The House at Mermaid's Cove(70)

I hardly dared to ask the next question, but I had to know. “Did you really doubt that Ned was yours?”

“When I first opened the letter, it struck me as highly suspicious that she’d waited all that time to tell me of Ned’s existence. But some part of me got carried away with the idea of having a child. I decided that the only decent thing to do would be to marry her.” His lips disappeared momentarily as he sucked them in over his teeth. “It would have been a secret marriage. My father was very ill by then. I couldn’t face trying to explain it to him.” He shook his head. “I had it all planned out. The wedding would take place on Guernsey, and Morwenna would stay there with Ned. I was so certain it was the right thing to do that I ordered a trousseau for her—a set of clothes and a wedding dress. I nearly got caught out, because the housekeeper opened the parcel. I had to cook up a story about them being for a cousin planning an elopement.”

I swallowed hard. So, that talk of a secret wife had been closer to the truth than the village gossips had realized. Something else dawned on me then. “Those clothes,” I murmured. “The ones you gave me—were they hers?”

He nodded. “They’d lain in a trunk, never worn, for three years. I’d taken them with me on Firefly to give to her, but when I got to Guernsey and saw Ned, I was confused. His hair and eyes were brown—like mine, not Morwenna’s: she had red hair and her eyes were green. But I had no idea whether Ned was the age he should have been if she’d become pregnant when we were together, in the spring of 1938. I didn’t know enough about young children to be able to tell his age. By the time we got onto the boat, I was so worked up I said things I shouldn’t have.” He rubbed his knuckles against the bristly outline of his jaw. “I can still see her face—that look in her eyes when I challenged her. They seemed to change color, like the sea when a squall blows up, from deep emerald to slate gray. ‘I thought you’d say that!’ She almost spat the words at me. That was when she produced the birth certificate.”

The scene he’d conjured was so vivid. I saw Morwenna, eyes blazing, like the mermaid in the church.

“When they were searching for her—during that week I stayed on Guernsey—I went to the public-records office in St. Peter Port. They had the original certificate there. The dates matched. He was born on the sixth of January 1939—nine months after we started seeing one another.” He shook his head. “I suppose you’re thinking what I thought, that a certificate doesn’t necessarily prove anything, that she could have been carrying on with some other man while she was seeing me. But there was something else.” He leaned closer, pushing back the hair that grew above his left ear. “Can you see this?” He moved his finger from the tip of his cheekbone to the place where the ear attached, just below the temple. I saw that there was a tiny puncture in the skin. “Ned has the same thing. It’s an extra sinus—quite rare and completely harmless—and it’s passed down through families.”

My mind flashed back to the time I’d bathed Ned at the boathouse and, seeing what looked like a needle hole in his ear, asked if Louis had been hurting him.

“I didn’t realize Ned had it until I was leaving Guernsey. When I went to say goodbye, I ruffled his hair, and there it was.” Jack lowered his eyes to the worn wooden boards of the wheelhouse. “I felt this awful, sick feeling when I saw it. I should have believed her. Should have trusted her. Can you imagine, when he’s older, what he’d say if he found out what I’d done?” The pain in his voice was palpable.

“But you wouldn’t have to tell him what you’ve told me,” I said. “He doesn’t need to know all that. Morwenna’s death was an accident: Whatever you were saying or thinking when it happened, you didn’t mean for her to fall overboard. You didn’t kill her.”

“I might as well have.”

I reached out and touched his arm. “You can’t let it go on gnawing away at you, Jack. You have to forgive yourself.”

“How can I? Ned wouldn’t forgive me—I’m certain of that.”

“Well, I believe everyone can be forgiven, no matter what they’ve done.” It came out sounding horribly trite.

“How can I be forgiven? If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be alive. I killed her.”

“You’re not a murderer, Jack. It was an accident.” My hand was still on his arm. I wanted to pull him closer, to comfort him, but I could feel the tension in his muscles through the woolen jersey. I was afraid that he would recoil. “You said that when you found me on the beach you wanted to make amends—that was why you helped me.”

He nodded. “What of it?”

“Well, don’t you think that one way you could make amends would be to acknowledge Ned?”

He huffed out a sigh. “I’ve already told you why I can’t do that.”

“Yes,” I said. “The family honor. But don’t you see what it’s doing to you? You’re at war with yourself. You couldn’t tell anyone about Morwenna because of the shame it would have brought, and the same thing has trapped you into denying that Ned is your son: You put the estate and the family name above everything else. Bricks and mortar are more important to you than people.” I was aware that I was being blunt, brutal, even. But for his sake and Ned’s, I had to say it. “Isn’t there more honor in being a father to Ned? Isn’t that more important than a house and social standing?”