Gambler's Daughter

by Ruth Owen

  “There was never a lover, was there? You made it up to make Edward believe that Isabel had deserted him.”

  “Very perceptive. I saw the story of the shipwreck in the Times, and used it to my advantage. There was no old governess, but since Isabel’s relatives were all dead there was no one to contradict me. It offered a nice touch of authenticity, did it not? Finally, I penned a letter—Isabel’s confession. Cyril and Paris both saw me receive it, though I made certain they never got a good look at the contents or the postmark. I’ll own I underestimated you again, my dear, when I told you of Isabel’s love for her children—forgetting that I’d told Paris that she spoke ill of them in the letter. After a few years one forgets, you must understand. In any event, Cyril tossed the letter in the fire when he saw how deeply it affected me, as I knew he would. Dear Cyril. He would have done anything for me. But with Isabel gone, he was no longer necessary to my plans. He was already quite ill. It was a very little thing to increase his laudanum dose to a fatal one.”

  Rina listened in horror as Cassie calmly told of not one murder, but two. Three, counting Isabel’s unborn child. And now she means to make it four. Rina chose her next words as if she were walking on eggshells. “Cassie, you are ill. Do not add another crime to the ones you’ve already committed. Help me out of here. There are people who can help you. Doctors—”

  “Doctors,” Cassie snarled, and for an instant the depth of her madness gleamed in her eyes. “I saw what they did to my mother. But she was weak—afraid to do what was needed to claim her destiny. But I am not weak and I will not fail. I will be Countess of Trevelyan.”

  “No, you will not,” Rina stated quietly. “Edward will never marry you. He loves me.”

  Cassie’s mouth curved into a satisfied smile. “My dear, you put too much stock in men’s fickle nature. When he learns you have deserted him, his love will vanish like dross in the wind.”

  “Edward will never believe I deserted him.”

  “Until a few days ago, I might have agreed with you. But that was before I learned you are not Prudence Winthrope.”

  Rina’s whole body went numb. “Th…that’s preposterous.”

  “Please, do not waste my time. My father made many friends during his foreign travels, and I contacted several of them to check out your story. Three days ago I learned the truth. I considered telling Edward, but I was uncertain whether the truth would entirely his infatuation for you. You see, I understand him, far better than either you or Isabel. I will tell him that I confronted you with the truth; and that you left rather than face the consequences of your actions. I will say that you laughed about his besotted love for you. And when he sees that you never loved him he will turn to me, just as he did after Isabel died.”

  Helplessly, Sabrina realized that Cassie might be right. She would spin lies about Rina’s duplicity, seeding just enough damning truth to give the story credence. Edward would believe that Rina never loved him, that the wonderful wholeness they’d found in each other’s arms was a lie. It would destroy him, but that would not matter to Cassie. Brokenhearted, he would marry her, believing she was the only woman he could trust. He would enter a loveless bargain, his heart growing more tarnished and jaded with each passing year.

  “Please,” she breathed desperately. “Please, do not do this to him.”

  “You are hardly in a position to dictate,” Cassie noted as she got up from the ledge. “Now I really must be going, lest the few servants remaining in this house note my absence. But if it eases your mind, I promise you that I shall make Edward a good wife. I will give him sons—two, I think. They will be a great consolation to him after his eldest son meets with an unexpected accident. After all, it must be my blood that continues the Trevelyan line.”

  “No!” Rina’s scream rang through the caves. She clawed at the wall until her palms bled, trying to climb up the rough rocks. But it did no good. Helplessly she watched the light from Cassie’s lantern fade, knowing that it was her deception that had given the evil woman the means to spin a credible story of her betrayal. The only chance Edward and David had was if she escaped from this dungeon. She tried again to climb the rocks, knowing she had to find a way out, she had to…

  * * *

  Despair was a place. Rina found it in the darkness, lived it in a way that had no time, no hope of release. For a while the passage of hours was marked by hunger, and thirst, but even those faded into consuming nothingness of despair. Her hands were caked with blood. Her ankle was swollen and useless. She had failed in her escape. Cassie had won. Again.

  Sleep and waking became one. The air was thick with the smell of decay and old death. She glanced at the corner of the well that had contained Isabel’s remains. How long had the poor woman lived in the darkness after Cassie left her?

  How long would she live?

  She fell asleep and dreamed that she was on the cliffs of Ravenshold, walking arm in arm with Isabel. Through the swirling mists ahead she caught sight of Edward. She cried out to him, warning him of Cassie’s evil plan. But he looked through her as if she didn’t exist. Isabel smiled sadly. You are dead, just like me. He will never hear you, no matter how much you cry out, no matter how much you want to warn him. He will never know the truth.

  She woke screaming.

