by Cheryl Holt
“You have to stop them,” Britannia insisted.
“I don’t see how I can,” Edward said, “or why I’d want to now. You treacherous witch! You were about to pawn her off on me when you knew she was a whore.”
The insanity that had been simmering inside Britannia bubbled to the surface.
“She’s your daughter!” Britannia screeched. “You can’t let him take your own daughter! You can’t!”
“Britannia!” Edward snapped. “Control yourself.”
“She’s your daughter!” Britannia claimed again. “You have to marry your own daughter. I must have my revenge! I can’t be denied! Not after I’ve waited all these years to see you punished!”
The crazed pronouncement seemed to suck the air out of the room. Everyone froze in place.
John frowned at Ian. “Did she say what I think she said?”
“Yes, she did,” Ian responded.
Caroline dropped Ian’s hand and came back to her mother. She studied Britannia’s unhinged expression, then she shifted her gaze to Edward, and the assembled group turned with her. They all observed the same thing: She and Edward looked exactly alike.
She peered at the Earl, studying him, too, and deeming it curious that she had no features in common with him. How was it that she’d never before noted the differences? No wonder the Earl had never felt any connection to her. There wasn’t one.
“You had an affair with Edward, didn’t you, Mother?” Caroline correctly deduced. “You hinted at it once, but I ignored you. That’s what you were trying to disclose, wasn’t it? You were planning to marry me to my own father.”
“Oh, my God.” Edward lurched away from Britannia as if she had the plague. “Woman, you are mad as a hatter! You always have been!”
Britannia’s beady little eyes darted around the sanctuary, seeking an escape route, and she resembled a rat caught in a trap. For a moment, Caroline was certain Britannia would scoff at the accusation, but instead, she laughed an eerie laugh that raised the hackles on Caroline’s neck.
“Yes, I had an affair with him,” Britannia admitted. “I was young and foolish, and he made me love him, but he never arrived to take me away as he promised he would.”
“I didn’t come for you,” Edward interjected, “because you were a lunatic, and as far as I can tell, nothing has changed in the intervening decades.”
“You see?” Britannia fumed. “Even now, he insults me. Even now, he has no idea how to be sorry. He must pay!”
Her arms outstretched, she stumbled toward Edward, lumbering like an automaton and intent on inflicting bodily harm.
“Britannia!” the Earl commanded, and he marched down from the altar and stepped between Edward and her mother.
John positioned himself between them, too, but Britannia was such a large person, and in such a muddled state, that Caroline wasn’t positive they could restrain her. Not that Caroline cared if they could or not.
For once, she was unconcerned about the Earl and his countess and how their predicament was resolved.
She scrutinized the Earl, who’d always detested her, then Edward, who was unveiled as her true sire, and she shuddered with distaste. She’d been mere seconds away from an incestuous union, orchestrated by a maniac. She felt tainted and revolted, but at the same juncture, strangely freed.
The Earl was struggling to contain Britannia, as Edward scurried out, led to safety by the vicar. For a brief instant, Caroline’s gaze locked with the Earl’s, and he appeared stricken and apologetic, but it was probably a trick of the light.
“Lord Derby,” she said, her mode of address severing her ties to him, “your countess previously informed me that she murdered your mistress. With poison.”
“She what?” he wheezed with shock.
“She confessed her homicidal crime a few weeks ago. Directly after, I tried to notify you, but you wouldn’t listen. I thought you should know.” She turned to Ian. “Please, take me out of here. I don’t want to see either of them ever again.”
“You won’t ever have to,” he vowed. He glanced over at John. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” John said. “I’ll stay and clean up the disaster. You get going.”
Together, she and Ian walked out of the church.
Behind her, she could hear her mother shrieking, “Let me at him, Wakefield. Let me at him!”
Her brother was by the door, having watched all with his typical disdain. As she passed, his sole participation in the event was to mutter, “Good luck. You’ll need it.”
Caroline swept by him without a word, judging it peculiar that he was now only a half brother and scarcely related, at all, but not being especially saddened by the realization. He’d always been awful to her, his dislike as blatant as her parents’ had been.
She followed Ian outside. His horse was tied in front, and he escorted her to it, tossed her up, and jumped on after her. The animal was winded from the journey that had brought Ian to London, but it was hale and spirited, and as Ian pulled on the reins, it eagerly leapt to action.
They raced off, cantering down the road, the church quickly vanishing from view. She didn’t even have on a coat, and the cold bit into her skin. She wrapped her arms around Ian’s waist, held on tight, and never looked back.
Chapter TWENTY-THREE
“I demand that you have me released!”
“I could, but I won’t.”
Bernard stared at Britannia, wondering how he was to deal with the reality that his countess was a raging lunatic. He’d never liked her, had definitely never loved her, but honestly!
She was pacing incessantly across the small cell. Her dress was ragged and dirty, her hair sticking out as if the gray strands had been altered into snakes. She looked inhuman, demonic even, like a wicked creature from an ancient Greek legend.
