Page 118 of The Duchess Curse

With a quick glance at Guin, her father bowed his neck over the journal. Then he lifted his head again, shaking it. “I don’t understand.”

“Did you truly believe in the curse, or was it just a means of controlling me?” Guin asked.

Her father’s mouth dropped open.

“What is this about?” Her mother groped for the journal, yanked it into her lap and read. She looked at her husband, then at Guin, then read it again. “This is… what is this?”

“It seems to suggest,” Bran said, “that one of the Earls of Cairnsbury fabricated a curse based on family history in order to control his daughter.”

“We haven’t looked through all the journals yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find other similar evidence.” Guin took the journal from her mother. “We’re taking all of them back to London.”

Her father rose to his feet. “If you find anything incriminating in there, I’ll⁠—”

“You’ll what?” Bran asked. “As I see it, your family is armpit deep in lies and possibly even murder.”

“Murder!” her mother shrieked.

“These are absurd allegations,” her father said.

“Are they?” Guin asked. “I’m not so sure. Did you know about this, Father? Did you have Tommy killed?”

Her father’s jaw worked as if trying to keep something behind his teeth. It didn’t work. He exploded. “That boy was a gutter rat! I didn’t have him murdered, though. I gave him more money than he could resist. He’s the one who chose to ride into a damned storm. He got himself killed. But that’s the curse!”

“It’s not a curse,” Guin said, feeling the lightness of truth. “It was convenient, though. A curse that’s connected to a glamour and impacts women as well as men—blasphemy. It was easy to keep everyone quiet. And quiet people are easy to control.”

Her father fell into his chair, arms limp, jaw hard. “It was done to me, too, by my father. I never wanted to marry your mother. But Giselle died… I thought it was real. I only learned it wasn’t when he died.”

“Who’s Giselle?” Bran whispered near Guin’s ear.

“A woman I debuted with.” Her mother pushed to her feet, steadier than Guin had ever seen her. “Your father courted her first, and she was… She got sick.”

“Poison,” Guin’s father said. “The Pottingers are quite good with poisons.”

Her mother’s eyes were red rimmed when she faced her husband. “Your father killed that girl?”

“I wanted to kill him.”

“And then you both ruined my life. You made me send my daughter away!” Her mother was screaming, scrambling over the desk, hands turned to claws and seeking eyes to gouge out.

Bran pulled her backward, and Guin wrapped her mother up tight.

“I’m going to kill him,” her mother said.

“Then will you come visit me? In London?” There was much her mother still had to answer for, but Guin had learned the trick of forgiveness, and she did not think she could stop. Her mother had been a pawn, too. She deserved a chance to do better.

And to get her own revenge.

Guin released her mother and fell backward into the warm comfort of her husband’s embrace. “I want to go home.”

As they walked out of the house she’d known for so little time before she’d been sent to live in a lonely castle on the moors, her parents’ voices shook the walls. Something crashed against a wall. Her mother wailed. Light and shadow danced a fatal waltz as candles burned fast then sizzled out into nothing. Doors slammed. Guin’s father screamed something guttural and indecipherable that was stopped short by silence.

Guin walked away from it all, stepped into the cool winter sunshine then into the waiting carriage. She settled next to her husband as the carriage took off and let herself breathe in freedom as he kissed the top of her head.

“Should we have helped her?” Guin asked.

“I think your mother is fine. It’s your father you should worry about. This is their battle. Best to leave them to it.”

“It all seems so senseless,” Guin said. “An entire family built on lies, no one questioning it. I feel such a fool. I should have known it was something like that.”