Page 70 of My Highland Rogue
“Sean told me that Betty switched the babies after the fire. You were one of the few people who would know if that’s true.”
She opened her eyes, turned her head, and stared at him.
“What is it you want from me?”
“The truth. Did Betty switch the babies, Miss McBride?”
“She was a hard woman. I imagine you know that, Gordon McDonnell. She could put fear into anyone just with a glance. We weren’t friends, in case you think that.”
“Did Betty switch the babies, Miss McBride?” he asked again.
She looked away, staring out the window once more.
“We lost one of our own that night. A lass by the name of Maisie. She was a good girl, a strong girl. She’d had her own child just three months earlier. Her husband was as proud as could be that she got a place at Adaire Hall. I didn’t even get to go to her funeral.”
She looked up at him, and he was startled by the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“It took the countess months after the fire to leave her sickbed. It took me weeks.”
She shocked him by pulling up her skirt to reveal her right leg. It was a web of scars, just like the countess’s face. She wasn’t done, however. She unbuttoned her cuff and rolled up her right sleeve. It, too, showed signs of being badly burned.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“There was no reason for you to. I don’t go around showing myself to other people.”
She buttoned her cuff again, taking so much time with the task that he almost bent forward to do it for her. She wouldn’t have welcomed that.
“To answer your question, Gordon McDonnell, I don’t know. By the time I was well enough to take up my duties again, two months had passed. Whatever I suspected, I kept to myself.”
He didn’t believe her. There was something in the way she refused to meet his eyes that told him she was lying.
She closed her eyes again, effectively shutting him out. He couldn’t pull words from her mouth or a confession from her soul.
“Would Betty have told anyone else?”
“Leave me, please. I am tired.”
He stood and looked down at her. “Betty might have given her son the life he would otherwise never have known. To do that, she stole mine.”
She finally met his look. “You’ve prospered all the same.”
“I have.”
“So who gets the credit for that, Gordon McDonnell? Betty, I’m thinking.”
“Does she get the blame, too, Miss McBride?”
“If she does, it’s too late to make amends.”
There was his answer, shining clear in her rheumy eyes.
He wasn’t Gordon McDonnell. He was the rightful heir to an earldom and to Adaire Hall.
And Jennifer was his sister.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The time had come to leave Adaire Hall. Gordon would never return, even if Harrison bankrupted the estate. Other people would wander through the buildings and appraise the furniture and belongings. He wouldn’t see it again.
