep.”
Shearing sheep sounded almost idyllic to Daria this morning. She strode out in her pantaloons to ride with the men.
On the way to Mamie’s cottage, she discovered why Charity was taken with Captain Mackenzie. He rode with Daria, chatting easily, complimenting her profusely. She was one of the bonniest women he’d ever met, et cetera, and he’d long thought so. He enumerated the various bachelor gentlemen he had met through Lord Eberlin and assured her that she would be found quite desirable by them. “I can make the necessary introductions, if you’d like, lass.”
“You?” Daria asked laughingly.
“Aye, me,” he said confidently. “You might be amazed, then, how many men have a secret desire to be a sea captain. I am well-regarded company in most circles.”
Daria laughed at him. “How modest you are, Captain!”
“I know my worth, Miss Babcock. Perhaps you are no’ as certain of yours, aye?” he asked jovially, and rode ahead.
His words echoed in Daria’s head as they made their way to Mamie’s cottage.
When they reached the cairns and started their descent into the little glen where Mamie lived, Mackenzie had another piece of advice for Daria. “It is my experience that a man who spends weeks on a ship will do what he must to be free of the sea, aye?”
“The sea?” Daria repeated, confused.
“What I mean, lass, is that your granny might very much like to be free of her sea. Go in there, then, lock the door, and donna let her out until she tells you what she’s hiding, aye? The truth may pain her greatly, but it will set her free of her sea.”
Yes, Daria could see why Charity was taken with Mackenzie.
When they reached Mamie’s cottage, Daria was alarmed to see the door standing open. The flowers that used to grace the windows were gone. There was no smoke at the chimney. Panic began to spread through her—the cottage looked abandoned.
Daria threw herself off her horse and hurried to the gate.
“We’ve the right cottage, have we no’?” Mackenzie asked.
“Aye,” Robbie said gruffly.
Daria pushed through the gate. “Mamie!” she called out.
“Daria?” Mamie’s voice filtered out from the back room.
Daria strode to the dark room where Jamie had spent a week.
Mamie met her at the door, looking slightly dazed. “Oh dear, is something wrong?” She rubbed her hands on her dirty apron. She was entirely disheveled.
“What are you about, Mamie?” Daria asked, peering past her into the darkened room.
“Just sorting things,” she said absently.
Daria whirled about and went to the front door. She waved to Mackenzie and Robbie, then shut the door and bolted it. When she turned around, Mamie was staring at her warily.
Her grandmother looked so small and so . . . old. Daria grabbed her up and held her tightly, burying her face in her neck. “Mamie, what has happened to you?” she asked tearfully.
“I am glad you have come, darling.” She pulled away and tried to smile, but Daria scarcely noticed it. She couldn’t look away from the dark circles beneath Mamie’s eyes.
“I’ll just put the kettle on,” Mamie said, and moved to the hearth.
Daria watched her. Something seemed different about the kitchen. She glanced up at the shelf. “Where are your china plates and the crystal?”
“Only things,” Mamie said, with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “Tell me, darling, how have you been at Dundavie?”
That was Mamie’s way of deflecting questions, Daria realized. The moment Daria asked her something she didn’t want to answer, Mamie would respond with a question for Daria. She wanted the old Mamie back, the grandmother who had taken her for long walks in the garden, and had ladies to tea, and allowed Daria to play dress-up in her silk gowns and pearls. She wanted to tell Mamie about the knots in her belly, the butterflies in her veins. “Actually, I . . . I have come to esteem the laird very much,” she blurted.
Mamie whirled about, her eyes wide, her mouth gaping in shock. “No, Daria! No, you mustn’t! God help me, when will my daughter come?” she cried to the ceiling.
“What is wrong?” Daria cried, taken aback. “What have I said?”
Mamie lurched forward and grabbed Daria’s face between her hands. “Daria, listen to me! You must leave here! You must go to England as soon as you are able, do you understand? You should never have come to Scotland! I don’t care if that man has granted you a kingdom, you will not ruin your life with such talk!”
Daria pushed her grandmother’s hands away from her. “Stop it,” she said angrily. “There was a time when I could speak to you about anything, Mamie.”
With a groan, Mamie sank onto a chair and pressed her hand to her forehead. “Dear God, I am so weary. I have done all that I could—I swear that I have. But I cannot keep you from ruining it all.”