  She continued trying to escape until she became too weak to continue. She must have fainted, because when she came to she was delirious. She heard a voice babbling that she could only vaguely recognize as her own. Memories of her life became jumbled, disjointed. Sometimes she thought of herself as Sabrina, sometimes as Prudence, and sometimes Isabel. “Funny,” she muttered with a giddy laugh. “So funny. Borrowed Prudence’s life. Borrowed Isabel’s death. S’funny, don’t you see…”

  She fell into a heap on the opposite side of the well from Isabel—she would not pollute the lady’s honest bones with her own tainted ones. Rina was a liar and a murderer. She deserved everything she got. But Isabel had been innocent; her only crime was loving her husband enough to believe in him. Edward would never know that. He would continue to believe that Isabel’s love was false, just as he would believe that Sabrina’s love was part of her deception. “I’m sorry, Isabel, so desperately sorry. I should have tried harder to find out how you died. I should not have trusted Cassie. I should not have stolen Prudence’s life. But I do love Edward—that much was real. Forgive me, Isabel. No one else will.”

  She imagined she saw the darkness brighten with the faint gleam of a heavenly light. She felt the soft brush of fresh air curling against her cheek. ”Isabel,” she breathed, knowing the sweet lady had touched her with her ghostly hand, forgiving her. Sighing, Sabrina closed her eyes for the last time. She knew death would come soon, for in the distance she heard the sound of the heavenly choir.

  But as the darkness swallowed her, she wondered why the angels’ voices sounded so much like Pendragon’s bark.

  * * *

  “…waking up. Hand me the cup.”

  Sabrina’s eyelids fluttered open, then closed again against the bright sunlight flooding in through her bedroom window. Her bedroom? But she’d died, hadn’t she? She had a distinct memory of dying, and a series of vaguer memories involving water soothing her parched throat, warm broth stilling the ache in her empty stomach, and sweet-scented bathwater cleansing the dirt from her exhausted body. She’d thought she was in heaven.

  Rina changed that opinion when a cup of noxious tasting liquid was pressed to her lips. She spat out the drink and a curse. “What the—?”

  A silvery laugh interrupted her. Rina opened her eyes, and stared up into the face of an angel who looked remarkably like Amy.

  “I think she’s feeling better, Charles,” Amy said as she handed the cup back to the doctor. “Welcome back, darling. We feared we’d lost you.”

  You did, Rina thought. The memories flooded back to her: the darkness, the terror, Cassie’s madness. Rina gripped Amy’s arm. “Cassie. You mustn’t trust…she’s—”

  “We k
now,” Amy said quietly as she smoothed Rina’s hair. “She left you in that terrible place to die. It very nearly worked. We all believed you’d gone away, just as Cassie said you had. If it had not been for Pendragon, we’d never have found you.”

  “And Mrs. Poldhu’s been feeding him steak ever since,” Charles added with a grin. “Not that the hound doesn’t deserve it. We knew you were somewhere in Fitzroy Hall, but we had no idea where to look. Pendragon led us to the secret panel, and through the tunnels to the well.”

  Sabrina stared up at Amy, not quite believing that she was really alive. “But how did you know I was in Fitzroy Hall? If Cassie told you that I had left, and you believed her, how did you—?”

  “Hello, Rina-lass.” Quinn stepped forward to Rina’s bedside.

  It took Rina a moment to gather enough breath to speak. “Quinn. Oh, Quinn.” Her eyes brimmed with tears at the sight of her friend. “But you told me you were leaving.”

  The sunlight glanced off his yellow waistcoat, making it shine like a golden breastplate. Yet his wide smile outshone it. “I did leave, darling. Miles away by sunset, I was, and glad to see the back of the place. But something nagged at me—kept me from moving on. I boarded overnight at an inn not twenty miles from here. Stayed there the whole of the next day, though devil take me as to why. Then that night in the pub, I heard a bloke going on about a gentry miss who’d pretended to be an heiress and absconded without so much as a by your leave. Well, I knew that weren’t the way of it—if leaving was on your mind, you’da hightailed it with me. So I headed back to Ravenshold as fast as my horse could take me. Thought I’d ‘ave to fight my way in the door, but his lordship was quick to see me when he heard my name.”

  Rina recalled the night in the stables, when Edward had heard her mention Quinn’s name. she didn’t doubt that he’d have wanted to see the “Quinn” he’d once thought she was in love with. “But you put yourself in great danger. You were free.”

  He chucked her chin with his fist. “And what would freedom be worth if I turned my back on a mate? ‘Sides, weren’t much danger to it—not after I told the great bleedin’ sod that you’d stayed behind because you were in love with ‘im.”

  Amy laughed. “He used those very words, too. You should have seen my brother’s face. He looked as if he had been hit by a runaway carriage!”

  Sabrina didn’t share Amy’s smile. She was beginning to grasp all that had happened while she was trapped in the well, and all that it implied. They all knew the truth about her now, about her terrible deception. “Amy, Charles, I wish…I wanted…Oh, I’m so dreadfully ashamed.”

