“The Countess of Rutherington.”
“Sin’s mother,” Simon clarified.
Callie frowned. Why would she be sending a gift? It made no sense given her actions toward Sin.
Curious, Callie opened the box and saw a small bottle.
“What the devil is that?” Simon asked.
Thinking it perfume, Callie opened the lid and took a whiff of it. She knew the reeking smell in an instant. It came from the plant her mother had used to rid their hall of mice and other unsavory vermin.
It was a bottle of poison.
Seven
Callie hesitated at the solar door where two guards stood on either side, making sure the countess didn’t leave her rooms again. But a moment’s hesitation was all she gave it. Her anger high, she strode between the men and threw the door open, then slammed it shut.
The countess looked up with a startled gasp from her perch on the bed as Callie charged unannounced into her room.
“What is the meaning of this?” Callie asked, moving to the bed to hand the countess the bottle of poison.
The lady wiped the tears from her eyes and drew a ragged breath as she ignored the bottle. She lifted her chin regally while toying with the edges of the pillow in her lap. “I thought you would have need of it tonight. Either for yourself or preferably for him. Either way it would spare you having to stomach such a repulsive monster in your bed.”
Callie was aghast. What on earth was the woman thinking? “How can you say that about your own son?”
The countess stiffened, her dark eyes snapped righteous fire. “He is no son of mine. That bastard destroys everything he touches. He always has. If you were wise, you’d drink that poison now and save yourself years of untold misery at his hands.”
The countess’ hatred of Sin mystified her. What could he have done to his mother to warrant such rampant hostility? “Why do you hate him so? What has he ever done to you?”
“What has he done?” she shrieked, rising from the bed and dropping her pillow to the floor. “He ruined my life. That wretched demonic father of his seduced me when I was just a child. I spent one night with him that no one should have ever known about. Instead, I conceived. When my father found out, he was so enraged he beat me so severely it would have swept any normal infant from my womb. But not him. He is the devil’s own. He even survived when I drank potions that should have killed him.”
Callie’s stomach knotted at what the woman was describing. Her hatred of Sin was unimaginable. She’d known there were mothers unfit to raise their children, but never in her life had she heard of anything like this.
“When he was born,” the countess continued, “he almost killed me. I bled so that ‘tis a wonder I ever survived. When they tried to hand him to me, I couldn’t bear to even look at him. So I bade my maid procure a nurse and send him immediately to his father.”
“You sent a newborn bairn out into the world within hours of his birth?”
“Hours? I sent him out as soon as I had finally flushed him from my body.”
Callie couldn’t breathe as pain assailed her. She saw the image of a newborn being handed off so clearly in her mind. How could anyone be so cruel?
Worse, there was no remorse in his mother’s face. She felt fully justified in what she’d done to him.
It made no sense to Callie.
Rage and hatred burned in the countess’s eyes. “The man I wanted to marry refused have me after I had been stretched by another man’s child, so my father viciously married me off to a man older than he was.”
“None of that is Sin’s fault.”
“But it is. Had he not been born, none of it would have happened.” She snarled her lips and glared. By the light in her eyes, ‘twas obvious the past was replaying itself to her. “I sent him to his father and thought I was through with him forever. Then ten years later, he showed up at court and all the gossips started in again. I had to live with that disgrace daily. People whispering behind my back. Comments and aspersions being made about my dear baby Roger. My husband was a pious man and made me wear hair shirts beneath my gowns from that day until he died. I was humiliated and forced to beg penance constantly for that creature’s birth. And now that monster has taken the only thing good in my life. Roger was all that was important to me. The only thing that gave my putrid life any happiness.”
Callie felt for the woman’s grief and she wished she could ease the pain she knew the countess bore over the death of her son. But none of that changed what she’d done to her eldest, who had been nothing more than an innocent babe in dire need of a mother’s love.
“Sin didn’t kill him.”
“You’re a fool if you believe his lies.”
Callie patted the countess’s arm in sympathy, wishing she knew what to say to ease the woman’s suffering.
