A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(103)

Her eyes shone with pride as they lighted on her chatelaine, lying cold and pointless upon the night table. “The day I pinned that to my skirt was the greatest day of my life,” she said. “And I thought we would always be together, the master and I. Miss Mertensia would marry one day, I expected, and leave us. And then it would be just the two of us, Mr. Malcolm and me, like a pair of bachelors, growing old in our comfortable seclusion. Then she came,” she said bitterly. “And it all fell to ashes.”

“He loved her,” I reminded Mrs. Trengrouse.

“Loved!” The word twisted her thin lips to something ugly. “She weren’t worthy of it, weren’t worthy of him.”

I stared at her, feeling the most abject pity for any creature I had ever known. Her doglike devotion was appalling; any woman with spirit or strength could only feel revulsion at the notion of offering oneself up like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter of one’s own independent thought and feeling. For decades Mrs. Trengrouse had effaced herself until she was nothing other than an automaton, moving through her master’s life with no thought beyond serving him and thereby winning his regard, taking care of a family that was never quite her own.

“You think you would never do this for love,” she said suddenly. “You think you are above such abasement. But you cannot know what it means to love someone so much that nothing matters, nothing at all. Not your pride, not your dignity, not yourself. Nothing but your little ones and their happiness. That was me with Mr. Malcolm and Miss Mertensia.”

“That is not love,” I told her.

“Perhaps,” she replied with something of her old authority. “But it was as near as I have ever known. And when I thought it was going to be taken from me when she came . . . I could not bear it.”

“Rosamund,” I said, drawing out the name like an invocation.

“She was so lovely, it was a pleasure to hate her,” she told me. “I am responsible for her death and I know I must pay for that. I do not regret it. I will hang happily for what I did to her. They will jeer and taunt and say I am a murderess, but she did her evil first, she did. She was willing to let Mr. Malcolm play father to another man’s child, and that was wrong.”

“It was,” I agreed. “But not so wrong that she should have paid with her life. Nor should she have answered to you for her misdeeds. It was Malcolm Romilly’s business.”

“And I was his avenger, righting the wrongs that had been done to him.”

“Still, it was not your place to make that choice.”

“My place?” Her laugh was harsh. “I would have had no place if she had lived. She threatened to turn me out. I went to her the night before she were married. I knew she had quarreled with Miss Mertensia about the garden, playing lady of the manor. I went and asked her to be a little kind. She could afford to be generous, I told her. She had everything, the master, the castle, the name and position. She laughed at me and told me to mind my business, and I saw red then. I told her Miss Mertensia’s happiness were my business and always would be and that’s when she said it wouldn’t be for much longer if I kept my uppity ways. She said I had got above myself and needed to learn my place and behave better. And that’s when I lost my temper. I said I knew she was going to have a child and that the church might put it right but that she had no call to speak to me of proper behavior.”

“She cannot have liked that,” I mused.

“She did not. She turned on me then and said if I didn’t keep her secret, she would see me put off the island on the first boat, and that’s when I realized it couldn’t be Mr. Malcolm’s child. Until then, I thought they had just anticipated their vows, you see. Many’s the couple that does, especially around here with the priest coming only once a month to see to marryings and buryings. But she would not have turned so white and begun to shake if the child were his. I remembered then that I had caught her once with Lord Templeton-Vane, nothing shocking, mind. But I had come upon them once and she was looking up at him with such an expression on her face as no woman has ever used except to a man she loves. I knew then what she meant to do to Mr. Malcolm. She meant to put a cuckoo in the nest, to give this place to her love child, to disgrace this family,” she finished bitterly. “And I knew I had to take care of my little ones once more and put an end to it.”

“You played the ghost after the séance, didn’t you?”

A tiny smile played about her lips. “Mr. Lucian taught me a little of music when he was a lad, first learning his chords. I knew it wouldn’t take much to bring everyone rushing in. I needed only a moment to nip into the passage and through the library. I thought to take Mr. Malcolm by surprise, to make him wonder if her ghost had really been summoned. He might give it all up then, I hoped.”

She faltered then, her eyes opaque with fear.

“Did you see her?” I asked.

She shook her head, one single sharp shake. “No, miss. But I know she were there. Later that night, I went into the music room and I felt a presence. I knew she had come.”

I might have told her then. It would have been a kindness to tell her the truth, that I had been the presence in the music room. But kindness is not the foremost of my virtues. And so I kept my silence and let her believe that the spirit of Rosamund Romilly had been conjured that night.