Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden. Nicola Cornick
She sat down on a rock at the edge of the sands. In a moment she thought she would turn and go back. She would find Garrick. She would listen to what he had to say.
There was a crunch on the shingle beside her. Merryn jumped and spun around. For a moment she thought she was imagining things. Tom Bradshaw was standing behind her, Tom in his London clothes looking debonair and tough and not particularly friendly.
“Hello, Merryn,” Tom said. He smiled, his dazzling, charming smile, but his eyes were opaque.
“What on earth are you doing here, Tom?” Merryn said.
“I followed you from the house,” Tom said. “I wanted to talk to you.” He half turned away from her, driving his hands into his pockets. “Quite a shock, isn’t it,” he said conversationally, “to discover that not only did Garrick Farne kill your brother, but he stole his child, too.”
“Stop it,” Merryn said sharply. “Don’t say that.”
“I suppose he’ll present it to you as being frightfully honorable,” Tom said, grinning. “Impossible choices, a promise of silence given on his wife’s deathbed, a child he knew could never bear his name because she was born too soon to have been his …” He shrugged. “You should appreciate all that, Merryn. I seem to recall that you were always frightfully keen on honor and justice and all those high-flown ideas.”
“What do you mean?” Merryn said, frowning. “How do you know all this, Tom?”
“Oh, I had it all from a friend,” Tom said. Merryn could tell that he was enjoying himself hugely. “She thought that the child was Farne’s own by-blow,” he added, “but I soon found out the truth, that it was his wife’s little bastard, not his own and after that …” He shrugged. “Well, the rest of the story was easy enough to come by. Servants talk, you know, when the price is right and you know whom to ask. And there are some servants here with long memories, people who recall Garrick Farne bringing the child here. They remember your father and the Duke of Farne and Lord Scott making a devil’s bargain to hide the truth and bury Kitty Farne’s shame with her. Your brother’s, too,” Tom added thoughtfully. “He was scarcely a lily-white innocent in all this, was he?” He looked at her. “Shall I tell you all about it?”
Tom’s eyes were bright and pale. Merryn realized with a pang of shock how much he was relishing this story and how much he enjoyed seeing her unhappiness. She had known that Tom Bradshaw was ruthless. She had even known that he could be cruel but she had never realized before that he enjoyed seeing others suffer. She clenched her fists. Her fingers, even inside her leather gloves, were almost numb with cold now.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Not from you. If there is more to tell then Garrick will be the one who tells me, not you.”
“How charmingly loyal,” Tom sneered. “Even in the moment when you could think the worst of him, still that stubborn spirit of yours clings to the belief that he cannot be bad through and through.”
“I know he has more integrity than you,” Merryn said furiously. She jumped to her feet. “You tried to blackmail my family,” she said. “You pretended to work for justice when instead you were only out for yourself. You—” She stopped dead. “You used me,” she whispered.
Tom laughed. “My, but it’s taken you so long to realize that!” he said. His smile broadened. “You are quite right,” he said. “I fed your hatred of Farne. I manipulated your every move. I used you to get the information I wanted.”
The cold settled icy and deep in Merryn’s stomach. “Why?” she said. “Why, Tom?”
“Because I’m going to bring down the Farne Dukedom,” Tom said. He smiled again but his eyes were cold. “I want to ruin Garrick Farne. He has everything that should have been mine.”
He half turned to face the sea. The wind caught at his hair, ruffling it. The tide was creeping closer, eating up the beach, smoothing and sculpting the sand. Merryn’s footprints had already disappeared.
“I am Claudius Farne’s son, too,” Tom said, “but unlike Garrick I was not born to privilege.”
“You?” Merryn took a step back. “But … your father worked on the Thames! You told me all about it—” She stopped because Tom was not paying her the slightest attention. He was looking out to sea where another gray snowstorm was sweeping in and ruffling the whitetops of the waves.
“My mother was a housemaid,” Tom said. His gaze came back to her but Merryn still had the oddest feeling that he was looking through her rather than at her. “She had known my father—the man who gave me his name—from childhood. They wed when she was already pregnant. As for the late Duke—” his shoulders moved beneath his jacket “—he took and used the household staff as though they were his private property. What was one more maid to him? What did it matter if she were willing or not? He offered my mother nothing. She was turned off without a penny, branded a whore.”
“I’m sorry,” Merryn said. The wind took her words and whipped them away. The storm was moving closer now, snowflakes swirling across the sand.
Tom took a tiny golden locket from his pocket. For a moment the gold caught the light, gleaming like treasure on a dark day. He raised his arm and threw it with all his strength across the sand. “My mother stole that when she was thrown out of Farne House,” he said. “It was a portrait of him. He did not give it to her. He gave her nothing.” The locket shimmered for a moment against the sand and then vanished. “When he died,” Tom said, “I thought that he might finally acknowledge me in some way.” His face twisted. “I had waited and waited for his notice. It was foolish of me, for of course I was nothing to him. I was less than nothing.”
“It was after he died that you showed me the documents relating to Stephen’s death,” Merryn said and saw him nod. She felt bitter and foolish. She could see now how cleverly Tom had influenced her, providing information, spurring her on while pretending to have his doubts, using her because in her quest for justice she had been blind to all else.
“I have all the evidence I need now,” Tom said. “I know there was no duel. I can prove it. I’ll reveal the whole truth and I’ll make sure Farne will hang.”
“No!” Merryn said. She thought of the children in the garden, of everything that Garrick had worked to protect. She remembered Garrick’s words to her at the ball: “If you pursue this the innocent will suffer …” She could see the impossible choices he had made and the hard decisions he had taken. “I’ll stop you,” she said. “I’ll testify against you if I have to. You will not hurt that child and …” she took a deep breath “… I will not let you ruin Garrick.”
Tom laughed harshly. “You were always so righteous,” he said. “What does your brother’s little bastard matter to me?” He put his hand into his pocket and took out a pistol. “I might have known you would fall in love with Farne,” he said. “He is an idealist like you.”
The snowstorm reached them with a sudden violent swirl of sound and the blizzard enveloped them. Tom took aim and Merryn turned, taking a hasty step back, tripping over her skirts. A wave caught her, knocking her off balance. She went down, feeling the sand shift treacherously beneath her feet. In a flash of blinding fear she remembered the locket shimmering on the surface of the sand and then vanishing below it. She was on the edge of a quicksand and had not realized it and now, as another wave buffeted her, she heard the greedy sucking of the waves about her feet. It was terrifying. It felt as though there was nothing but emptiness beneath her, no firm foothold, nothing but the quicksand dragging her down, devouring her. And in front of her was Tom Bradshaw, with a pistol.
She waited as time seemed to spin out in endless moments.
And Tom stood there, watching the sands take her, and made no move to help her at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GARRICK HAD LOOKED everywhere