Daria’s heart began to beat wildly. “You are mad,” she said, her voice shaking. “My parents will be here today or tomorrow and my ransom will be paid, and they must deal with you. For I swear, I cannot bear this a moment longer.”
“Then please, do not bear it,” Mamie said, lifting her head. “Just promise me you will return to England at once. I want your word that you will! I want your word that you will not be charmed by that Scotsman and ruin everything I and your parents have tried to do for you!”
Daria’s heart had been beating so hard that she could scarcely catch a breath, but those words stopped it altogether. “What you and my parents have done for me? What have any of you done for me, Mamie? I have put myself into society! In spite of all of you, I have done all that I could to make a decent match. Even my debut was at the behest of Lady Horncastle, and yet my parents brought me home from London as soon as the debut was made! For what? So that I might spend my days watching my parents create orchids?”
“You cannot imagine how difficult it has been,” Mamie moaned.
“Then tell me!” Daria pleaded. “For God’s sake, Mamie, tell me something that is the truth. Tell me why you dislike the laird so, or why you would shoot him, or why you didn’t tell me that the man you met in the glen that day was an Englishman! Do you truly expect me to believe you don’t know him? That you hadn’t gone to meet him?”
Mamie burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. Daria hurried to her side and fell to her knees, her hands on her grandmother’s knees. “Please, Mamie—what is happening?”
Mamie gulped back her tears. Her hands shaking, she wiped the tears from her face. “I have tried to spare you, darling. Oh, how I have tried. But I always knew you would learn the truth one day.”
“The truth,” Daria repeated. “So that man is known to you?”
Mamie nodded.
Daria stood and pulled a chair close, sitting directly in front of Mamie. “We will not leave this cottage until you have told me everything, do you understand? Begin with that man. Who is he?”
Mamie drew a deep breath. “It’s quite an involved tale—”
“I don’t care! For God’s sake, tell me!”
Her expression pained, Mamie said, “Do you recall when, a few years ago, the old Earl of Ashwood went missing?”
“Yes,” Daria said. “He drowned. But what has that to do—”
“The truth begins there. You recall he’d gone fishing on a swollen river, and he was never seen again. The only things they could find were a mangled fishing pole and his tackle on the shore. His body was never found. Well, the earl didn’t drown. He duped everyone into believing he had, and he escaped to Scotland.
“He had sizable gambling debts that he couldn’t pay without dismantling Ashwood completely. But if he were dead, his gambling debts wouldn’t be pursued. He had no heirs, and the sort of men to whom he owed money couldn’t legitimately make a claim against Ashwood. So the earl emptied his coffers, staged his death, and disappeared.”
Daria shook her head in disbelief. “Even if that were true—and I can hardly believe that he might have accomplished such trickery—what has that to do with you?”
“The earl’s thirst for gambling did not end with his supposed death. He continued to gamble here, and he began to lose more money. When he had lost almost all that he had, he needed someone to bring him more. So he chose us,” Mamie said bitterly.
“ ‘Us’? Who is ‘us’?” Daria cried in frustration.
“The Babcocks.”
Daria blinked. Nothing made sense. “What do you mean? How could he choose us from Scotland? And choose us for what, pray tell?” She felt exhausted, emotionally drained.
“Because we have the means to bring money to him—”
“Absurd,” Daria said angrily and stood up. “I won’t listen to more of your lies, Mamie. If you won’t tell me the truth, I’ll go—”
“He chose us to do his dirty deeds because he knows our devastating secret.”
Daria threw her arms wide in disbelief. “Yes, of course! If this isn’t enough madness, then we’ll add a devastating family secret! What is it, Mamie? What possible secret could we have?”
“Oh, Daria,” Mamie said sadly, and gazed at Daria as if she were about to walk up on the gallows. “I never wanted to tell you this. I—we—had hoped there would never be a need. But as you’ve grown up and wanted more from life . . . I told Beth that this was inevitable, and she wouldn’t listen to me!”
“What?” Daria snapped. “Say whatever it is now, or I will walk out the door for good. I have been held for ransom because of this secret! You shot an innocent man because of it! You will tell me, or I will walk out the door and you will never see me again.” She angrily swiped at a tear that was sliding down her cheek.
“I am telling you the truth now, Daria.” Mamie slowly gained her feet and reached for Daria’s hand. “Have you ever wondered why your parents came to live in Hadley Green? Why your grandfather and I followed?”
