"That's quite an aim you have," he observed. "But I can't imagine why that should surprise me."
No response seemed required and Judith glanced toward the settle where Harriet sat, now looking utterly bemused. "Harriet…"
"She's frightened but has taken no serious harm," Marcus said. "What interests me rather more is what the devil you think you're doing here." He pulled out his handkerchief and went over to where Agnes stood, still staring in disbelief at the blood welling from her hand.
"It seems fortunate I am here," Judith responded rather tartly. "You didn't really expect me to leave you to conduct this business alone?"
"I had thought I'd made it crystal clear that was exactly what I expected." Taking Agnes's hand, he wrapped the handkerchief over the wound.
"But I love you," Judith cried with an edge of exasperation. "I couldn't possibly stand by when you might be hurt."
Marcus looked up from his bandaging, and a smile touched his eyes, then spread slowly across his face. "No, I suppose you couldn't," he said. "Where you love, you love hard and long, don't you, lynx?"
"And you?" It was a tentative question and she seemed to be perched on a precipice with joy on one side, desolation on the other.
"I've never loved before," Marcus said, still smiling. "But it does seem to be a very powerful and exclusive emotion."
Despair, anxiety, tension drained slowly away, leaving her empty of all but bone-deep relief and a well of loving warmth. It was going to be all right. She hadn't lost Marcus and his love. "And forgiveness?" she asked. "Can love include that?"
"It seems to promote it," he said, tying a knot in the handkerchief. "Is that comfortable, Lady Barret?"
"Comfortable is hardly the word I would have used," Agnes stated. She looked across at Judith with a strange smile quirking her lips. "I have to say, Charlotte, that for two such mewling babes, you and Peter have certainly turned out unexpectedly. Whatever could George have done, I wonder, to have given you both so much strength of character?"
Gracemere flung himself on the settle beside a shrinking Harriet and began to laugh. It was an unsettling sound, totally without mirth.
Judith stared at Agnes. "What do you mean?" But she knew. She knew as she had always known. Only the knowledge had been in blood and bone and sinew, in the threads of a primitive instinct, not in absolute words speaking absolute truths.
"Can't you guess, my dear child?" Agnes said, a taunting note in her voice. "But yes, I see that you can. Curiously, I find you a worthy daughter. I hadn't expected George's children to have any red blood in their veins."
"I thought you were dead," Judith said, her voice hollow.
"Alice Devereux is dead," Agnes said. "She died a convenient death in a convent somewhere. And then she rose again, as you see." She passed her uninjured hand down her body in mocking explanation.
"Marcus…?" Judith spoke his name hesitantly, her eyes searched for his, her free hand went out toward him in apprehensive plea.
"I'm here," he said softly, taking her hand, squeezing it tightly as her mother continued to talk.
"Your father was so blind. He never knew… never guessed that Gracemere and I had been lovers since we were little more than children. Since between us we hadn't a feather to fly with, one of us had to marry for money. But it didn't work out as it was supposed to. In the end, we had to get rid of George."
She was speaking quietly, cradling her bandaged hand, almost as if unaware of her audience. "He was in the way, always making demands… protestations of love. He wouldn't leave me alone. He made it impossible for me to be with Gracemere as I had to be. And there was Peter and then you, ten months apart, for heaven's sake. I had to get away from him."
Judith felt nauseated but she could no more move away or even interrupt than the fly stickily entwined in the web. She gazed at her mother, who continued her explanation with almost an assumption of shared comprehension.
"I couldn't simply leave your father, you must understand, because then I would have been as penniless as if I'd never married him. What were we to do?" It was a genuine question. "I could only leave your father if we had possession of his money. So Gracernere took it from him. We did what was necessary."
"Sebastian and I would have been in your way, of course," Judith heard herself say. "You'd hardly want to be saddled with a pair of brats when you started on your new life."
Agnes shook her head impatiently. "I never wanted children but George insisted. If he chose to take you with him when he left, why would it matter to me?"
"Why indeed?" Judith agreed distantly. "I quite see that." She shook her head as if to dispel the cobwebs of confusion. In some essential way, the story seemed to have nothing to do with her at all, but she couldn't quite clarify how or why that should be so.
"It seems that the affair has come full circle, ma'am," Marcus said into the silence, still holding Judith's hand. "Your children have ruined you and your lover as completely as you and your lover ruined their father. There's a nice symmetry to it, I'm sure you'll agree." And it did now seem to him that it was the only right thing to have happened. Listening to the evil in this woman, who for passion's sake had condemned her children to a life as outcasts, he felt only satisfaction for what Judith and her brother had achieved. Vengeance was an ancient and savage imperative.
"But my mother needn't be ruined. Perhaps she would prefer to remain with her present husband in London," Judith suggested with a razor-edged smile, her voice hard. "I'm sure Sebastian-or rather, Peter-and I would really enjoy getting to know her properly."
Agnes regarded her daughter with a glimmer of respect. "That could almost be an amusing prospect. However, my dear, you'll never see me again. You must make my farewells to your brother." She turned and went into the connecting room. Gracemere rose from the settle, offered a mocking bow to Judith, and followed his mistress.
Harriet whimpered. "I don't understand…"
"No, of course you don't," Judith said swiftly. "What a terrible time you must have had, love. There's a hackney downstairs. The jarvey is most reliable and he'll convey you back to Brook Street immediately. In fact, I'll accompany you-"
"No, you will not," Marcus interrupted. "I'm not letting you out of my sight again. Come, Harriet." He picked up the bewildered, tear-streaked girl, who lay limply in his arms. "I'm going to put you in the hackney and direct the jarvey to take you to Sebastian. I think you'll find greater strength there than in your mother's company, and he will know just how to explain matters to your parents so that they have no idea of the truth. Davenports are very good at that." He cast his wife a darkling look that nevertheless carried a hint of rueful amusement. "Stay here, Judith, until I come back."
"I'll be here," she said. She stood looking at the closed door to the other room. How much of her mother did she have in her? Was she infected with her mother's evil? But she knew she wasn't. The person she was had more to do with the circumstances of her childhood than to any blood, bone, and sinew she shared with Agnes Barret. Her mother's abandonment had been the greatest service she could have rendered her children. If she'd stayed in their lives, they would probably have learned to be as warped as she.
She went to the window, watching as Marcus carried Harriet across the yard. She felt curiously at peace, despite the dreadful revelations of the last minutes. It was as if something had been completed. The last piece of her past was fitted in place. She knew her mother, had avenged her father. Now she was free to be her own person.
"I can't imagine how Sebastian is going to adapt to life with a woman who collapses in the middle of adventures," Marcus observed, when he returned. "After a lifetime with you, my love, it seems impossible to imagine." "I expect he'll find it a pleasant change," Judith said. "How did you know Gracemere would be here?" "That's a story for later… much later." Marcus came over to her, taking her hands in his. The black eyes gazed down at her intently. "How do you feel after all that?"