“That’s quite enough,” Hattie choked out.
“Two dozen miners, all of them women and children, died that day,” Miss Byrne said. “And Rutland washed his hands of it. Hadn’t ordered anyone to enter a ventilation shaft, he said. Higher powers, the thunderstorm, he said. So he was cleared. Refused to pay compensation to the grieving families, then evicted everyone from their cottages who couldn’t afford the rent. Well, I say, who could, with one working spouse dead in the ground? Luke had to settle in a new place, where they called him a bastard.” Miss Byrne shook her head. “And that is how he came to hate the Earl of Rutland.”
The tea surged back up Hattie’s throat, bitter like bile. She had been a fool. “I asked him to give up his vengeful designs on Rutland,” she said.
Miss Byrne looked surprised, then impressed. “You’ve some guts, ma’am.”
“And he said he’d try, and then, when he didn’t, I—I was ghastly to him.”
Miss Byrne dropped her lavender sprig. “He said that? That he’d give up Rutland?”
“He said he would try,” Hattoe whispered. “Oh. Oh, I wish he had told me. I wouldn’t have approved. What good can come from vengeance? But I would not have spoken so harshly to him.” The memory of his blank, pale face while she had railed at him stabbed into her stomach, and she buried her face in her hands. “I was a sanctimonious toad,” she moaned.
Through the fog of self-loathing, she heard Aoife Byrne clear her throat.
Hattie glanced up. “Yes?”
“Perhaps he couldn’t tell you,” the woman said. “Even if he wanted to. Even if you’d done everything right.”
“He told you, did he not?”
Miss Byrne smirked at the poorly bridled jealousy in Hattie’s tone. “The truth is, I’m not certain Blackstone has a proper memory of it when he’s conscious,” she said. “He told me everything in the days when we still shared a pallet—nothing naughty, we were only children then. Luke—Blackstone, I mean—is a poor sleeper, and he’d sometimes wake me by thrashing around and whimpering. But he never said a word, until one day, he got hold of a bottle of gin. I hadn’t taken him for a drinker, but there he was: blue ruin for a week. I thought I had picked up a drunk, and after a few days of him nursing the bloody bottle, I gave him a good kicking. That’s when he told me all I just told you, but he was stone-cold drunk. It was the anniversary of their death, you see, and he feels it in his body every year. That year, he didn’t want to feel it, so he got pissed. He’s done it every year since. He couldn’t remember that he’d told me anything after he had sobered up, but I never forgot.” She tapped a finger against her forehead. “It’s not a tale you forget. What I meant to explain is, it’s not easy to say words such as My kid sister is dead. My mum is dead. They lined them up in the mud, arranged by size, tallest to smallest. They were dead and I lived. These aren’t easy words to say. Not for a man like him, not in front of a wife he’s sworn to protect. He’s very protective. And he failed them; he didn’t keep them safe.”
I feel even less safe with you. For a beat, her chest felt icy cold. Her parting shot must have hit the mark. A strangled sob made it past her composure. “Thank you for telling me, Miss Byrne.”
Miss Byrne’s angular face softened. “Destroying Rutland was what he lived for, Mrs. Blackstone. And he was prepared to try to give him up, for you. I’m no fortune-teller, but I think he’ll forgive you.”
Hattie knew she had some forgiving to do, too. She clearly still harbored resentment over how her marriage had begun. And she hadn’t forgiven herself for her stupid conduct in the gallery. The haze of passion blurred these ugly, festering emotions, but they had never been properly drained. He was right, she thought, it had been a test in part, asking him to let go of Rutland, her attempt to reclaim a sense of power by turning him from dark knight to a Sir Galahad. What if this simmering resentment would bubble over whenever something unrelated stoked her temper?
Miss Byrne finished her tea, then she pulled a small envelope from her reticule and said, “I had come to give him this—could you keep it safe until he arrives?”
“I can’t make any predictions as to when he will show,” Hattie said. If he will show ever again, she added silently.
Aoife chuckled. “I can,” she said. “Again: he was willing to give up Rutland for you. You cannot run from him, I’m afraid. In fact”—she pulled out her pocket watch—“I’ll expect him to be here by early afternoon, for I doubt he gave you more than two trains’ head start.”