“Mamma said they came to Hadley Green for the air.”
Mamie swallowed. “They came to Hadley Green to escape an awful scandal, and the earl was happy to help them. Your father was a jeweler, did you know? He had helped a broker sell some of the countess’s jewelry for the earl. And when scandal came to your father, the earl offered your parents refuge.”
“Refuge,” Daria repeated.
Mamie swallowed again, as if the words were stuck in her throat. “He knew that your father was married . . .” She looked away. “He was—he is—married to someone else.”
It took a moment for Daria to understand what Mamie was implying, and then she gasped. “Good God, have you any idea what you are saying?” She tried to pull her hand free of her grandmother’s, but Mamie tightened her grip.
“Listen to me. I was very unhappy with their relationship, obviously, for he was a married man. I didn’t care that he was trapped in an unhappy union with a wife who refused to agree to a divorce. I cared only that my daughter—who was younger than you are now—was throwing her life away by courting such a scandal. Oh, but she was stubborn. She said that she loved him.
“But when Richard’s wife found out that he esteemed Beth and had been meeting her privately, she threatened to ruin him. Your grandfather and I wanted to send Beth away, to spare her such a ruinous scandal, but it was too late. She had already conceived you.”
Daria sank onto a chair, suddenly unable to breathe.
“That’s when your father sought the help of his friend the earl, and the earl brought him to Hadley Green and established him there. It was awful—Richard and Beth left in the dead of night, slipping out of their homes, out of his marriage, out of society. Out of even his name! They chose the surname Babcock from a grave marker! All these years, they have lived as man and wife, while his true and lawful wife was living not one hundred miles away.”
“I don’t believe you!” Daria cried.
“That is the reason they have kept to themselves, my love. They thought you would be content to live in that house with them, but I told them you were far too spirited, and sooner or later they would have to tell you the truth—”
“That I am a bastard?” Daria said, nearly choking on the words.
Mamie did not deny it. “We protected you all these years . . . but then the earl began to blackmail us. That’s why I came to Scotland. I tried to reason with him, but he is relentless. He wants more and more until he has taken everything, and then he wants even more—”
“So it’s true, then! You stole from Uncle Hamish.”
“No! The earl befriended Hamish Campbell at the horse races. When he understood how addled the poor man was, he asked for the money, and Hamish agreed. I met Hamish in Nairn to receive the money and deliver it to the earl. I suppose he forgot that he agreed to give it to the earl.”
“It was not his to give,” Daria said flatly. “Nor was it yours to take, Mamie.”
“I haven’t sought more from him; I just delivered it! I’ve sold things—Oh, what is the use? The truth is that there is not enough money to satisfy that beast. He bets it all on the ponies.”
“But why have you allowed it?” Daria demanded. “Why have you not told the authorities?”
“Because your father’s wife is still alive,” Mamie said bitterly. “If she knew where he was, she could bring about criminal proceedings for abandonment.”
“Let Pappa face what he has done,” Daria said bitterly.
“But it’s more than that now, darling. You would be ruined, your chances at a match destroyed. Even if you had married before now, such news would give a man grounds to claim fraud if the truth were to come to light. Don’t you see?”
Daria felt light-headed. She drew a shallow breath, and then another. She had almost single-handedly worked her way up in Hadley Green society without any help from her family, all with the hopes of marrying and having children one day. That was what she wanted, and this—this was devastating. She couldn’t imagine how they could keep the truth from coming out.
She turned away from her grandmother, her thoughts racing, nausea building. She thought of Charity, surrounded by opulence but imprisoned by society’s conventions, a path she’d been put on when her father was falsely accused of stealing the Ashwood jewels. Daria’s family had actually stolen, had lied and dissembled—and she would be completely disgraced. No self-respecting man would have her.
She suddenly thought of Jamie. A laird, an upstanding man of honor. She couldn’t bear to look at him, knowing what she knew now.
Daria turned away from her grandmother and walked to the door.
“Daria? Where are you going? Come back!” Mamie begged her.
“I’ve heard enough.” Daria couldn’t look at her grandmother. She could scarcely even breathe. She walked out into the yard as Mamie rushed to the door behind her. She was aware that Mamie called her back, that Mackenzie was asking her if she was all right.
But all Daria could manage was, “I should like to go.”
“Aye. Where?”
An excellent question. There was no place where she might escape this disaster.