Page 47 of To Treasure an Heiress
Rory’s snort of laughter agreed. “Oh, I see what this is. You fancy her. Well, Hank, you’ll want to look elsewhere. She doesn’t live upto your sterling standards. Did she mention why she was dismissed? Caught rolling in the hay—”
“Will you shut up, Rory?” Ainsley sounded more annoyed than she’d ever heard him.
But Rory wouldn’t have to say more. His implications were crystal clear, and they’d sink fast and deep into his cousin’s mind. Just as they sank straight to her dormant conscience.
Rory turned to her again and leaned close. “I’m your choice now. And if you want to keep it open, don’t drag your feet. I’m not hanging around here long. If you’re not ready to come with me next time I stop by, then you’re on your own. But if youdowant to come”—he fastened a smile to his lips, but there was no charm in it now—“then come with information. Eyes and ears open, luv.”
She shook her head, though it still felt dazed. “I won’t betray them.”
“They’d betrayyou. Just like Clifford, ready to turn on you at the first sign of imperfection. They’re all the same, all the masters. You think they’d suffer your being around them if they knew the truth about you?” He shook his head. “Bet your parents wouldn’t be too pleased either. I’m it, Senara. So focus onus, not them.”
Ainsley remained standing, solid and straight, at her side. “Not everyone is as fickle as you, Rory. Don’t listen to him, Miss Dawe.”
Rory laughed and backed up a step. “She knows the truth.” His gaze arrowed into her, stripping her down to her hopes, to her shame. “Don’t you, luv?”
She couldn’t convince her lips to move.
It was his turn to shake his head, looking disgusted with her. “Think about it. I’ll give you two weeks to weigh your choices while I see about some other business, and then that’s it. If you don’t come with something useful, I’m gone.Thenwhat will you have?”
She didn’t dare to answer. It didn’t bear thinking about.
He melted into the night, and Senara didn’t stay a moment longer to make sure he left the garden. She spun back toward the door, the horror of it all too heavy. And to think that Ainsley had witnessed itall! How could she ever hold her head up around him again, much less look him in the eye?
“Senara.” Ainsley stepped into her path, apology in every line of his posture. “Don’t let anything he says bother you. I know better than to believe a word that falls from Rory’s lips.”
Somehow hearing him so ready to dismiss the accusations undid her.
Because she didn’t deserve his high regard. Not in the least. She had trusted a man bent on using her. She had let love for him blind her to her own morals. She had given what she could never take back. And she’d lost everything.
“Excuse me.” The mutter came out halfway to a sob. She sidestepped him and flew through the door, ignoring her father, who was just stepping into the kitchen with questions on his lips.
Up the stairs, into the room that had always been hers. It was dim inside, but she didn’t need to see. She just needed to disappear. She closed the door behind her, fingers hovering for a moment. And then she did something she hadn’t done since she was fourteen and crying over the loss of her grandmother. She turned the skeleton key in the old iron lock.
It squeaked a protest at being shifted in its bed, but then a solid clunk assured her the bolt had moved.
She pulled it from its hole and then just stared at the dark outline of it against her pale palm, its details smudged by the rainy twilight coming through her window. Never in her life had she bothered taking the key from the lock. Because her door didn’t need to be bolted, certainly not from the inside. She’d never had any secrets to lock away. Never had any danger to keep out.
Now, she had both, and the truth of it was cold and rusty in her shaking hand.
Though she sat slowly, her old mattress still protested her weight, the springs rattling. She set the skeleton key on her knee for a moment, long enough to reach under her collar for the long silver chain she’d worn for the last seventeen years. She slipped it on everymorning, off again every evening. Lifted it now, a familiar whisper. But then she undid the clasp. Fed one end through the loop end of the iron. Fastened it again.
The door’s key slid down, gravity pulling it until it clanked against the pendant key. The one so ornate, so lovely, so promising.“Your life,”Mamm-wynn F had said as she pressed it to her palm in her last moments,“is whatever you make of it. Just remember that family is the key to it all.”
But she’d squandered that hope, that promise. Thrown it away on a man who’d proven himself unworthy of it.
And this was what she had left. A stark, cold reminder that doors could be locked too late. And that if one’s secrets were already loose, then the dangers were already waiting.
13
Never had Beth imagined that she would resent the first rays of sunshine after a week of incessant rain. She’d been rather looking forward to another day tucked away in the library, Mother’s words looping before her. But instead, the sunshine had brought Mabena and Libby and Lady Emily back to Tresco, so the day had been spent with them.
And it had been a wonderful day, she granted, as she padded back down the steps on bare feet, long after she should have been asleep again. They’d shown the girls all they’d found in the attic. Briggs had pulled out three letters from the Scofield servants that had arrived during the previous week, sharing far more gossip about Nigel than they really needed to know—including the fact that he hadn’t been back to the family estate in more than a month, but that he’d made appearances at the London townhouse several times.
And then Mabena had gone for a stroll with Casek and come back with a ring on her finger and a flush in her cheeks, so naturally supper had been an all-family celebration, including uncles and aunts and cousins and more or less the entire village “just happening by.”
Island village life. She loved it, in general. And wouldn’t have traded it in this case especially, since Mabena certainly deserved all the happy wishes and the happy future they were certain to usher in.
It had been dark before that petered out, which meant it was too late for anyone to sail back to St. Mary’s. Libby and Mabena had already been planning on spending the night with the Moons, but Emily and Briggs were left little choice. Em was asleep now in Beth’s bed, and Briggs had gone home with Mabena.
