Chapter 15
Fox watched Perry pace the Turkish carpet of the drawing room, face locked into a mask of perfect aplomb. By the time they’d returned to the stables and seen to their horses, the afternoon had advanced into evening. Jenny was in the kitchen preparing dinner, with help from MacEwen, and neither would be underfoot for Perry’s interrogation of him.
She’d come down from her high horse to this blandness. Someone had managed a bit of progress in molding her into a tractable woman suitable for marriage. The thought vaguely depressed him, but he comforted himself with the notion that they hadn’t quite succeeded, else she wouldn’t be here.
And her hands, gripped at her slim waist, showed the passionate woman inside, the woman he’d seen blossoming ten years earlier.
He unclenched his own fists. “Won’t you take a seat?”
If she sat, he wouldn’t be so tempted to go to her, to take her into his arms.
She nodded and seated herself like a queen, perching on the edge of a wing chair, back as straight as the paneled wall. Her stony compliance was a deeper cut than any physical blow.
He deserved it, didn’t he? Where Perry was concerned, he always deserved it. He turned the matching chair to face hers and sat down.
I will ask the questions, you will answer them,she’d said.
Or not. He lounged back in the chair and waited.
“What really happened to my mother, Fox?” she asked, her voice tense.
The question brought him up. Where the devil had it come from?
She’s back to get the ones as threw her over the cliff…
“I don’t truly know, Perry.” That wasn’t a lie. He couldn’t say more based on the words of a drunken free trader. “I heard that her coach went off the road.”
“Was it this road, the cliff road leading to Gorse Cottage?”
“Yes.”
She put a hand to her heart and swallowed hard. “How? What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fox, was she murdered?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Fox.” Her face bloomed with color.
He hated this, hated the pain he was causing her. “I truly don’t know, not for certain. What did the boy tell you?”
“That someone came, threw her over the cliff, and bashed her b-brains out.” Her hands knotted together, and he felt the clenching in his own heart.
He couldn’t leave her thinking her mother died so dreadfully. “Oh, Perry. I don’t know that it happened like that. That might be a story the locals made up to keep outsiders away.”
“Then how did it happen?”
He went onto his knees and took her knotted hands. “I wasn’t here. I don’t truly know. I’d guess your father doesn’t either. I was told she was in the carriage returning to Cransdall, and…” He shook his head. “The wheel came off, or the axle broke. The carriage jumped that narrow road and fell onto the rocks below.”
Was she thrown over? The picture was too terrible.
“How?” Her voice had gone small. “Mother always kept everything in prime order. And it wouldn’t have been sabotage. She had guards around her, always. Father insisted. His work was so dangerous. He had so many enemies.”
He released her and got to his feet, dragging a hand through his hair. “It’s possible the coach was tampered with. The guards had left with your father.”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. The longing to kiss her astonishment away, to stop the questioning, was almost overpowering. She’d known nothing of this. How could her father and brothers not have told her?
