Chapter 22 #2
“She never leaves a thing out of place.” Julia stepped up and her voice trembled as she said, “There’s a note here.”
They took it and read it, first to themselves. When Evelina gasped and Julia let out a broken moan of pain, Silas couldn’t wait. He snatched it from them and read it out loud,
My dearest Evelina and Julia,
This is all too much for me, knowing how I destroyed you.
And I cannot go on with the guilt any longer.
Not in harming you, nor in the humiliation I caused against our innocent father, who only wished to raise us with love and kindness.
To free us all from my mistakes, I must end my life.
Think of my favorite spot and know that I’m washed away from all the pain.
With all my love to you and to Silus, goodbye. Arabella.
He was unsteady on his feet and Reg reached out to catch his elbow. “Suicide?” Silas whispered. “No. Not possible. She would never.”
“I agree,” Evelina said, though her voice was thick with emotion.
“I know she sometimes feels guilt at where my path and Julia’s took us, but we’ve spoken of it often.
She would know that losing her would be a far worse thing for us than anything else we’ve ever done or endured.
Someone must have compelled her to do it.
Look at how she’s spelled your name wrong. ”
“She wouldn’t do that, even in haste?” Reg asked.
“No. Never.” Julia paced away. “She’s written that name so many times in the years, she could probably do it in the dark with her left hand. It was on purpose. Which means she’s trying to send us a message. Let us know this isn’t real.”
“Let us know she’s in danger if she were lucky enough that someone found it.” Silas pivoted toward Barnaby. “How long ago did she come home? It couldn’t have been long.”
“Less than an hour,” Barnaby said. “She went into the parlor downstairs. When I came to tell her that the food she asked for had been delivered to her chamber, she refused to open the door to the parlor. I thought it odd. A little while later my wife and I heard her come up and assumed she went to her chamber.”
Evelina swallowed hard. “If our father was there, if he was truly of a violent bent, she would have tried to keep Barnaby and the rest of the staff out of it.”
“Yes,” Silas said. “That wonderful streak of protection in her would have wanted to save him. But she went to the trouble to write this, to leave these clues. So there might still be a chance. If we can find her.”
Reg drew the letter from Silas’s fingers. “This line is odd: Think of my favorite spot and know that I’m washed away from all the pain. Why would she be so specific?”
They were all silent for a moment, the women pondering the answer and then Julia gasped, as if she’d thought of something.
“When she received this house from the Duke of Kentwood a few years ago, I remember her saying she was especially happy to have it because it was so close to her favorite place in the world. She meant the park across the street.”
Evelina nodded. “Yes, yes! There’s a place with a little grove of trees where one can sit and watch the Thames rush by. That could be what she meant by washed away.”
“Come on,” Silas said, rushing from the room. “Reg and I will go. You stay here and direct the guard when they arrive.”
“Like hell we will,” Evelina said, and started for the door. “We are coming, Julia and I and Harry.”
“I cannot,” Southwater said. Gently but still firmly.
Evelina stopped and pivoted back to stare at him. “You—you would not go to help my sister?”
“My reputation, Evelina,” he said. “I could not be involved in such a scandalous thing. You shouldn’t either. Come with me. We’ll get word when it’s over.”
She drew back, her face twisting. “When it’s over? You mean when they find my sister dead?”
He flinched. “Or alive and well. And then we would have involved ourselves for nothing.”
Evelina swallowed hard, but then lifted up to kiss his cheek. “You should go. I understand your desire to protect yourself. But I’m going with the rest of them. I’ll call on you tomorrow and let you know what has come of it.” She glanced back at Silas. “Come on.”
She and Julia raced from the room and Silas and his brother followed. As Silas passed the duke, he muttered, “Cowardly fuck.”
They made their way out of the house and across the road, dodging carriages and horses in their haste.
The park across the way was very dark, but Evelina and Julia seemed to know the way by heart.
Of course they would if Arabella had taken them to this “favorite place” over the years.
Silas could only hope he wouldn’t find her crumpled in that spot.
