“What are you saying?” A jiggle of fear settled low in her stomach.

“A man who will strike his own mother, bloody her mouth and blacken her eye, won’t think twice about doing the same to another woman. She’s so small and delicate, Mrs. T. I can’t bear the thought of what he could do to her.”

“You believe Michael Fury beat his own mother?” Susan said slowly.

“She told me so herself. Came looking for him here with her poor face all black and blue. I took her into my room and did what I could for her, and she told me Michael had come home the night before, drunk, and had hurt her, had driven her husband off, then left her there alone. I wanted to go to the police, but she wouldn’t have it.”

She whirled away, emotions choking her. “Ah, he belonged in a cell. He belonged in a cage. If you had only seen her face. If that man raises a finger to Miss Laura, I—”

“Annie, I did see Michael’s mother.” Susan rose. “I did speak with her.”

“Then you know. He ran off to sea just after that rather than face what he’d done. Mrs. T, we have to make him go away from here. We can’t have a man who’s capable of what he is near Miss Laura and her babies.”

“I’ll tell you what she told me, Annie, after she came to shout at me for keeping Michael here after that night.”

“Here?” Ann had to press a hand to her outraged heart to keep it in place. “That man was here? You let him stay here in this house after—”

“He slept in the stables until he shipped out. He never laid a hand on that woman.”

“You saw her. She told me—”

“She blamed him. She couldn’t blame herself, not then. But I had the truth out of her. It was her husband who beat her, and who had done so before. She had come to work with black eyes before, and Michael didn’t put them there.”

“But she said—”

“I don’t care what she said,” Susan shouted. The memory of it still made her blood burn. A mother blaming a child for her own failings. “That boy came home and saw his stepfather beating his mother. And he protected her. The thanks he got for giving that beast what he deserved was having his own mother kick him out of the house, tell him he had no right to interfere, that he was to blame.”

She stopped for a moment, struggled to calm herself. “And when Michael was gone, when she knew she’d lost him, she sat right here in this room and broke down. She told me everything.”

“But she told me . . . I believed . . .” Ann sank down in a chair. “Oh, sweet God.”