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Chapter 31
Mearsall, Kent
May 1828
“Avenge me.”
The raspy whisper stirred Nell Trim from her grief-stricken haze. She straightened in the hard wooden chair beside the narrow bed. Around her, tallow candles guttered. Outside the cottage’s mullioned windows, the night was dark and quiet.
She rose to smooth her half sister’s covers. “Shall I fetch Father?”
“No.” Dorothy grabbed Nell’s hand. The late spring air was warm and Dorothy’s fever had raged for two days, but the fingers that closed around Nell’s were icy with encroaching death. “Listen … to me.”
Nell stared helplessly into the girl’s ashen face. Once Dorothy had been the village belle. Now her skin was gray and dry, and her large blue eyes sank deep into their sockets. She was eighteen years old and looked three times that. “Dr. Parsons said to rest.”
Dorothy’s cracked lips turned down. “There’s no time.”
Nell’s heart cramped with futile denial. “Darling …”
Her half sister’s hold tightened, stifling the comforting lie. “We both know it’s true.”
Yes, they did. Dr. Parsons had relinquished all hope after Dorothy had lost her baby. Nell still shuddered to remember the sea of blood gushing from her half sister’s slight body.
Since then, Dorothy had lingered through agony. Looking into her drawn face, Nell knew that lovely, vivacious, heedless Dorothy Simpson wouldn’t last the night. “I’ll get you some water.”
Irritation shadowed her half sister’s face. “I don’t want water. I want your promise to take up my cause.”
Nell frowned. “But you don’t know who assaulted you.”
For months, Dorothy had hidden her pregnancy, until even her unworldly schoolmaster father had noticed. In tearful shame, she’d confessed that a stranger had attacked her.
Dorothy’s bitter smile was out of keeping with the frivolous girl Nell knew. But of course, frivolity had brought disaster, hadn’t it?
“It wasn’t exactly … assault.”
Horrified, Nell snatched her hand free. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
Ever since hearing that Dorothy’s pregnancy resulted from violence, Nell had been angry. This hint that the story wasn’t exactly as presented—hardly surprising, Dorothy was often unreliable with the truth—left her bewildered. “You went … willingly?”
Dorothy’s expression conveyed a strange mixture of shame and pride. “I loved him.”
“Was it one of the village boys?” Nell felt queasy. Had someone they knew taken advantage of Dorothy? It seemed the most obvious answer, yet Dorothy had always scorned Mearsall’s lads as yokels.
A grunt that might have been a dismissive laugh. “Don’t be silly.”
“Then who?”
Dorothy’s gaze fixed on some distant horizon. Unbelievably Nell heard a trace of her sister’s old conceit. “A great gentleman. A man who could give me everything I wanted.”
“Everything except a wedding ring,” Nell said sharply, unable to reconcile Dorothy’s boasting with this pain and disgrace.
Tears filled Dorothy’s eyes. “I knew you and Papa would scold. That’s why I said I’d been forced.”
Despairingly, Nell stared at this wayward girl she loved so much. Dorothy was seven years younger, more child than sister. When Nell was five, her soldier father had died fighting the French. Widowed Frances Trim had then married the considerably older William Simpson, as much to provide security for her daughter Nell as for companionship. Since Frances’s death ten years ago, Nell had cared for her half sister like a mother.
“Oh, Dorothy,” Nell said, a world of regret in the words. She could hardly bear her guilt at failing to keep a closer eye on her sister.
Convulsively Dorothy clutched Nell’s hand. “Don’t be cross.”
“I’m cross with the man who did this to you.” That was an understatement. She’d like to see the wretch hanged.
Before this unknown blackguard had got his filthy paws on her, Dorothy had been an innocent, although easily flattered. A man wouldn’t need much town polish to convince Dorothy, who’d never been past Canterbury, of his credentials as a lord.
“Good,” Dorothy said with venom, her face as white as the pillowcases.
For a terrifyingly long time, Dorothy lay still. Nell’s heart slammed to a stop, only to resume beating when Dorothy drew a rattling breath. She was alive. Just.
“I want you to …” A coughing fit interrupted. Every word sounded like her last.
“Don’t talk,” Nell said, although she was frantic to know who had wronged this beautiful, vibrant girl.
Dorothy’s words emerged in a breathless tumble. “Find him and expose him to the world as a villain.”
“But who—” Nell began.
“Promise me.” Dorothy struggled up on her elbows, the effort draining what little strength remained. “He said he’d marry me. He said he’d take me to his house and set me up like a queen.”
She started to cough again. Nell released her and poured some water, but drinking only made Dorothy choke. “Rest now.”
Petulantly Dorothy struck away the glass, spilling water on the sheets. “When I told him about the baby, he laughed. Laughed and called me a brainless slut.”
