Surrender to Me (The Derrings #4)(59)

Griffin tensed beside Astrid. She resisted the sudden urge to reach for his hand beneath the table.

Osborne dragged a hand sprinkled with dark hairs over his face and suddenly she knew. She remembered. The skin of her face suddenly felt tight and itchy. A knot of dread settled in her stomach, a heavy pull that made it difficult to draw air.

“You,” she managed to get out. Her trembling hands fisted in her skirts. “It was you.”

“Astrid,” Griffin hissed in warning.

Shaking her head, she rose slowly to her feet, gaze fixed on the man before them, awareness sweeping through her in a flash of heat. The memory of Bertram’s face as she had last seen him filled her mind.

Griffin seized her wrist and tried to pull her back down, but she twisted free.

Osborn stared at her as if she had sprouted a second head.

“You killed him,” Astrid ground out. “You came to his room, argued with him and shoved him into the mantel.”

“Is she mad? What’s the lass talking about?” MacFadden looked at Griffin.

Osborn’s eyes narrowed on her. “You were the woman seen fleeing Powell’s room.” A cruel smile curved his lips. “My, my. What a small world.”

She nodded jerkily, not bothering to remind him that Bertram wasn’t Powell.

“You’re his wife,” the cloaked woman spoke softly from behind Osborn, the first sound she had made since entering the hall. All eyes swung to her. She dropped her hood to reveal a moderately pretty face. At first, Astrid thought a shadow darkened the lower half of her cheek, extending along her jaw and trailing down her throat. And then she realized the shadow was reddish in color—not a shadow at all, but a birthmark.

Her eyes, a soft doe brown, settled on Astrid with surprising intensity.

“Yes,” Astrid admitted. “I was his wife.”

“What the hell is going on?” MacFadden exploded.

“Powell wasn’t who he claimed to be,” Osborn explained. “He was a married man. A fugitive, in fact.”

MacFadden’s eyes bulged and he motioned to the cloaked woman. “You would marry your daughter off to such a man?”

“I did not know he was married,” Osborn gritted through clenched teeth. “Like everyone else, I simply thought it a blessing any man of quality wanted to marry Petra.”

Astrid flinched, stung at his words even if they had not been directed at her.

A quick glance at Petra revealed nothing save her bowed head. If her father’s callous words affected her, she gave no sign.

“He claimed to be a man of property. Vast coal mines in Cornwall. A knighted gentleman,” Osborn defended hotly.

“And no one thought to verify this information before he married into the family?” Griffin questioned.

Osborn cut him a swift glare. “Not even here a day and you presume to stick your nose into our family affairs.”

“He is one of us,” MacFadden declared with a pound of his fist on the thick table, rattling the crockery.

Osborn shook his head in disgust.

“I think everyone is failing to miss the point here,” Astrid inserted, waving in Thomas’s direction. “He killed Bertram.”

Everyone stared at her with dull, unmoved expressions, almost as if she had not uttered anything of significance.

“And,” she added, “he let everyone think I did it.”

Osborn shrugged. “I don’t owe you anything. It was simply easier than explaining the situation. I did not mean to kill the wretch, after all. He fell and struck his head—”

“Because you were beating him,” Astrid hotly reminded.

“Aye,” he agreed, with no sign of remorse.

“You took his ring,” she added, suddenly recalling the missing signet ring. “I’ll thank you to return it to me.”

“Fine.”

Astrid watched as Bertram’s murderer slid a ring from his finger and tossed it to her. She fumbled to catch it. Sucking in a deep breath, she looked to each of the men, waiting for their outrage, their sense of justice to surface. Whatever Bertram had done, he had not deserved to die. “Well?” she prodded.

“So the knave is dead, then.” MacFadden shrugged. “Good riddance. A just end.”

Gallagher nodded in agreement. “Highland justice. A man doesn’t desecrate another man’s daughter.”

“He only attempted to,” Astrid pointed out. “His perfidy was brought to light. Petra was spared.”

At this, Osborn lurched from his chair to grab his daughter by the arm, yanking her forward. Petra stared at her with wide, soulful eyes. The eyes of a wounded animal. Astrid’s stomach twisted, a deep sense of foreboding crawling through her with the insidiousness of creeping fog.

“Is that so?” Osborn growled.

As though Griffin sensed what was coming—or perhaps he simply sensed her apprehension—his hand closed over hers, strong fingers lacing with hers in a way that made her heart squeeze. It took everything in her to resist squeezing those fingers back, taking the comfort he lent.

Petra’s cloak was yanked open to reveal the slight bulge of stomach.

“Considering your husband took his husbandly rights early and filled my daughter’s womb with his bastard, I had every right to end his cursed life.”