Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(90)
Her lady’s maid.
A gasp tore from her as a fresh onslaught of shock barreled through her. Abigail, who had always been pleasant and polite and smiling, who had been her steadfast attendant, first as a nurse and later as her lady’s maid, was coolly training a gun upon her. She took an instinctive step forward, palms raised in supplication.
“Don’t take another step or you’ll regret it,” Abigail warned, her voice as cold and hard as the frozen ground on a January morning.
Daisy froze, her mouth going dry. “Abigail, what are you doing?”
“Returning you to your father. He’s waiting in a carriage below,” Abigail said with an eerie calm that belied the heaviness of the moment. As though Daisy wasn’t staring down the barrel of a gun. “Come along quietly, and you won’t get hurt.”
She shook her head, dread icing a path down her spine. “I don’t wish to go anywhere with him. I never want to see him again.”
“Ungrateful bitch.” Her lip curled. “Just like your mother.”
“How dare you disparage my mother?” The words rushed from Daisy’s lips before she could think better of them. But she was fiercely defensive of her precious mama’s memory—the only part of her that remained.
“I dare quite a bit seeing as how I’ve a pistol.” Abigail stalked forward. “You’re not worth much to me any longer, so you’d serve yourself best by shutting your mouth and doing as I say.”
Abigail’s tone as she had spoken of Daisy’s mother struck her then. Bitter, laced with rancor and hatred. Suddenly queasy, she flattened her palm over her belly where even now, her babe innocently grew. She would do anything to protect her child. Her instincts told her that obeying the other woman would be a grave mistake.
Her spinning mind suddenly recalled that she was not without a means of defending herself. As she’d paced the Axminster earlier, she’d discovered Sebastian’s forgotten knife on the floor and had slipped it into the pocket on her robe. If she could distract Abigail sufficiently, she had a chance of striking with the knife and knocking the gun from her hand.
Yes, she had to distract her. Keep her talking. Think, Daisy. Think.
“What do you know of my mother?” she asked.
“She didn’t deserve your father,” Abigail snapped. “She never loved him as I do. Now get moving to the door. We haven’t much time.”
Daisy hesitated, grappling with the elder woman’s revelation. “You love my father?”
“I’ve loved him for years.”
“And yet he turned you out without reference,” she was quick to point out.
“You believed it so easily, didn’t you? You ruined our plans by eloping with that blackguard duke, and I needed a reason to stay close to you.” Abigail’s eyes narrowed. “Now to the door with you! No more tarrying.”
Daisy feared she was going to be ill. “What plans?”
Abigail struck her head with the butt of the pistol. Pain laced through her. She stumbled, losing her balance, crying out. Tears stung her eyes. The woman before her, wild-eyed and stern-faced, was not the woman she had known for her entire life. It was as if a stranger had come to inhabit her body. But that was the gift, she supposed, of evil. It could hide in plain sight, waiting for the right moment to strike and lay low the innocent.
“Walk to the door,” the woman gritted, “or I’ll hit you even harder next time.”
Daisy forced herself to move. One foot in front of the other. Step by step. Think, Daisy. Distract her.
“What plans?” she asked again.
Abigail grabbed her arm and settled the pistol into her lower back, urging her to move faster. “You were to marry Lord Breckly to solidify your father’s position in the Irish Nationalist League. It would have been the perfect foil. Your father would have been rid of you at last, and his influence and power would have grown immeasurably. But you couldn’t obey him, could you?”
Dear God. Her father was a Fenian, and so was Abigail. It all began to make horrible, sickening sense. Why had she failed to see it before now? Sebastian’s government had suspected Daisy, and all along, the true conspirator had been her lady’s maid, the one woman she’d trusted more than she’d even trusted her own aunt.
She forced her dazed mind to churn up more questions, more diversions. “Why are you doing this, Abigail? What use has my father for me now that I’ve married another?”
“You’re leverage, of course.” Abigail pushed her forward so roughly that she stumbled again. She righted herself, the gun jamming into her back. “Wasn’t hard to dupe the English fools into believing I’d serve as an informant. They already suspected your father, and we knew it and used their suspicion to our benefit. Did you know they paid me five hundred pounds to tell them that you were colluding to gain Irish independence from English tyranny?”
They’d reached the chamber door, and Daisy’s heart hammered in her breast, a combination of what Abigail had revealed to her and the realization that she needed to act now to save herself. Whatever Abigail and her father intended for her, she knew without question that it wasn’t as harmless as Abigail would have her believe. Marrying Sebastian was the first time she had ever gone against her father’s edicts. She recalled all too well his red-faced rage the morning after her wedding. How furious he’d been that his bargaining chip had been stripped from his grasp.