“Why, why in God’s name would you not speak of such atrocity? What manner of coward are you that you would protect such a creature?” Anne hardly knew what she was saying until her eyes met Liston’s, and she saw the hurt and fear there.

“Liston, he must speak of what he knows, or another life will be on his conscience,” Anne begged. “Will you not make him speak?”

“Liston, make him speak,” Molly cried. “For God’s sake, I beg you!”

“Father, tell me—tell all those here what you know. For if you do not, what manner of man are you?”

“A damned one,” Clifton said. “Long ago, when I was a lad, I met a fine young lady, and she became my obsession. Before long I would do anything for her, and I did. I did terrible things. When she told me she had drowned her father while he bathed, I kept silent, for I knew what a brute he had been. When she asked me to help her stop her cousins from tormenting her, I did, though I could not know what lengths she meant to go to until it was too late and they were dead. I could have spoken up then, told the world my love was a murderer, but she was still just a girl of no more than fifteen. And she was my religion, my every act of violence on her behalf a prayer to her. Though the things she did might seem wrong to the rest of the world entire, I knew it was only because of the horrors she had endured. She told me she had never known kindness until I had laid my eyes upon her.” Clifton cradled his own chapped and cracked hands against his chest as if he were holding another’s over his heart. “I was no witness to the death of her uncle and aunt, but . . . I suspect she had a hand in it. We should have been free then, the two of us. To marry and live a good life at last, now all those who had sinned against her had suffered her vengeance. But it was in that moment that she cast me out and cut me off. She wanted more than this, more than me. She told me she deserved a finer life than I could ever give her. I was no use to her anymore, half beast and brute that I was. For a while I thought I might die, but a man must live, and a man must marry, and I married your mother, Liston. After some years, I loved her too. For she was everything the other was not: kind, gentle, brave and good. I don’t know what prompted her to hide her secrets here or to take Joseph. But I know it was her.”

“Explain yourself at once,” Emily demanded.