  Amy pressed a finger to Rina’s lips, silencing her. She exchanged a loving glance with Charles before continuing. “Hush. We’ll sort it all out later. Meanwhile, you need your rest. You—”

  A commotion in the hall outside the bedchamber interrupted Amy. Rina froze. She knew the voice of the man arguing with Duffy for entrance to her room as well as she knew her own heartbeat. She glanced from Amy, to Charles, to Quinn. “I cannot see him now. Please don’t let—”

  Edward stormed into the room. His hair was ragged, his cravat was hastily tied, and his beard looked as if it hadn’t seen a razor in a week. Charles moved to intercept him, but the earl looked through him as if he were made of glass. He had eyes for only one person in the room.

  “Out,” he commanded.

  To Rina’s distress, the others obeyed. She clutched at Amy’s hand, but the girl smiled and pulled gently away. “It will be all right,” she whispered as she gave Rina an encouraging wink. Then she took Charles’s arm and followed Quinn out of the room.

  If Sabrina had had an ounce of strength, she’d have jumped from the bed and run after them.

  She turned her head away, part of her wishing that she was still trapped in the smuggler’s well. She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth against the shame welling up inside her.

  He said nothing. The room was so silent that for a moment she imagined that Edward had left with his sister. But that hope died when she heard his heavy-booted tread, and felt the mattress sink under his weight as he sat beside her. Strong, warm hands enveloped her icy ones.

  “Look at me.”

  The tenderness of his voice only deepened her shame. “I cannot. I cannot ever look at you again.”

  “As you wish. But I fear that will make it difficult to recite your wedding vows.”

  Her eyes snapped open, but she could not turn to face him. “Edward, we cannot wed. Everything you believed about me is true. I am a thief and a liar. The only reason I came to Ravenshold was to steal the Dutchman. Quinn must have told you.”

  “What Quinn told me is that you gave the necklace back to Grandmother, and she confirmed his story. You may have come here to steal the Dutchman, but you could not go through with it. You are not a thief. And as for being a liar…well, I told you my fair share of them. There is only one thing I must know. Were you telling the truth when you said that you loved me?”

  The uncertainty in his voice drew her like a magnet. Unable to resist, she turned back to him, and stared up into the face of the man she loved more than her own life. She saw the echo of fear in his expression, and the shadow of despair that still lingered in his eyes. She knew exactly what that despair felt like—she’d experienced the same feeling when she’d been trapped in the smuggler’s well, thinking that she would never be able to tell him the truth. But now I can tell him the truth. I must—even though it means we can never be together.

  She reached up and traced the lines that had been etched into the edges of his mouth, and into his soul. “It makes no difference. I cannot marry you. Ever. There is something in my past, something terrible that happened before I met you. I am much worse than a liar. I am a mur…a mur—”

  “A murderer,” Edward finished with a shrug. “Yes, I know.”

  “You know?” Shocked, she started to rise from the bed.

  Edward held her down. “Lie still, darling.”

  She shook her head from side to side, struggling with her limited strength against his hold. “Do not call me that. You musn’t. I cannot marry you. I will not let you link your proud family name to my name.”

  Impossibly, Edward’s mouth began to edge up in a smile. “Yes, I thought your stubborn mind might come up with something like that. So as soon as Quinn told me of your past, I sent Mr. Cherry to London to find out how things stood. I received his post last evening. He was able to confirm much of your story, and from a rather unique source—the murder victim himself.”

  Rina stopped struggling. ”Albert?”

  Edward’s smile turned to an outright grin. “Tremaine did not die. In fact, he was lustily downing a large plate of braised beef when Cherry came upon him. Seems he and his mother exaggerated his injuries in order to force you to marry him. My solicitor ‘encouraged’ him to sign a statement absolving you of any blame in the attack—though not before he’d seen to it that the villain had a few less teeth with which to finish his dinner. A bit out of character for Cherry, but he’s quite fond of you in his own blustering way. Still, the thrashing he gave your stepbrother was better than he deserved.”

  The earl’s smile vanished, and his eyes grew dark and lethal. “If I’d found Tremaine rather than Cherry, there would have been a murder to prosecute. He was the Albert who tried to rape you, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded shakily.

  His eyes still held murder, but he traced her jaw with a tender touch. “God, what you must have gone through. And then, to get trapped in that hellhole…in my heart, I knew you hadn’t left me, even before Quinn appeared. I was looking for you from the start. But I feared we’d never find you. The cliffs have guarded their smugglers’ secrets for hundreds of years, and I held out little hope after Cassie—”

  His words stopped abruptly and he looked away.

  Rina swallowed. “What happened to Cassie?”

  “When she learned what Quinn had told us, and that we had proof of her deceit,
she…she leapt from the cliffs.”

  Rina turned her face to the pillow, shutting her eyes in pain. Cassie had betrayed her and tried to kill her, but Rina hadn’t wanted her death. There’d been too much of it already. ” ‘Tis my fault,” she whispered brokenly. “If I had not come to Ravenshold—”