A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(55)



I shook my head.

He turned aside, swiping a hand down his face. “That’s quite a revelation.”

“Yes.” My fingers lifted almost of their own accord to grip the smoothed surface of my mother’s amethyst pendant, seeking solace from it. Perhaps that’s why she’d really given it to me. Perhaps the real protection it provided had always been in my being able to touch it and know that she was still with me—even in that small way—offering me what comfort she could.

Was that how she’d felt about the pendant? Was that why Miss Campbell had given it to her?

Gage’s eyes dipped to the amethyst and then returned to my face. “That must have been difficult to hear, particularly when the knowledge should have come from your family. I presume you’re going to write to Alana and Trevor.”

I nodded. “And I need to speak to my Aunt Cait. Though I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to say.” I pushed the rattle Emma had dropped closer to her as she rolled toward me, reaching for it. She gazed up at me in contemplation and then smiled. Unable to resist, I grinned in return.

“Just tell her you want to confirm whether it’s true,” my husband suggested. “I suspect she’ll carry the rest of the conversation.”

My eyes scoured his face for reassurance. “Do you think so?”

He held out his hand for mine, and I gave it to him. His calloused fingers brushed over my own in a caress before gently squeezing. “I do.”

My vision clouded with tears as I offered him a watery smile.

Seeing the hands linked over her, Emma decided this was her cue to drop the rattle and reach for them, loudly protesting the fact that they were too far away. We lowered them to her and then proceeded to tickle her.





Chapter 16




Is it true?” my Aunt Cait repeated a short time later when we were closeted alone in her bedchamber. Her eyes widened. “Why, yes. But . . . Kiera, are you telling me you never knew about Edmund?”

The look on my face must have spoken for itself, for she clasped a hand to her chest in what seemed to be genuine distress.

“Oh, my dear! I’m so sorry.” She pressed her hand over the top of mine where it rested against the settee. “I thought for certain your father must have told you. Or Alana. Or . . . well, someone. But to learn of it in such a way. I’m so terribly sorry, my dear.”

I sat stiffly, gazing across the room toward where rain lashed the windows. A fire burned in her hearth, the logs crackling and popping as juniper branches lent their aroma to the air. The larger part of the chamber was cast in shadow, but inside the circle of the fire’s light, a warmth pervaded, slowly thawing my reticence.

“Then you weren’t keeping it from me on purpose?” I asked.

“Keeping it from you? Oh, no. Of course not, my dear. It’s just . . . well, it was not the happiest time of your mother’s life.”

My chest tightened with dread. “What do you mean?”

She turned her head to the side, seeming to gather her thoughts. From this angle I could better see the silver threading her soft brown hair, and I felt a pang at the evidence of her age. Though the largest part of my sorrow was not at the fact that my aunt was getting older, but rather that her sister—my mother—had not had the opportunity to do so. For that matter, neither had my father or Gage’s mother. Emma had one grandparent left, and matters were so strained between Lord Gage and his son that I wasn’t certain when, if ever, he would meet her.

Aunt Cait turned back to me with a look of resignation. “Edmund Campbell was somewhat of a scoundrel.” She lifted a hand to her brow, sinking deeper into the embroidered silk cushions. “Oh, I don’t know why I’m mincing words. He was a scoundrel, plain and simple. He raked hell from Oban to Edinburgh and back again. The man was as faithless as they come.”

I listened quietly while inside my heart broke a little bit for my mother. It had been one thing to speculate that Edmund Campbell might have been a rogue and quite another to hear it was true. And my mother had reaped the anguish of it.

“But the real trouble was that he was a charming scoundrel. And your mother loved him.” She lowered her gaze from where she’d been staring at the ornate stuccowork decorating the ceiling. “Each time he was caught, each time he was less than discreet, he would make the prettiest apology and she would forgive him. He would dance attendance on her for a month or two, and all would be well. And then he would grow bored, and . . . well, you can surmise the rest.” She shook her head, her brow creasing in pain. “Greer had her heart broken so many times by that cad. If only she hadn’t loved him. There was nothing she could do about the rest. But at least if she hadn’t loved him, then her heart could have remained intact.”

I stared dumbfounded at the Jacob Marrel watercolors gracing the wall immediately across from me, the tulips seeming to wilt before my eyes.

“I know it is not easy to hear,” my aunt commiserated.

“Does Alana know all this?” I asked, wondering if this excused her at least partially for not telling me. She’d wished to shield me from the pain.

“Yes, I . . . shared it with her when she was pursuing Philip so ardently.”

I looked up in surprise.

Her lips creased in subtle humor. “You’re aware he was a bit of a rake in his younger days, before he wed your sister? She teases him about it often enough.”

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