Page 40 of Suddenly a Bride
“That I met so many people,” she answered, taking another step through the water. He followed in her wake. “I made sure to find out who had older children who could use work.”
“Why?”
“We definitely need more servants inside the castle. I could use help in all the gardens, too.” She glanced almost nervously at him. “You did say I could do as I wished as the lady of the castle.”
“I did. Just clear all hiring with Mrs. Haskell, who knows who the good workers are.”
“Everyone I met seems quite capable.”
“There used to be more idlers before, but now they all seem to work well out of fear.”
Her gaze was puzzled, and she seemed to stiffen. “What do you mean?”
He’d deliberately started this conversation to look for a reaction of guilt on her part, but he almost hated breaking the spell of magic she wove about this place.
“Well, I am a murderer, aren’t I?”
Chapter 10
Stunned, Gwyneth stared up at her husband. Many in the valley thought he was a murderer, and Edmund accepted it all as his due without defending himself. The water was suddenly cold as it swirled about her calves, and the brightness of the day faded. She pretended to lose her balance, and as she hoped, he quickly grabbed her other hand. She held him firmly and looked into his inscrutable eyes.
“We both know that you are not a murderer, Edmund,” she said, hiding the compassion she knew he’d hate.
“Perhaps the Langstons did not bother to inform you of my scandalous deeds.”
“They didn’t need to inform me about this. I was the one who found Elizabeth’s body.”
His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to probe her honesty with a searching gaze. “You?”
Gwyneth had thought he knew all of this, and to have to remind him only gave her pain. “While you were in France, I spent the last few months of her life at court as her companion.”
“Companion? She never needed anyone’s company but her own.”
“So I found out,” she said dryly. “But when Earl Langston sent for me, it seemed like such an exciting thing to go to court with my fascinating cousin. I was an unpaid maid.”
He studied her with narrowed eyes. “Did they not care for you as they did for Elizabeth?”
“If you mean did they handle the marriage negotiations, then yes. But other than that and my brief months with Elizabeth I never saw the Langstons.”
“I’m sorry.”
His gaze was so direct, but she could read nothing in his face.
“Don’t be. It made me realize that I don’t care to be part of a society where clothes and scandal are more important than making one’s family happy. And even when I was angry with Elizabeth, it was easy to pity her.”
Had his grip tightened? Or was it only a reaction to the water flowing between and around them, pulling them apart.
“Elizabeth knew nothing of happiness,” she continued, “or how to achieve it. She pursued her vanity, because it was all she knew.”
“Then you know what she did to herself,” he said in a low voice.
She nodded.
“I tried to stop her. I even destroyed the potion.”
“She had more made. She was determined to look like the queen, regardless of the fact that the queen came by her thin figure naturally.”
“Why did she not just paint her face, as so many other women do?” he asked hoarsely.