But he couldn’t bear to think that so he kept his mind on hope. And on the love he felt for Arabella that he would never keep inside again if he found her alive and unharmed.
* * *
A rabella stumbled as she was dragged through the woods by her father.
There was a path, but he seemed bent on causing her as much pain and fear as possible, so he dragged her through the brambles instead, tearing her dress and scratching her arms as they went.
When she tripped, he didn’t hesitate and continued to drag her as she staggered to try to get back to her feet.
“You’re not going to make a suicide very realistic if you batter me the whole way,” she snapped.
“Well, they won’t find you for a good long time, if ever,” he said over his shoulder. “The river so rarely gives up its dead.”
She swallowed. He couldn’t make her drown, he wouldn’t be so sloppy as to give her a chance to get away.
So he’d likely shoot her and toss her in the current.
And he was correct, there would be very little change she’d be found.
And even if she were and could somehow be identified, who on the guard would put much effort into determining the cause of her death?
She might have a pretty title like courtesan or Cyprian linked to her name, but a whore was a whore was a whore to all of them.
She didn’t want to cry. That would give her father too much satisfaction. She bit her lip until she tasted blood and let him take her to the water.
“Is this the place?” he asked. “The grove? The riverside?”
She nodded, for there was no reason to lie anymore.
She’d given herself…what? Perhaps an hour from the time she’d found him in her parlor to when he’d shoot her in the head without a thought or a care?
Her sisters wouldn’t be home before then to determine she was missing.
Silas was with his brothers, hopefully settling their relationship in a positive way.
No one would come.
“You know, we loved you, despite it all.” One of the tears she so desperately didn’t want to shed slid down her cheek. “All three of us wanted to make you happy. To give you what you wanted.”
“And yet you all ran away. You traded respectability for scandal without a thought,” he snapped, facing her.
He was once again highlighted in pale glow of the moon and he looked like a monster again.
She tried to find her father there, but couldn’t.
It felt like no remnants of any positive part of him remained.
He was only this. And it was nearly as heartbreaking as the acceptance of the fact she would die.
“We weren’t being offered respectability,” she said softly.
“ You made me a whore, Father. Papa . You were trying to sell my virginity with just as much zeal as any madame ever has. I ran because I feared the consequences. And so did my sisters. The funny part is that if you had just been a fraction less cruel, we would have all fallen in line. We would have given you just what you wanted and hoped it would be enough. But I look at you now and see it never could have been enough.”
He blinked at her. “No… I’m the victim. You stole from me. You stole my future.”
“You stole mine first,” she whispered.
He was silent for a very long time and then he pointed the gun at her. “Then perhaps we go together. Perhaps we both atone for our sins in one fell swoop. I can’t fix what you broke. There’s nothing left for me. So you die and I die with you and we erase all the damage done.”
She couldn’t stop the tears now. Couldn’t hold off the terror and the regret.
Not for the life she’d led that this man so despised, but for the one she wouldn’t get to lead.
The love she wouldn’t get to share with her sisters and with Silas.
She’d never get to tell that man that he was everything to her.
That she adored him beyond reason and hope and reality. He would never know that.
She sank to her knees in the wet grass and stared up at her father beyond the pistol now leveled at her head.
“Please don’t do this,” she said. “You don’t have to.
You can let me go. Let all of this go. I would give you the money to leave the country if you wanted it.
You could take a new name and forget you ever had three daughters. ”
“Three ungrateful daughters,” he said, but she could see the hesitation.
“Three very ungrateful daughters,” she corrected herself, trying not to hope that she might be getting through to him. That she might make it out alive. “You could start new. Become someone you want to be instead of what you became when we abandoned you. Please. Please let me do that.”
He stared at her a long moment and then he lifted the gun that had drooped momentarily in his fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut, ready for the blast and the darkness that would come after.
But when the blast came, there was no pain, there was no darkness. She heaved backward onto her backside out of instinct and scooted away before she realized she hadn’t been shot. Instead her father lay on the shores of the Thames, smoking gun still clutched in his hand.
And he was dead.