The hospital where he and Wakefield had delivered her was the best of its kind, but the accolade was a sorry statement on the level of modern convalescent care. She’d been housed in the private wing, with the other members of affluent families who had to be permanently locked away, but the conditions were sparse and disturbing.
“You can’t mean to keep me here,” she said.
“Oh, but I do. You’re completely insane. And you’re dangerous. You can’t be out among normal people. There’s no telling what mischief you might instigate.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong!”
“Nothing!”
“I was entirely justified in seeking revenge against Edward.”
“Madam, I suggest you be silent. The very fact that you would mention your affair to me only underscores how crazed you are.”
“You are a philandering roué. You always have been. Don’t try to seize the moral high ground.”
He’d been an awful husband; he couldn’t deny it. He’d chased after every trollop who’d strolled by, but with all that had recently occurred, his liaisons seemed to have been so pointless.
He wished he could go back and do so many things differently. He wished Georgie were alive and being courted by some fine fellow her own age who would have cherished her as she’d deserved. He wished he’d been a better father to Adam and Caroline.
After the fiasco at the church, Adam had packed his bags and left, claiming he’d never return, and Bernard hoped that time and distance would calm him, but he wouldn’t count on it.
Mostly, he wished he knew how Caroline was weathering her mother’s revelations, but he had no idea where she was and no one he could ask who might inform him. She wasn’t an earl’s daughter, after all, so everything she’d understood about herself was false.
She’d been born during his marriage to Britannia, so in the eyes of God and the law she was considered to be his child and always would be. He wouldn’t repudiate her. It was so strange, but when he’d believed himself to be her actual father he’d constantly snubbed her. Now that he’d found out he wasn’t her father, he was desperate to make amends, to take the faltering steps toward a continuin
g relationship.
Instead, he would head to his empty mansion. The family he’d loathed was in tatters. His spouse was deranged, his son had fled, and his daughter was missing and would likely never talk to him again. It was a pitiful situation, indeed.
“If you aren’t here to fetch me home,” Britannia nagged, “why have you come?”
“I’ve brought some of the items you requested.”
“Pen and ink?”
“No.”
“But I need to write letters. I have to notify my friends of how heinously I’m being treated!”
“You have no friends, Britannia. Not any who’d like to hear from you anyway, and I won’t allow you to share your venom with the outside world. You’ve done enough harm.”
“You can’t refuse to let me correspond!”
“I already have.” He placed the satchel of her belongings on the narrow, rickety cot where she slept. He didn’t know how it held her enormous weight and girth.
“Now then, I’m off.”
“When is your next visit scheduled?”
“It’s not. In the future, if you must contact me, you’ll have to send a message through my solicitor. I don’t intend to confer with you in person ever again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You shall come whenever I summon you.”
“No, Britannia, I won’t. I’m leaving you to stew in your own juice.”
“Stop being melodramatic.”
“I could have had you tried and hanged.”
“For what crime?”
“For murder.”
She laughed. “There’s not a jury in the land that would have convicted me for killing your mistress. You were going to divorce me. The girl had you bewitched.”
He could have made a thousand replies. He could have admitted all the ways he’d erred; he could have reminded her that his failings weren’t Georgie’s fault, or that he was genuinely sorry for everything that had transpired.
But she was crazy, and he was so very weary.
“You must listen to me,” he told her, unsure of how to get her to focus. “Should you need anything, tell your nurse, and a note will be dispatched to my lawyer.”
“I won’t speak with your lawyer. I will speak with you directly, or I will speak to no one, at all.”
“So be it.”
He sighed, gazing at the gloomy cell, at his mad wife who hadn’t yet paused in her pacing. She was like a spinning top that couldn’t be stilled.
“I doubt you’ll ever thank me,” he murmured, “but by keeping you here, I’m doing you a favor.”
“A favor! How?”
“At least you’re alive. That’s better than swinging from a gibbet, I’d warrant. Good-bye.”
He knocked for the guard to let him out, and to his dismay, she hurried over and stood as if she’d walk out with him.
“What are you thinking, Britannia?”
“I’m coming with you.”
He sighed again. “You’re not. You can’t. You must remain here.”
“With all these lunatics?”
“Well, since you put it that way, yes.”
“I’m coming with you!” she repeated, growing agitated.
He rapped more forcefully, and the guard arrived. Bernard stepped out, and Britannia tried to step out, too, but the guard held up a hand, signaling her to halt. Without warning, she grabbed his wrist and twisted it so hard that he howled in pain, and he began struggling with her.
It was a hideous scene—his demented, obese wife grappling with her jailor—and Bernard was too stunned to assist or intervene.
On whose side would he have fought? Britannia had to stay, but he couldn’t bear to be the one to physically restrain her. He was paying the staff, and paying them well, to do that exact sort of thing.
The guard’s yowling brought several others running, and it took five burly men to wrestle her to the floor. One of them produced a type of jacket, and they shoved her arms into it. The sleeves had long strings attached at the cuffs, and they were wrapped around her waist so that she was trussed like a Christmas goose.
The sweating, bruised men eased her to a sitting position, but she was too large for them to move her farther until she was ready to go. She glared up at him, and her hatred was so evident that Bernard blanched.
