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The footman turned around. “Yes, ma’am?”
She shook her head at him, unable to understand what he was doing here, with her mother, fighting with spies. She turned towards the other scuffle taking place by the door. Her mother was headed in that direction with her wooden stake, no doubt to administer the same treatment to the second man. She vaguely recognized the other man as a footman from Rose Manor as well and wondered how her mother had persuaded them to come with her.
She’d last seen her mother at her wedding breakfast, where she’d managed to introduce her briefly to Bertram but they’d not been able to speak much. Rosamund had promised to stay, however, until they returned from the honeymoon.
To see her here, still dressed in the gown she’d worn for the wedding was…confusing.
“Letty?” She jerked in surprise, turning towards Bertram who was still tied up, “Would you help me?”
“Oh! Of course!” she leapt up and ran to him, trying to pull at his knots but they were too tightly wound.
“Get a knife from the kitchen.”
She nodded, hurrying off to do as he asked. There was a knife on the wooden cutting board and she picked it up, deeming it sharp enough for her. She ran back to Bertram, using the knife to cut him loose.
He stood up, rubbing his wrists before turning to face her. He grabbed her face, turning it to the side so he could see the nick on her neck. He stared intently at it, looking stricken. “Does it hurt?”
“No, I’m fine, I have had much worse, believe me.”
He touched her neck softly. “You’re bleeding.” His voice was bleak.
“It doesn’t matter.” She tried to reassure him if only to get the dark look off his face.
He nodded, though he looked no more reassured. He looked up to where her mother was busy instructing the two footmen on how to tie the three men together and prop them against the wall.
“Your mother is quite something.” he murmured.
Letty laughed. “I would have to concur with that assessment.” She stared in wonder as her mother efficiently managed the entire situation as if she’d been doing this her entire life.
“If it’s not too much to ask, Mrs. Strange, would you mind explaining how you come to be here?” Bertram asked.
Rosamund’s mouth twisted. “I haven’t heard myself called that in almost two decades. It’s quite something to hear it now. Here.”
“How do you come to be here, now?” Letty put in.
Rosamund smiled. “Shall we sit? I will tell you my part of this although I do suspect that one of these men who are tied up might be able to fill in the blanks.”
“Go ahead,” Bertram took Letty’s hand and seated her on the settee, next to her mother, while he took the chesterfield armchair opposite them.
“I suppose I should start at the beginning. My husband,” she inclined her head at Letty, “and Jacqui’s father, abandoned me some time ago because he suspected that I might be an English spy.”
Letty gasped, shocked at this revelation. “He abandoned you? He told us that you left.”
She snorted derisively. “I suppose it was all the same to him.” She looked at Letty in the eye. “Do not think for one minute that I wanted to leave you behind. I fought hard to take you with me but he said that you and your brother werehischildren.”
Letty reached out to take her hand and squeezed it.
“Still, I tried to run away with you both but he caught me and took you back. Then he put me on a ship that dropped me in the English Channel. It was a miracle that I was picked up by a fishing boat or else I might have died in the water.”
Letty blinked at her mother, devastated to hear her fate. “He told us you abandoned us. That you left without a backward glance. That you did not want us.”
“Oh, I wanted you, my dear. You and your brother were my reason for living.”
Letty looked away. “And then I killed him…Etienne.”
Rosamund frowned. “I was told he died of the lockjaw?”
“He did. But it was my fault that he got it.”
