"How could you do that to her? She was your ward. The daughter of your own sister. She was your own blood. How could you not protect her, cherish her?"
"I-" Graham didn't have a chance to say another word.
"Get out!" Mrs. Barton exploded. "Get out of this house now. This very moment."
"Calm yourself," Wynne ordered. "If you would allow Graham and Lady Josephine-"
"No. I'll allow nothing of the kind." She glared wildly at Jo and pointed at the door. "You're no one. Do you hear? No one. No connection. Josephine Sellar drowned in a flood. She's gone. There was no child. You're an intruder in our lives. Remove her from our home, Graham."
"Your home?" Jo asked sharply, looking from the irate woman back at Graham. "Look behind you. He is still here. Charles is alive. This is his home."
Neither moved. Their attention was on Jo's flushed face.
"Or will you do the same thing to Charles that you did to my mother? Why not? You can save yourself the expense of sending him to his death in Aberdeen. Why not simply dig a grave here and fill it with the body of any poor soul?"
"You're a devil," Mrs. Barton fumed, her eyes spitting fire. "To say such a thing to a mother."
Jo ignored her, keeping her attention on Graham. "Isn't that what you did in Garloch? Isn't it true that you identified the first available corpse as your ward, Josephine Sellar?"
Graham stalked to a desk by a window.
"And what did you gain by it?" she persisted. "A few paltry pounds from the sale of her estate?" Jo shook her head in disgust. "In your vile scheming, is Charles next to die?"
Mrs. Barton took a step toward her.
"You are the only vile schemer," she hissed. "You and your clever plans to take everything we have built. Everything we hold dear."
Jo continued to ignore her, keeping after Graham.
"Or were your actions even more insidious?" she demanded. "Did you try to kill her? Did you throw her into those flood waters yourself? Is that the reason she was so terrified of coming back?"
"You're wrong," he retorted, anguish in his voice. "I committed no murder. She was caught in the flood, and I thought she was dead. I was sure of it. No one could have survived those raging waters, certainly not a woman in her condition. And I tell you with God as my witness, it wasn't about her estate. I wanted to bring her back. Save her."
His admission had a more powerful effect on Mrs. Barton than Wynne would have imagined. She crossed the room and slapped Graham hard across the face.
"That's a lie!" she screamed. "You wouldn't betray me. Not then, not now."
Graham said nothing. He never lifted a hand to his face. He simply stood where he was as Mrs. Barton spun and started back toward Jo.
"That harlot deserved to die." The old woman stopped in the center of the room, her eyes wild, unfocused. "It was God's will that she should drown like the Pharaoh and his Egyptian whore. She died as she should. And the devil growing inside her died as well. I wanted them gone. God wanted them dead. Both dead."
As if suddenly awakened, Graham started toward her. "Leana. Stop."
She held up a hand, halting him in his tracks.
"From the first moment the little jade stepped foot in this house, all she wanted was to steal the Barton men from me," she sneered. "She wanted to take everything from me. Ainsley and his sanctimonious drivel. Speaking of her as the daughter I should have given him."
Backing toward the desk where her son sat, she reached out to touch his hair, but stopped, pulling her hand back as if burned.
"And then my Charles, my boy, fell under her spell."
She glared at Jo, pure hatred in her eyes.
"He turned on me like an adder, and she made him do it. Turned his back on the match that would have made him a man for all Scotland. Shrugged off the marriage prospect that I'd arranged for him like it was nothing. Nothing! And turned to her! Married her . . . just to spite me. All my plans for him. All for nothing!"
* * *
Married her.
Josephine and Charles. Married. He was her father.
Married her. Mrs. Barton's words reverberated in Jo's mind.
She wanted to go to Charles, hold him. He was her father. But the old woman was standing beside him, her arms askew, her face twitching with fury. And Jo knew Charles's mother would fight her like a wild animal if she tried to get near him now.
Then something changed in Mrs. Barton's face. A glimmer of understanding flickered in her eyes. She scowled darkly at Graham.
"Saved her? You would have saved her?" Her mouth opened and closed as if forming words that did not come out. "You wouldn't do that. Not you. Not the man who claimed he loved me. Not the man who had begged me to marry him for . . . how many years, Graham? Not the man who vowed to wait for me till the last breath of life left our bodies."
Suddenly, all the anger and doubt and frustration and helplessness inside of Jo was pushed aside, and pity welled up in her heart. In spite of the knowledge that this old woman was the cause of so much misery, responsible for the death of her mother, she could feel nothing but pity for her at this moment. Another lost woman.
"Leana," Graham began helplessly.
Mrs. Barton shuddered and shot a fierce glance at Jo.
"So you've stolen him from me, as well," she rasped. "You and your whore mother have taken them all. Well, this one's not half the man his brother was. Never could be. So take him. I don't need him or anyone. You both should have drowned. I wish you'd never seen the light of day."
"That's enough, Leana," Graham said, crossing toward her.
And then he stopped and began to back away, and Jo glimpsed the small, lady's muff pistol she'd drawn from the drawer of the desk.
The barrel of the gun swiveled toward Jo, and Mrs. Barton moved a step closer. She wasn't going to miss.
Their strategy, devised at Knockburn Hall when Charles haltingly asked Wynne and Jo to bring him here, had degenerated into imminent disaster. Jo had been willing to provoke Mrs. Barton and Graham, and prod them for answers, but right now it looked as if she would die in the effort.
Jo didn't know how he reached her, but suddenly Wynne was standing between them.
"This has gone far enough, Mrs. Barton," he said coolly. "You'll hand me that pistol immediately."
"Do you think for a moment that I'll let her take everything? My family? My home? My position? Get out of my way."
A thousand thoughts and fears raced through Jo, for she knew this woman was capable of pulling the trigger. She'd come to the Highlands to get answers, to find her origins. And now she knew her mother's story. She'd discovered her father. But what about Wynne? He was the one true love of her life. And she could lose him now.
Fear gripped her heart with iron claws. He was her past, her future, her present. Her life and her dreams. He was the happiness that she thought she had lost forever. He was the air that sustained her.
Sixteen years ago she lost Wynne. Here in the Highlands she found him again. And now he was standing between her and a loaded weapon.
"You can only shoot one of us," he said to Mrs. Barton. "It won't be her, I promise you."
Graham took a step toward the older woman.
"Stop," she barked. "If I had two bullets, one of them would be for you. Now get out of the way, Captain."
She couldn't let him do this. Jo tried to step around Wynne, but he held her back.
"They'll hang you for this as sure as we're standing here. Do you think her brother, the Lord Justice, would allow you to live if you kill either of us today?"
"Do you think I care? Do you think I want to live after this?"
Jo edged around Wynne enough to see Mrs. Barton waving the pistol.
"Then you may as well shoot me," he said. "I've already taken one bullet for her. I'm ready to take another."
"No!" Jo shouted, backing out of Wynne's reach and stepping to the side.
As the pistol turned, she saw the woman's eyes focus on her, and her intent was deadly.
"No, Mother," Charles Barton said as his hand closed over the pistol, pushing the muzzle toward the floor. "You'll not . . . not be killing . . . my daughter."
Chapter 23
Though she hadn't expected to, Jo saw Mrs. Barton every day after the incident in the library.
When Charles intervened, the older woman had immediately sunk into a chair, shocked and staring at him. She'd been defeated, stripped of whatever power she imagined she had over her son, over Jo, even over Graham. When she failed to move or respond to anyone, servants carried her up to her chambers and put her to bed.