“I waited thirty years,” she hissed. “I planned how I would wound you in the worst possible way. I finally told you the truth about Caroline, but you don’t care!”
“I care that you hurt her, when she didn’t deserve it. But I’m unconcerned about you. Your misery is all your own doing.”
“When I get out, I’ll kill Edward, then I’ll kill you. You’d best keep looking over your shoulder.”
“You’ll never get out,” Bernard vowed. “I intend to see to it.”
He left, and she started screaming, “Bernard! Bernard! Bernard!”
He shuddered and hastened down the lengthy labyrinth of corridors, and even after he was in his carriage and proceeding home, he was certain he could hear her bellowing his name.
* * *
Edward entered his club, and he tarried in the foyer, impatient for the butler to take his coat and hat, but no one appeared, and his temper flared.
How dare the servants fail to attend him! His exclusive membership cost a pretty penny, and their sloth would be reported.
He marched up the stairs to the library, positive he would bump into some person of authority to whom he could vent his wrath, but to his surprise, he encountered no one. The place was busy—male laughter drifted by as he approached the stately chamber—but as he strolled into the room, the closest gentleman coughed discreetly, alerting the other patrons. The noise was a warning that wafted through the crowd.
Heads turned; brows raised; whispers swept by. The words Shelton and his own daughter! were bandied by all. Every man stared him down, their indignation and censure clear. He stared back, angry, defiant, and refusing to be cowed.
From out of nowhere, the butler emerged, his fake smile firmly fixed.
“Is there a problem?” Edward asked. As if he didn’t know!
“No, Mr. Shelton. If I might speak with you downstairs?”
He was much smaller than Edward, but he had a nimble and diplomatic knack for steering out an undesirable guest. On a dozen previous occasions, Edward had chuckled when it had been some other poor fellow who was cast out.
To realize that it was now himself! To understand that he was being shunned!
For the briefest instant, he dragged his feet, thinking that he might defend himself, that he might hurl the facts at their pathetic faces.
I had no idea that she was my daughter, he imagined himself saying. It was all Britannia’s doing. The woman is mad, I tell you! Mad!
But as he frowned at their stony expressions, absorbing the collective resolve to eject him from their eminent company, he recognized they couldn’t be dissuaded, and he wasn’t about to grovel.
Without comment, he whipped away and stomped out. He was mortified and fully aware that his years of residing in London—perhaps in England—were at an end. He’d never be invited to another social event. He’d be ignored by everyone who mattered.
Who had tattled? Derby? Wakefield? Why would they? Or had it been that weasel of a vicar? Who could be trusted anymore?
He stormed to his carriage and climbed in, advising his driver to take him to his favorite brothel. There was no situation that a bit of illicit fornication couldn’t cure, and within minutes he’d sneaked through the shrubbery to the secret entrance.
He knocked the special knock, expecting to be greeted immediately, but he waited and waited, and no one came.
Finally, the madam peeked out, a brawny houseman lurking behind her.
Edward straightened and flashed his most imperious glare. “I seek an afternoon of entertainment. I demand to be admitted.”
“We don’t serve your kind,” she sneered. “Be gone, you disgusting pervert!”
She slammed an
d barred the door.
Gad! Even the whores were revolted by him! Considering some of the foul deeds he’d attempted in the woman’s establishment, that was saying a lot.
He was so shocked he couldn’t move. He loitered on the stoop, his cold cheeks red with humiliation, the icy rain wetting his shoulders. He wanted to raise his fist, to pound and howl until his furious summons was heeded.
He’d inform the old harlot of how he was an innocent victim, how he’d done nothing wrong. It wasn’t as if he’d married the accursed child. Yes, he’d privately lusted after her, but with no overt action being undertaken, how could he be judged guilty? Was it his fault that Britannia was deranged? Why should he be punished?
He trudged to his carriage and gave the directions to hurry home. He’d pack his bags and flee the city in the dark of night where he wouldn’t be seen scurrying away like a rat in the sewer. But where the hell was he to go? And when would he ever be able to return?
* * *
Rebecca was snuggled under the covers and staring at the ceiling when she first noted that someone was banging on her front door. It wasn’t that late, only midnight or so, and she was plagued by her usual insomnia.
Her butler and housekeeper were away for the weekend, so neither was available to respond. The other servants were asleep in their rooms in the attic, and even if they could hear the commotion, they wouldn’t answer.
Well, she wasn’t about to, either. Whoever it was could come back in the morning when sane, rational people were up and dressed and receiving callers.
The thumping grew more determined, and she’d tugged a pillow over her head when a man bellowed, “Rebecca Blake! I know you’re in there!”
Scowling, she sat up.
“Rebecca!” he continued. “Get your shapely ass out of bed and open the door!”
“What the devil…?” she muttered.
Shivering against the chill, she grabbed a woolen shawl and marched down the stairs.
“Rebecca!” he yelled again. “Don’t make me come in and get you!”
“Would you be silent?” she griped as she fumbled with the lock, yanked on the knob, and peered out. “You’ll wake the dead.”
