“Dear God …” Ariana breathed again, staring from her shaken brother to her still-alive sister. “So the two of you …”
“Evidently, Baxter, you didn’t do nearly as convincing a job as you’d believed,” Vanessa commented. “Judging from Ariana’s appearance in my room, I’d say she wasn’t at all convinced of her husband’s”—she spat out the word “guilt.”
“I don’t understand,” Baxter said dazedly, still staring at Ariana. “You accepted my reasoning. Your carriage left Winsham. … I heard it depart.”
“Apparently, it departed without its occupant,” Vanessa concluded, a glimmer of respect in her eyes. “It seems, Baxter, that our baby sister is far more ingenious than we gave her credit for. Something you said must have given her reason to suspect you were lying. So she staged her exit, then hid and searched the house. Isn’t that right, Ariana?”
Ariana’s head was still reeling with the discovery that her supposedly dead sister was very much alive.
Vanessa walked forward and lifted Ariana’s chin, evaluating her as one would inspect a fine jewel prior to its purchase. “Are you in shock or merely unwilling to acknowledge your scheme?”
“My scheme!” Ariana jerked her face away, jolting out of her reverie at the impact of Vanessa’s words. “You have the audacity to interrogate me about my intentions? You who have feigned death for six years and returned only to further torment a man you’ve already cruelly and unnecessarily stripped of six years of his life! Dear God, Vanessa …” Ariana’s expression was a mixture of disbelief and revulsion. “You really are a vicious monster, aren’t you?”
“That’s enough, Ariana!” Baxter intervened in a warning tone.
“And you …” Ariana’s biting gaze swept over her brother. “You can defend her? After all she’s done, reappearing after all these years?” Seeing the guilt flash across Baxter’s face, comprehension struck Ariana full force. “You knew,” she breathed. “All this time, you knew she was alive. You let me go on thinking my sister was dead, that she’d been driven to suicide … or worse … when from the first you knew it was a lie! Why, Baxter, why?”
“You know the answer to that as well as I,” he returned bitterly and without regret. “Trenton Kingsley. He destroyed Vanessa’s life. It gave me great pleasure to destroy his.”
“She was the one who destroyed his life!” Ariana shot back. “How can you condone that? Good Lord, Baxter, was I so wrong about you? I thought you had some humanity! Have you none?” She stared at her brother as if seeing him for the first time. “Even after brutally accusing Trenton of murder, forcing him to live with the possibility that a woman took her own life because of him, still you weren’t satisfied. You had to blackmail him, didn’t you? Get every damned cent you could out of the situation. Never let it be said that my money-driven brother allowed a lucrative opportunity to escape him.” Abrupt realization dawned in Ariana’s eyes. “Or was blackmail not an afterthought? Was it all part of the original plan? Is that why you both tampered with Vanessa’s journal? To make it as incriminating as possible? Tell me, Baxter, when did you alter the journal? Just prior to Vanessa’s suicide? Did the two of you sit up nights writing her implicating entries … so you could just happen to find the journal a mere day after her tragic and untimely death and twist the knife still deeper in Trenton’s heart? Is that how it worked?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Baxter exploded. “I altered nothing! Everything in that journal was the truth!” He strode forward, seizing Ariana by the shoulders. “I already admitted to you that I took money from Kingsley. And I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I detest the man. Dammit, Ariana, I haven’t lied to you about anything! I’ve only tried to protect you.” He winced at the glaring accusation on her face. “All right, I lied to you about Vanessa. It’s true I knew she was alive. But I had to keep her whereabouts a secret … for her own sake. What if Kingsley had gone after her? Tried to hurt her again? I couldn’t risk it. Everyone had to believe her dead … including you. Besides …” and his tone turned icy, “thanks to Kingsley, she was gone forever. She could never return to England; not after the circumstances that drove her away! If she returned, she’d be ridiculed, shunned, possibly even jailed! While Kingsley would be suddenly hailed a hero, rather than the demented madman that he is! So why should I torture you by telling you the truth? Your sister was lost to you forever. It was best you believed her dead.”
