Page 69

Gareth swore.

“It’s Marina’s baby, isn’t it? The one she lost?” Sadness choked her, followed by a wave of panic. There was no reason to feel this way. Those tiny bones lovingly laid in a small wooden box couldn’t hurt her.

But they had. Not physically. Until now, there had been a certain distance—an unreality—to everything that had transpired since she met the duke.

Seeing those bones made all the heartbreak, all the pain, feel achingly concrete. Close enough to tear open every scar that had healed.

She would not have lain easy in her grave, either, if she had known her baby’s body was unburied.

How would he take it?

And…could this be Marina’s treasure?

Evaine opened her eyes. He sat on his knees with his hands braced on either side of the box, staring into it. A sob tore out of her. She had never seen anyone so haunted. So devastated. So…hollow.

That would have been his son or daughter. Never mind that the child was technically his half-sibling and that he hadn’t been the true father. Gareth had been very clear that he would have raised the child as his own.

She didn’t know what to say.

Any words of sympathy or comfort that she could summon rang hollow. She had come here looking for gold. A hidden stash of money. Not this heartbreak.

Her gaze returned to the box.

“They didn’t even bury it,” he said hollowly. “She miscarried days before the fire. I received word at school. He told me to call off the wedding now that Marina’s ‘problem’ had been solved.”

A tiny sob escaped Evaine’s unraveling control.

“They put it into a box and just left the body,” he said.

“Gareth, I am so sorry⁠—”

“Get out of here,” he growled. “Take your grandmother and go.”

“I don’t think I should leave you right now⁠—”

“I said go!” he roared, lurching up. He grabbed her arms, hard, and shook her. “There is nothing you can do but run. Don’t come back.”

She knew she was wrong to ask him now, but she had to know the truth. She could not live without knowing. “Did you kill Marina, Gareth?”

He turned on her with his face contorted in a rictus of fury.

“Take that back,” he demanded. His eyes had taken on that strange light again. She had seen it in his eyes when he burst into her bath. Again when he’d pressed her against the wall.

“I have to know,” she said brokenly. “The villagers said⁠—”

“I know what they say about me!” he shouted. “But you, Evaine? I thought you were different. I thought you understood.”

“Gareth, I—I’m sorry. I don’t know what to think.”

“How would I have killed Marina all the way from London?” he shouted. “I wasn’t here when she died.” He pushed her back a step. Another. She tripped over a beam and fell. Gareth loomed over her. She did not know this man.

“That isn’t true,” she said slowly, scrambling up. “You said she was standing in the window when you came back. Unless that was a lie?”

If she had thought his face was a thundercloud before, she was disabused of that notion now. His features contorted into something monstrous.

“Believe what you want, Evaine. Just go.”

“I won’t leave you,” she insisted.