Page 57 of The Knight's Pledge
“Tommy,” Harriet called out in a thin,cracking voice.
The man turned his head, his gaze bouncing off of Effie to go to the man behind her. He straightened, his brushy eyebrows raising.
“Lucan?” he asked quietly, and then his gaze came back to Effie and the entire universe seemed to slow its spinning to a halt as Effie came to the end of the trestle and stood not ten feet from Thomas Annesley.
Baron Annesley, Lord of Darlyrede.
Murderer and fugitive.
Fisherman.
Widower.
He looked at her, his brows now knit together, his head cocking slightly. His face was weather-worn and tanned, almost stained. And she remembered that he had lived a hard life for the past twenty-five years—a life on the sea. His long arms jutted out from his sleeves, the wrists and finger joints knobby and swollen. His clothing was still that of a common laborer, and yet it all appeared new and of fine quality.
Effie swallowed and raised her chin. “Are you Thomas Annesley?”
His head cocked a bit further, his eyes narrowed. “Doona take me as unkind, child, but I’d ken who is doing the asking of that question before I answer it. There are many who are out for Thomas Annesley’s hide. Your fair face is somehow familiar to me, but…nay, your hair is light. I canna think where we’ve met.Nae Caedmaray.”
“No, not Caedmaray,” Effie allowed. “We’ve never met. I was given the name Euphemia Hargrave the night I first drew breath at Darlyrede House, some thirty years ago,” Effie said. “But I now go by Effie. Effie Annesley.”
Tommy’s head straightened, then his back. His face paled beneath his bronzed skin, as if he suddenly recognized Effie’s face. “Cordelia?” he rasped.
Effie nodded and forced herself to swallow before she could speak. “I amyour daughter.”
Eternity seemed to pass before Tommy took one halting step, then another. “Cordelia,” he whispered again, his complexion reddening. And then with a staggering advance, he came to his knees before Effie, wrapping his arms about her.
“I thought they had taken you both,” he sobbed. He gained his feet and took her into his arms roughly,still weeping.
Effie’s arms hung limp at her sides as emotion swirled around her in a fury, shocking her into stillness. Was this really happening?
“Father?”she whispered.
“Aye, my girl,” Tommy said, squeezing her tighter. “I’m here. I’m here.”
And then Effie’s arms went around his waist, felt the solidness of him. Her fingertips clutched at his woolen tunic.
Her father. Her parent. Her blood. Her family. Here, now.
“Father,” she breathed, tears of a long-forgotten little girl at last releasing in a flood break, years of loneliness and isolation, fear that she would never find him, never know, at last able to find release in this Scottish castle, in the arms of an old man she had never met, but who her heart had recognized at once. She clung evenmore fiercely.
They pulled apart from one another after several moments and Effie at last lookedinto his eyes.
“My God,” he breathed. “You are the image of her. Of your mother.” He led her by the hand to the chair at the head of the trestle and pulled it out for her. “Sit down.”
Effie glanced around the grand space and saw that Lucan and Harriet had quietly quit the room. She screeched the chair closer to the table, just as Tommy did to the one he dragged near.
“There were no portraits of her at Darlyrede,” Effie said.
“There used to be,” Tommy said. “The last was your mother and I in the costumes we were to wear at our wedding.”
Effie shook her head. “I’venever seen it.”
“My God. My God.Effie.” Tommy looked down at the table top briefly. “How did you…how did you know? What do you know?”
Then Effie told him of the years of doubt while in that plush prison Caris Hargrave had made for her; of circumstances and people and timelines that did not add up. The family she was to have come from that was never spoken of, never alluded to—Effie had never even been told from where they supposedly hailed. She spoke of the talks she’d had with Father Kettering, stories and rumors she’d heard from the village. Slowly the people who’d known the tales had vanished or died, and somehow this man, Thomas Annesley, was being blamed.
“I knew it wasn’t true,” Effie said to him. “What they were saying. I could see it with my own eyes. People who came to Darlyrede were there one day and gone the next. And Vaughn Hargrave only became richer and more powerful.” She paused. “I knew how old I was. And I’d heard…I’d heard dreadful stories of Vaughn Hargrave’s personal attendants. And then the night that word reached Darlyrede that Castle Dare was afire, I hoped what they said was true—that it was you who had done it. I prayed it was you. And I went to find you.”