“You’re still doing it,” Ariana said in amazement. “Justifying your malicious, selfish actions with absurd, fabricated motives and blatant lies. You actually believe what you just said, don’t you, Baxter? You tampered with a man’s life, indirectly killed his father and stripped his family of their honor, and you feel vindicated?”
“What about what he did to Vanessa?” Baxter demanded, shaking Ariana in frustration. “Don’t you give a damn that he robbed your sister of her youth, her life?”
“Trenton never even touched Vanessa!” Ariana burst out. “Everything she sacrificed … her youth, her reputation … she brought on herself. And you know it!” Focusing on Baxter’s oblivious expression, Ariana blinked. “You don’t know, do you?” she whispered, the final pieces falling into place. “You really don’t.”
“Know what?”
“That the journal entries were indeed devised … brilliantly and creatively, I might add,” Vanessa said calmly. She closed the door behind her, leaning against it to block off any attempt at escape. “But not by Baxter, darling. You should know by now that the formulation of devious plans is not his forté. He executes them splendidly and with great enthusiasm, but the actual planning requires a level of cunning that is mine and mine alone.”
Baxter released Ariana and snapped around to face Vanessa. “What are you talking about?” He looked so stupefied that Ariana almost pitied him in that moment. “Are you telling me you invented the contents of your journal?”
“Embellished, darling. Only embellished.”
“Fabricated,” Ariana corrected. “Every word. Other than the fact that you wanted Trenton desperately and would do anything to get him. Including spreading false rumors designed to coerce him into your arms and eventually to the altar. And when that was unsuccessful, feigning desperation, pretending to be despondent enough to take your own life. That’s how irrationally you wanted him.
“But you didn’t count on one thing.” Ariana raised her chin proudly, meeting Vanessa’s mocking gaze head-on. “Trenton didn’t want you.”
Hatred twisted Vanessa’s fine features. “He was a fool … a stupid, stubborn fool. I would have been the perfect wife for him. But he wanted a sweet little virgin. Well, he got one, didn’t he?”
“Ness … what about all the things you told me?” Baxter asked weakly. “His jealousy, his violence, his rage?”
“It was all lies, Baxter,” Ariana supplied. “Every last word. Trenton and Vanessa were never intimate—he never even laid a hand on her.” Ariana’s gaze locked with Vanessa’s. “What I still can’t figure out is, why did you come back? Merely to resume your torture? Why now, after six years? … Surely you must have made a life for yourself in France?”
A bitter laugh. “A life? No, Ariana, not a life. A living hell… one you could never in your wildest dreams fathom. I’m married, darling. To a respected French nobleman … a spiteful, savage parasite. You, on the other hand, are married to the eminent Duke of Broddington, affluent and powerful, seductive as sin itself.”
“You still want him,” Ariana murmured, incredulous.
“I don’t want any man!” Vanessa snarled back. “But I’ll be damned if one of them will spurn me and go unpunished! I vowed that Trenton Kingsley would pay for his rejection and pay he did … with years of exile and humiliation. Now, after six years, you come along and suddenly all his agony is erased as if it had never been?”
“Trenton’s agony will never be erased, Vanessa.” Ariana felt tears of outrage sting her eyes. He hasn’t known a day of peace since that horrible night.”
“He hasn’t known a day of peace?” Savagely, Vanessa seized the front of her gown, rending it from throat to bodice to expose ugly portions of scarred skin surrounded by a dozen recently inflicted angry red welts. Ignoring Ariana’s shocked gasp, she bit out, “This is agony, Ariana. Not what your husband has endured. This. I’ve lived with torture every day of my life, relinquished more than anyone can ever restore.” She dragged the sides of her gown together. “But I intend to seek vengeance in any way I can. I’ve earned it and, dammit, I’m going to have it!”
Ariana swallowed convulsively, sickened by the physical abuse Vanessa had suffered. Recognizing the horrifying outcome of her sister’s deceit, Ariana could almost forgive her—almost. “How will driving Trenton mad ease all you’ve endured?” she asked, pity and anger warring inside her.