The Duke’s Guests Laughed as the Maid Fell Into the Lake — She Said, “I’ll Remember Every Face”
Chapter 17
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"That's right." The big man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Little Clara Doyle, all grown up. God help me, I thought you were dead."She cried then. She could not stop it. Fifteen years of being alone came pouring out of her all at once. Ned sat beside the bed and held her hand in his enormous, rough one, and he let her cry until there were no tears left.Then she told him everything: the lake, the man with the scar, the secret drawer and the old Duke's letter, E.V., the brooch under her pillow, Lord Vane's soft, cruel laugh in the great hall.When she finished, Ned Turner was silent for a very long time. He stared into the fire. His big hands had closed into fists."Edmund Vane," he said at last. "I always wondered. God forgive me, I always wondered.""Wondered what?"Ned stood up slowly. He walked across the room to an old wooden chest in the corner under a pile of horse blankets. He knelt in front of it and opened it, and for a while he dug through old tools and rusty horseshoes. Then he came back to the bed, holding something long and dark in his hands.It was a leather strap, old and cracked, with a heavy iron buckle on one end."The morning the old Duke died," Ned said, "they brought me his saddle. Wanted me to mend the buckle so it could go back into the tack room, nice and tidy, like nothing had happened. But when I picked up this strap, I saw something." He held it out to Clara. "Look at the end where it broke."Clara took the strap in her hands. She turned it toward the firelight, and her breath stopped. The leather had not torn. It had not frayed or split the way old leather does when it breaks. The end was straight, smooth, almost perfectly clean."Somebody cut it," she whispered."Almost all the way through. Just enough that it would hold for a while and then snap at full gallop.""Aye," Ned said. "A sharp knife, a steady hand. That was no accident. And your father never did a thing like that in his life. He'd rather have cut off his own arm than hurt a horse or a rider."Clara looked up at him. "Then why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you go to the judge?"Ned's face crumpled with old shame. "I did, lass. I went straight to the magistrate's house with this strap in my hand. I told him what I saw." He looked at the floor. "That night, two men came to my forge. I never saw their faces. They broke three of my fingers with my own hammer. And they told me that if I ever said another word about that saddle, they'd come back for my Annie." He held up his left hand; three of the fingers were bent and twisted. "I was a coward," Ned said. "I kept quiet. I watched them send John away in chains, and I said nothing. I've hated myself every day for 15 years. But I never threw away the strap. Not once. I kept it because I always prayed that one day somebody would come back and ask me for it."