Once a Duchess(82)
“Miss Palmer,” Isabelle spread her hands to reason with the woman, who was little more than a girl in truth, “Mr. Gerald served the sentence for his crime. And unless I’m mistaken, you met Mr. Gerald during his exile, so you cannot say nothing but bad came of it. Done is done, is it not? Why continue to harbor ill will against the Monthwaite family?”
Sally Palmer’s lips drew into a thin line, and his face turned an angry purple. “He didn’t do it!” she shrieked. Isabelle stepped back at the force of her tone. Naomi let out a piteous cry. “That vile man’s the one killed that horse and foal!” Sally continued. “And the bloody coward let Thomas take the blame!”
“What?” Isabelle shook her head. The woman was crazed, she reminded herself. Otherwise, she wouldn’t spout such nonsense and behave in this erratic manner.
“It’s true!” Sally’s voice took on a pleading tone. “Thomas told me all about it when I nursed him through the ’fluenza.” She licked her lips. “As Thomas tells it, they was like friends. Not really, I know,” she said derisively, “but he used to come to the stables and talk while my Thomas worked. Spoiled, do-nothing lordling,” she spat as an aside. “He used to tell Thomas about plants and things they could do.”
Isabelle blinked. That did sound like a young Marshall.
Sally Palmer dropped the gun to her side, but kept a firm grip on Naomi. Her riding hat was askew atop her head, and her hair hung in loose strands over her captor’s arm.
“Then there was a brood mare, Priscilla, Thomas called her.” Sally shook her head sadly. “He told me how ’e worried over her, with her foal not coming when it should, and her starting to get sick-like.” The young woman’s voice took on a pleading quality as she continued her tale. “Then one day the young lord comes in to check on Priscilla. Says he had an idea to help her start her foaling. He mixes up this and that, but he asks Thomas to give it to her. So he do. Then here’s the mare and her foal dead, and Thomas blamed for it, neat as can be.” Rage and anguish warred, contorting Sally’s features.
Isabelle’s face went cold. She stared at the frantic girl. Somehow, she recognized herself in Sally’s words, the same tone of desperation as she told her story of a man wrongfully accused, just as Isabelle had longed for someone to believe her innocent of adultery. Reason told her Sally was lying. But if she wasn’t?
“My brother would never do that!” Naomi protested.
Sally yanked her head back by the hair. Naomi cried out in pain. “He would and he did,” she said darkly, looming over her.
She was coming unhinged, Isabelle realized.
“I know how you feel,” Isabelle blurted. There was no time to analyze the veracity of the woman’s claims. Right now, she just had to keep her distracted from Naomi. “If there’s anyone held higher in public scorn than a convict, it’s a divorced woman.” She raised her chin and laughed nervously, hoping she conveyed some sense of fraternity.
Calmly, as though strolling through the roses at a garden party, she began moving toward the armed woman and Naomi.
“Monthwaite did quite a number on me, too.” She stopped to smell a blossom on Marshall’s pea plants.
“Then you know exactly what I mean,” Sally said. “You know why I’ve got to get back at him.”
Isabelle nodded once, firmly. “Indeed I do, Miss Palmer. But consider: The Duke of Monthwaite is a ridiculously wealthy, powerful man. If you bring harm to his sister or property, you will hang. But a ransom,” she said widening her eyes, “might be just the thing. He could give you and Mr. Gerald enough money to start over. You could go to America,” she suggested. “What do you think?”
Sally’s brow creased. “I don’t think Thomas would like that. We passed a couple years in the islands, but he tol’ me he was going to bring me to England, that we’d have a life here.” She stared blankly out the glass wall; her arm around Naomi’s neck slackened. Isabelle inched toward Marshall’s workbench.
The greenhouse door flew open with a crack. “Release her, Miss Palmer,” Marshall demanded, pointing his own pistol at the miscreant.
Isabelle’s heart kicked at the sight of him. His wavy, dark hair was in windswept disarray, and the dust and mud splatters all over his finely tailored clothes bespoke his long day in the saddle.
In a flash, Sally’s arm clamped around Naomi once again, and the gun pressed to her head.