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.”It was impossible, Millicent thought.“I mentioned it before.” Truscott’s brooding face turned to her.“Emma had been planning to be the Countess Aytoun, to rule Baronsford, from the time she was a wee lass.She married Lyon not for love of him, but for love of his title.He was the one who would inherit everything.And it was this that brought on the quarreling between the brothers.”He waited a heartbeat before turning his gaze on the hills across the way.“Wild, beautiful, untamed she was.In their own way, each of the Pennington lads was enthralled by her.Each of them wanted to change her or protect her.Of course, we always knew that Lyon would be the winner.Or loser.”Millicent put aside her questions.She focused hard on every word that Truscott spoke.“After me, David was the closest in age to Emma.As children, they were inseparable.As they grew older, she became the very embodiment of what a woman should be in his mind.Of the three of them, I think he was the one who was always in love with her.But of course, he knew he couldn’t have her.”He started walking again, ushering Millicent to the side, away from the edge.“Then there was Pierce.He was always the protective kind.A born hero, that Pierce.He worried about her from the time she could walk.Watched over her through all the wildness.In a way, I think he regarded Emma as a sister.It was his responsibility to teach her and guide her.He had high hopes, but Emma was willful to say the least.She could never be tamed.”Walter kicked a pebble with the tip of his boot, and Millicent watched it roll down the rugged cliffs and bounce high off the rocks before disappearing into the waters of the rushing river.“Of course, Aytoun was the one with the greatest expectations and the most to lose.He tried, though.He did his best to make her happy in her role as countess.And she did conform to what was expected, I suppose, but only on the surface.” He cast a sidelong look at Millicent.“Do you know why Aytoun was called ‘Lord of Scandal’ among the members of the ton?”“Because of his temper? His duels?”Walter Truscott nodded.“Duels to protect his wife’s reputation.To salvage what he could of his honor.All of those men with whom he fought, every one of them, had supposedly had a relationship with Emma.”“But was it true?” she challenged.“Rumors have a way of starting with no justification.”“Who can say?” he said vaguely.“Emma liked to toy with men.One never knew if she was speaking the truth or lying just to get a reaction.Whatever it was, she thrived on the attention.” He paused, frowning.“But she was also as ambitious as she was wild.And becoming mistress of Baronsford—as grand as that might have seemed to her before her marriage—it was not enough once she had it.”Millicent looked back in the direction of Baronsford.Even at this distance, it was immense.“Most of all, though, she wanted to control Aytoun.She didn’t know how to go about it, though, so she started this dangerous game of playing on his jealousy.She soon found that she could not easily manipulate him.The more she flirted, the more reserved he became.In a very short time, Emma became a burden that he was responsible for, but that was the extent of it.No affection.”The conversation she and Lyon had in bed last night came back to Millicent.In a perverse way, that was what she wanted out of her marriage, as well.Not to control her husband—and never by using the methods that Emma had used—but Millicent, too, wanted to know for certain that she mattered to him.That she was the only woman he wanted.“One of Emma’s unforgivable flaws, though,” he continued, “was her insistence on pitting the members of this family against each other.She knew how much David and Pierce cared for her, so from the start of her marriage, she used them as a means of riling Aytoun.Complaints she had were not brought to her husband but to his brothers.If anything at all displeased her, she would run to one of them.Of course, the fault for every problem lay with Aytoun.”“Were they so blind?” Millicent asked passionately.“Couldn’t they see what she was doing?”“She had been a part of this family for too many years for them to doubt her.”“What about the dowager? She must have seen through her?”“By the time she realized what was happening, there were not many choices left to her.Emma was already Aytoun’s wife.The dowager’s answer to the problem was simply to stay away and let her son work out his own difficulties.”“What happened the day of the accident?”“Everyone had been invited to Baronsford for the dowager’s birthday.Now, Emma had planned it, which made it very suspicious to start with, for she didn’t have the best of relationships with her mother-in-law.But still, they all came.Even Emma’s side of the family had been invited.”Truscott stopped again and turned to look down at the rocks.Not far ahead Millicent could see the stretch of stony beach at the bend in the river [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]