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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

“Does Miss Tamar still have Miss Rebecca’s letters?” asked Abigail. And, when Scipio looked uncertain, she went on, “I’m not fishing for servant-hall gossip, Scipio. Mrs. Pentyre was deliberately lured to Rebecca’s house—I know this,” she added, seeing the surprise in his face. “Believe me, it is true. She was lured there, and murdered, by someone who knew Rebecca: someone who knew that he could get Rebecca to let him into the house, one way or another. I think she saw him, and I think that’s why she fled. It may be someone she knew in Boston—someone I would know, or Mr. Adams, or even you . . . and it may be someone she knew before she married Mr. Malvern.”

“Who?” asked Scipio, baffled. “Most of her people—her brother and her father—are dead. The rest of her family cut ties with her, when she gave up her faith.”

“That’s why I need to see her letters,” said Abigail. “Because whoever he is, I suspect that he knows she saw him. And unless we find him—and find her—he may reach her first.”

Ten

Ten

011

“What I don’t understand, m’am, is how Miss Rebecca even knew this Mrs. Pentyre.” Scipio kept his voice to a near-whisper as he led Abigail up the servants’ backstairs to the upper floor. “She was only a young girl, not even wed to Mr. Pentyre when Miss Rebecca left this house. Unless Mr. Pentyre for some reason thought to learn something from Miss Rebecca, that would damage Mr. Malvern—”

Abigail said, “Good Heavens!” It was something she hadn’t even considered. “Would he? I’ve never met the man—”

“Nor I.” They reached a tiny landing and the butler opened the little door there. The hall was near pitch-dark, save for the dim glow of the candles he bore in a pewter branch, and cold as the back corridors of Hell. “Ulee—that’s the head groom—has a cousin in Pentyre’s stables, though, so every time Mr. Malvern sues Pentyre, or Mr. Pentyre gets the Governor or the Royal Port Commissioner to fine Mr. Malvern or hold up one of his cargoes to search—”

“My goodness. I had no idea. Every time . . . Is this a common occurrence? Do they hate one another so?”