by Ruth Owen
Edward gripped her hand as if he were holding onto a lifeline. “If you had not come, Cassie would have succeeded. Because of you, we discovered her plot before it was too late. If you had not come—if you had not risked your freedom to stay behind and face what you had done—I would never have found out the truth about the saboteur, or about the danger to my children, or about…Isabel.”
In her distress, Rina had forgotten that Edward was still dealing with the horror of his first wife’s murder. She reached up to brush his cheek. “You must not blame yourself for what happened to her. There is nothing you could have done.”
“Perhaps. But I will never stop wondering—if I had trusted her more, or trusted Cassie less…We have a choice, both of us. We can bury ourselves in the mistakes of our past, or we can put those mistakes behind us and look to the future. So I ask you again, Pru—” He arched a dark brow. “Hmm. I cannot call you Miss Winthrope any longer. And Quinn speaks of you as Murphy’s girl, Rina-lass, and occasionally the Red Queen. The whole thing has me blasted foxed. What exactly is your name?”
“Sabrina,” she said softly.
“Sabrina,” he mused with a slight grin. “Well, it fits you a great deal better than ‘Prudence.’ Caution was never your strong suit. But in spite of that, my family has formed quite an attachment for you. Amy is planning a double wedding. Grandmother is deciding on the names of our children. And Sarah and David are pestering me to know when they can start calling you ‘Mama.’ I shall not have any peace until we walk down the aisle. So, my beautiful, brave, uncautious Sabrina, I ask you again—were you telling the truth when you said that you loved me?”
His strong fingers laced protectively and possessively through hers, and she felt the shadows of her past melt away under his warm, treasuring love. What had started out as a deception had become a reality. By playing Prudence Winthrope, Quinn’s Queen of Diamonds, Rina had found a home she had longed for, a family she could cherish, and a strong, good man who needed her love as much as she needed his. ‘Twasn’t the Queen of Diamonds I was playing, but the Queen of Hearts.
Edward was right. They had a choice, and in that moment she made hers. No more lies. No more deceptions. She looked up, with her love for him shining in her eyes like the sun, and whispered, “Yes.”
Epilogue
“Cor, Aggie, will ya look at that!”
Agnes Peak stopped walking down the Cheapside street and peered through the iron bars of the fence that ringed the old church graveyard. “Can’t see much through this snow. What is it?”
“Have you no eyes?” Livy demanded. Once more she stabbed her bony finger in the direction of the churchyard. “Look over there. Near the Murphy grave.”
Dutifully, Aggie pulled her shawl closer against the March wind and obeyed her friend. This time she saw the couple standing next to the Murphy grave—a dark, distinguished-looking lord and an elegant young lady. The fact that they were visiting that fallen soul was strange enough. The fact that they looked as if they’d both stepped out of Mayfair was even stranger. “Well, I’ll be jiggered. What’s quality like that doing at Murphy’s grave?”
Livy squinted through the bars and licked her lips, as if she could almost taste the juicy morsel of gossip. “Will you look at his cloak? That’s made by a Par-ree tailor or my name ain’t Sneed. And that muff of hers—”
“Livy—”
“That muff is ermine. Not the tricked-up kind, mind you, but the real article. Oh, I’d give my Joe’s wages for a month to know what—”
“Livy, it’s—”
“—they’re up to. Nothing good, I’m sure. Of course, I’m not the kind to think the worst of anyone, but if I were, I’d—”
“Livy! It’s her!”
Annoyed, Lavinia glanced at Aggie. She wasn’t used to being interrupted. “What are you on about?”
“It’s her. His daughter. That lady is Murphy’s daughter!”
Livy gave the shorter woman a patronizing pat. “Now, now, Aggie. Murphy’s daughter disappeared well nigh a year ago, and good riddance. She was a brazen strumpet to be sure, and though I’ve never wished ill on a single soul, I’m sure that chit got her just comeuppan—”
Her words died as the aristocratic lady turned to the side, revealing a stunning fall of unmistakable auburn hair. Livy’s jaw dropped. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. It is her.”
“Sure as frost,” Aggie commented. She turned her gaze back to the churchyard, nearly as stunned as Livy at the transformation in the woman. A year ago Sabrina Murphy had been a plain, pitiful waif without a friend in the world. Now she was an elegant young lady, as polished as any of the gentry who passed this way in their fine carriages. The images were as different as day and night, yet they both had one thing in common. The grief Aggie’d seen on the girl’s face a year past was the same as the grief she now saw on the woman’s.
Sabrina knelt down and laid a bouquet of flowers on her father’s grave—a grave his widow had never graced with so much as a nosegay. It did not seem to be the act of a brazen strumpet. Aggie continued to watch as the lady carefully wiped the snow from the headstone’s letters, then rose into the embrace of the man at her side. The look that passed between them warmed Aggie’s heart despite the cold wind. That’s just how Tommy looked at me when we was courtin’, she thought as a soft smile creased her lips. “I’m glad the poor waif’s found someone to love.”
“Humph,” Livy commented, her speech returning with a vengeance. “And how did she find him, I ask you? By no honest means, I’ll vow.”
“Oh, what does it matter? isn’t it enough that she’s found some happiness?”
“For now, maybe. But it will never last. Daniel Murphy was a no-good scoundrel and his daughter’s the same. She’s a black-hearted gambler’s daughter, and she’ll come to a bad end, you mark my words.”
Aggie watched as the couple walked arm in arm out of the churchyard, disappearing into the curtain of swirling snow. She looked at the beautiful bouquet on the grave, and recalled the memory of the gentleman’s loving smile. Perhaps Daniel Murphy had been black-hearted—she really hadn’t known the man well enough to judge. But black-hearted or not, his daughter had loved him, and found love herself. “I don’t think she’ll come to a bad end. I think she’ll live happily ever after.”
“Shows what you know. She’s as wicked as sin, she is. Just like her da. Blood will tell, Aggie. Blood will—”
“Livy.”
“Yes.”
“Do shut up.” Whistling jauntily, Aggie turned away and started down the street, leaving the speechless Livy behind.
