Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(102)

“Who?” A strange look crossed Bel’s face. “I don’t know any Miss Turner.”

“The lady from the dock, Bel. What happened to her?”

Bel frowned. “I don’t know,” she whispered, eyes downcast. “She said someone would be meeting her, and then Mr. Wilson found me, and …”

“And she left.” Gray pressed his forehead to the bars. Christ. She’d truly left. She’d truly left him. Until that moment, he hadn’t believed she could do it.

He must have done something wrong. Perhaps he ought to have demanded her secrets. Perhaps he should have held back some of his. Or maybe … God, maybe she’d been playing him for a fool all along.

“I’m sorry,” Bel said. “I suppose she just slipped away.”

“I can’t believe I lied to him,” Miss Grayson said, opening the green plantation shutters to admit a sultry breeze. “I’ve never lied to my brother in my life.”

Cringing, Sophia sat on the edge of the bed. As if all her own lies to him weren’t bad enough, now she’d gone and corrupted Gray’s sister. “I’m sorry to ask it of you,” she said. “But it was for his benefit. If my name reached the judge’s ears today, he might not believe my story tomorrow.”

“But how could the judge not believe the truth?”

How, indeed. Sophia’s lies were growing so numerous, even she couldn’t keep them straight. But when she’d assumed Sophia to be a missionary, Miss Grayson had handed her the perfect way to help Gray, as well as the perfect escape. One more day of deceit—in this, her most challenging role yet—and she would be done.

Miss Grayson sat down beside her. “I suppose it was in service of the greater good. But the look on Gray’s face when I told him you’d gone … He was—”

“Furious, I’d imagine.”

“No,” Miss Grayson said, surprised. “Not angry at all, just … disappointed, I think. His face went very grim. For all his initial resistance to the sugar cooperative, he must be attached to the idea now.” She beamed at Sophia.

“That must be your good influence, Miss Turner.”

Sophia thought it best to change the subject. “This isn’t your bedchamber, is it? I couldn’t put you out, you’ve been so kind.”

Gray had not been exaggerating when he described his sister’s kind nature. Indeed, Bel seemed to Sophia some kind of saint. While Bel had visited her brothers in jail, Sophia had been offered a series of small miracles: a bath in fresh, fragrant, heated water; a feast of tropical fruits and risen bread and unsalted meat; a freshly laundered dress; a soft, clean bed in this bright, airy chamber. If Gray had only been with her, Sophia would have felt welcomed into Heaven.

“No, this isn’t my bedchamber,” Bel answered. “It was once my mother’s, but no one has used it in years.”

“Has your mother been gone so long, then?” From what Gray had told her, she’d thought Bel’s mother had died more recently.

“She died a little over a year ago. But we had to move her from this room several years earlier, when she first took ill.” Bel opened a door between the windows, and beckoned Sophia. “Come have a look.”

Sophia stepped through the door and emerged onto a stone-tiled portico framed by a Grecian colonnade. Beyond the railing, a lush, green valley fell away from the house, the hillsides blanketed with fields. In the distance, two craggy mountains framed a wedge of ocean blue. “How beautiful,” she breathed. “I can see all the way to the harbor.”

“Yes. It’s a lovely vista. Transporting house hold goods to the top of a mountain isn’t especially convenient, but one can’t complain in the face of such grandeur.”

“Why did you move your mother to a different chamber?” she asked. “I should think this vista would cure all manner of ills.”

“Perhaps, for some. Though in my mother’s case, the risk was too great.”

She gave Sophia a melancholy smile. “She suffered an attack of brain fever, you see, when I was just a girl. She survived, in body—but her mind was never quite the same. For the rest of her life, she was prone to fits of… unpredictability. For her safety, we moved her to a room facing the mountainside, below-stairs.”

Sophia bent and peered down over the rail at the mossy limestone boulders below. It was a long way down. To think, Bel had grown up concerned that her mother would fling herself off this portico? If her own mother stood in the same place, she would think only of hanging draperies. Sophia felt a sudden swell of gratitude for her boring, sheltered childhood.

“The land you see below used to be my father’s plantation. Now the family owns only the house.”

“Were you angry, when Gray sold it?”

Bel turned to her. “But how would you know about—” Her eyes widened with understanding. “Ah, I can guess. My brothers are still fighting?” She shook her head. “He did the right thing, selling the plantation. Joss would have done the same. As would I have done, if these matters were ever placed in ladies’ hands.”

Below them, dusk painted the valley purple with shadow. Sophia gathered the borrowed shawl about her shoulders. “But I don’t understand. If Gray and Joss were in agreement then, why do they keep arguing now, over the sugar cooperative?”