“Lord Sandon,” she breathed. Then her gaze drifted past him, fixing on Selina. “My precious girl.”
“She is not and was never your girl,” Rafe said coldly. He had absolutely no sympathy for this woman on her deathbed. She’d stolen them from their life.
Pauline looked back to Rafe, her body seeming to shrink beneath his stare. “No. I am glad to see you both looking so well. You are Lord Stone now?”
The serving maid came to the room, interrupting them. Mrs. Gill excused herself, closing the door after she left.
Selina moved to the bed. “Yes, he is Lord Stone. I am Lady Selina Sheffield. My husband is the son of the Earl of Aylesbury.”
“As it should be,” Pauline said softly as tears pooled in her eyes. “As it should be. I am glad I am alive to see it. To see you both well.”
Rafe chafed at her apparent joy. “We have only recently learned who we truly are. We have spent our lives wondering about our origins as we fought to survive. We have many questions, and you owe it to us to answer them to the best of your ability.”
Pauline’s dry lips parted. She licked them as she looked toward Selina, perhaps hoping she would be less demanding than Rafe.
“Why did you kidnap us from Stonehaven?” Selina asked. “We know about the fire and that we were presumed dead.”
Her pallor went from gray to white. “I didn’t kidnap you. Not really.” She winced. “It’s a terrible, awful tale,” she whispered.
Selina took Rafe’s hand and squeezed. “Tell us. And don’t leave anything out. It seems you are not long for this world and we would have the truth. We can’t ask Edgar—our ‘uncle’—nor can we ask our parents.”
“Was Edgar even your brother?” Rafe asked, impatient to hear the story.
“Oh, yes. He was the eldest of us. He was a footman at Stonehaven. He was sent there after starting at Ivy Grove. That’s how I was hired as your nurse.” She coughed, and a tear tracked down her lined face. “Water, please?” She inclined her head toward a pitcher and glass on a table at the end of the bed.
Selina went to pour the water. She then helped the frail woman sip a bit.
“Thank you,” Pauline said, gasping. “Are you certain you want to hear this? Perhaps it’s better to let the past alone, especially since you both appear to have landed on your feet.”
“You have no idea what we have endured,” Selina snapped. She clutched the glass in her hand, and Rafe wondered if she might dump it on the woman’s head. “You stole us from our home. I was barely more than a babe. Your brother forced us to steal and lie and swindle. My brother had to save every penny we earned to send me away to school before I was raped and forced into prostitution.”
Pauline shrank into the pillows, her eyes wide and filling with tears once more. “I didn’t know. At least you went to school.”
“Where I was ridiculed for being less than my peers, and when I left to take respectable employment, I was raped anyway.” The revelation shook Rafe. He put his hand on his sister’s lower back, steadying her as much as himself. “And since then, I’ve had to scrape a living together to keep myself and my sister fed.”
“You didn’t have a sister,” Pauline said, confused as she wiped a tear from her cheek.
Selina swore as she went to slam the glass down on the table. When she returned, she stood close to Rafe, and he put his arm around her gently.
“Never mind our sister,” Rafe said. “This isn’t a day for our revelations but for yours. Why did you take us away from Stonehaven and give us to Edgar?”
“You won’t like it,” Pauline said, sniffing. “Your uncle hated your father. He wanted everything your father had, so he took what he could. He paid Edgar to start the fire, and we were to ensure that you”—she looked pointedly at Rafe—“and your father died.”
A blinding rage took hold of Rafe. He gripped Selina harder than he should as the world around him went red.
“He didn’t die, however,” Selina said from somewhere that sounded quite far away. “But our father did.”
“He’d been given laudanum so that he wouldn’t be able to escape. Your mother refused to leave him. Her maid told me to take the two of you to safety. But I was supposed to make sure you were trapped.” She looked from Rafe to Selina. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave you in the fire. So I took you and ran.”
“You left our parents to die?” Selina’s voice was closer now, but so small. The question pierced Rafe’s heart. This woman and her brother had taken everything from them.
“You did this for money?” he asked, his vision clearing while a dull throb started at the back of his head.
“More money than I could ever make in a lifetime as a nurse.”
He curled his lip. “Yet you’re dying in the back room of your sister’s husband’s inn.”
She turned her gaze to the wall. “I have made many poor choices.”
“What did you do after you ran away?” Selina asked.
“I was afraid of your uncle, that he’d catch me. Edgar wanted to take you, so I let him. I knew he was going to London. I went there too, but I didn’t stay long. I lost all my money and came here, where I married.”
Selina practically growled in frustration. “Your life sounds rather normal.”
Rafe repeated everything Pauline had said in his mind. Now, he summarized it out loud. “I want to make sure I understand: my uncle, Ludlow Mallory, arranged to murder my father and me. You know this for a fact?”
Pauline looked him in the eye. “Yes. He asked Edgar to start the fire and later spoke directly with me and Edgar to discuss the details. He visited Stonehaven about a week before the fire to make the final arrangements.”
“And you never once thought to alert our father or the authorities? You had no hesitation about killing a man and his five-year-old son?” Selina’s voice was rough with anger and despair.
“I did.” Pauline closed her eyes briefly and pushed her head back into the pillow. “But I was young and foolish.”
“Greedy,” Selina said tightly, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Fortunately for you, there is still time to do something right,” Rafe said.
“What’s that?” Pauline’s lids drooped as she looked up at them.
“You’ll provide testimony to a clerk in the event that you don’t live long enough to testify at the trial.”
She shook her head so hard that she started coughing once more. Rafe glanced at Selina, but she continued to stare malevolently at the woman in the bed.
He went and picked up the glass of water, then waited for her coughing to subside before helping her to take a few sips.
“I can’t do that,” Pauline croaked.
Selina violently uncrossed her arms, elbowing Rafe in the process. “Why not? You can’t be afraid for your life. It’s nearly at an end.”
“No, but I won’t cause trouble for my sister and her husband. They’ve been good to me. Lord knows I don’t deserve it. But they don’t deserve the taint of being associated with someone like me and what I’ve done.”