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“It is strange revisiting a portion of one’s life one had thought long gone,” she said.
“It is cold in here,” Theodore said after regarding her for a few moments. “I will find the letter and you can go somewhere warm to read it.”
“Thank you,” she said. She supposed it was cold in here since there was no fire in the hearth and she could hear the wind rattling the windows, beyond which the sky was a leaden gray. But even if she had not been wearing a winter dress and the soft wool shawl Claudia had given her as an early Christmas gift, she did not believe she would really have felt it this morning. “But I want to read the letter here. May I, please, Theodore?”
This was where the letter must have been written, she realized-on this very desk. Just before…
Theodore did not argue. He stooped down on his haunches to light the fire, and then he stepped up to the safe and opened it. He turned with a folded, sealed sheet of paper in his hand. Susa
“I will leave you for a while, then,” he said, “and then come back to answer any questions you may have- if I can answer them, that is. I was away at school at the time, and I was not told much. But I have read my father’s letter, and I have spoken with my mother.”
“Thank you,” she said, but as he handed her the letter, she realized that in fact there were two. Her hand closed about them, and she shut her eyes until she heard the quiet click of the door as he left.
She seated herself carefully behind the desk and looked down at the papers in her hand.
Her own letter was on top. The words Miss Susa
“My dearest Susa
“I am ruined, as perhaps I deserve to be. Your mother has already paid the ultimate price. It is time I did too. And I do it-or so I tell myself, trying to give my life some touch of nobility at the end-so that you may live. You have family, Susa
Susa
I do it so that you may live.
Must she bear that burden too?
Perhaps I would face that change if I were alone.
There was no mention of Viscountess Whitleaf or of choosing death rather than life without the woman he loved. But would a father admit such a thing to his twelve-year-old child anyway?
He had loved the viscountess. She had seen them together one afternoon just before his death. She had been hiding under a hedgerow close to the road that led from Fincham to the village, about to come out because it had become obvious to her that Edith must have tired of the game when she could not find Susa
“Do you think I care?” Lady Whitleaf had said, her voice filled with scorn as she tossed her head so that the pink feathered plume in her riding hat nodded against her ear. “I do not care the snap of my fingers for you and never have.”
It had struck Susa
“I am sorry,” her father had said, possessing himself of her hand and carrying it to his lips. “I truly am sorry.”
“You will be very sorry indeed for having set your sights so high,” she had said, snatching back her hand. “And for having molested me.”
“Molested?”He had taken a step back. “I am sorry if you see my actions that way.”
“I do.” She had looked down on him as if he were a worm beneath her feet. “That I should have deigned to take even a moment’s notice of a mere government secretary! I hope your heart is broken. It deserves to be. I hope it drives you to your death.”
And she had driven her spurs into the horse’s side and gone cantering off down the lane.
While Susa
Her mind returned to the present and the letter in her hand. She could hear the fire crackling to life in the fireplace. She could even feel a thread of warmth from its direction.
She had family -or had had eleven years ago, on both her mother’s and father’s side. They would have taken her in-but not her father. What had he done to offend them so?
I have been accused of two dreadful crimes, one of which I committed…
Her mother had paid the ultimate price, and now it was his turn.
The ultimate price for what? What dreadful crime had called for the deaths of two people?
Her father had killed himself for her sake. Without her he might have struggled on. He had kept her after her birth even though he might have sent her to live with his family or her mother’s. He had been too selfish to give her up.
Susa
So many thoughts and emotions to churn around in one body and mind!
But only one thought came at her with any real clarity-or rather the memory of three words written on the paper beneath her.
…my dearest child.
Theodore was going to come back, she thought suddenly, and sat up again. Her father’s letter had raised as many questions as it had answered. Perhaps there were some answers…
She reached her hand toward the other letter, whose seal, she could see, was already broken. But did she want to know the secrets of the man who had been her father? How could she not want to know, though, after reading her own letter? Was it really not as she had thought all these years? Was one of the impediments to her marrying Peter-though there were a thousand others-to be removed?
She drew Sir Charles’s letter toward her and opened it. Her eyes went straight to the body of the letter, closely written and in just as steady a hand as her own letter.
“You listened kindly to me a few days ago,” she read, “when I told you my sordid, long-held secrets before the Viscountess Whitleaf could do it for me. I have never had a high opinion of blackmailers or of those who allow themselves to become their victims. You were even gracious enough to refuse to accept my resignation-at least until we saw how much the lady talked and what the gravity of the resulting scandal would be.