“Thank you,” she said, but as he handed her the letter, she realized that in fact there were two. Her hand closed about them, and she shut her eyes until she heard the quiet click of the door as he left.

She seated herself carefully behind the desk and looked down at the papers in her hand.

Her own letter was on top. The words Miss Susanna Osbourne were written in the firm, sloping, elegant hand that she recognized instantly as her father’s. His hand had not even shaken at the end, she thought as she set the other letter down on the desk, but her own was shaking as she held it. She slid her thumb beneath the seal and broke it before opening out the sheet.

“My dearest Susanna,” she read, “you will feel that I have abandoned you, that I did not love you enough to live for you. When you are older, perhaps you will understand that this is not true. My life, if I were to live on, would suddenly change quite drastically, and therefore so would yours. Perhaps I would face that change if I were alone as I faced another when I was much younger. Who knows? But I cannot subject you to it. I have been accused of two dreadful crimes, one of which I committed, one of which I did not. But my innocence in the second case does not matter. It will not be believed in light of the first.

“I am ruined, as perhaps I deserve to be. Your mother has already paid the ultimate price. It is time I did too. And I do it-or so I tell myself, trying to give my life some touch of nobility at the end-so that you may live. You have family, Susanna-mine and your mother’s. And either one will be happy enough to take you in once I am gone. They would have taken you at your birth, but I was too selfish to give you up. You were all I had left. I have given instructions to Sir Charles, and you will be united with your family. They will be good to you-they are good people. They will love you. You will have a secure, happy girlhood with them and a bright future. I promise you this though life will probably seem very bleak to you now as you read. I will take my leave of you, then, my dearest child. Believe that I do love you and always have. Papa.”

Susanna rubbed the side of her thumb over that final word. Papa. Had she really called him that? But of course she had. It was only afterward that she had changed his name to my father.

I do it so that you may live.

Must she bear that burden too?

Perhaps I would face that change if I were alone.

There was no mention of Viscountess Whitleaf or of choosing death rather than life without the woman he loved. But would a father admit such a thing to his twelve-year-old child anyway?

He had loved the viscountess. She had seen them together one afternoon just before his death. She had been hiding under a hedgerow close to the road that led from Fincham to the village, about to come out because it had become obvious to her that Edith must have tired of the game when she could not find Susanna and had gone home to wait for her to put in an appearance. But then along had come Susanna’s father, walking beside Lady Whitleaf’s horse until they both stopped a mere stone’s throw away. Susanna had stayed where she was, too embarrassed to be seen crawling out of a hedgerow. She had even been able to see them, though she had hoped they would not see her.

“Do you think I care?” Lady Whitleaf had said, her voice filled with scorn as she tossed her head so that the pink feathered plume in her riding hat nodded against her ear. “I do not care the snap of my fingers for you and never have.”

It had struck Susanna that she was very beautiful.

“I am sorry,” her father had said, possessing himself of her hand and carrying it to his lips. “I truly am sorry.”

“You will be very sorry indeed for having set your sights so high,” she had said, snatching back her hand. “And for having molested me.”

“Molested?”He had taken a step back. “I am sorry if you see my actions that way.”

“I do.” She had looked down on him as if he were a worm beneath her feet. “That I should have deigned to take even a moment’s notice of a mere government secretary! I hope your heart is broken. It deserves to be. I hope it drives you to your death.”

And she had driven her spurs into the horse’s side and gone cantering off down the lane.

While Susanna had sat paralyzed in her hiding place, biting her knee through the cotton fabric of her dress, she had watched her father pass a hand wearily over his face before turning and trudging off back in the direction of the house.

Her mind returned to the present and the letter in her hand. She could hear the fire crackling to life in the fireplace. She could even feel a thread of warmth from its direction.

She had family -or had had eleven years ago, on both her mother’s and father’s side. They would have taken her in-but not her father. What had he done to offend them so?

I have been accused of two dreadful crimes, one of which I committed…

Her mother had paid the ultimate price, and now it was his turn.

The ultimate price for what? What dreadful crime had called for the deaths of two people?

Her father had killed himself for her sake. Without her he might have struggled on. He had kept her after her birth even though he might have sent her to live with his family or her mother’s. He had been too selfish to give her up.

Susanna lowered her forehead to the desk to rest on the open letter.

So many thoughts and emotions to churn around in one body and mind!

But only one thought came at her with any real clarity-or rather the memory of three words written on the paper beneath her.

…my dearest child.

Theodore was going to come back, she thought suddenly, and sat up again. Her father’s letter had raised as many questions as it had answered. Perhaps there were some answers…

She reached her hand toward the other letter, whose seal, she could see, was already broken. But did she want to know the secrets of the man who had been her father? How could she not want to know, though, after reading her own letter? Was it really not as she had thought all these years? Was one of the impediments to her marrying Peter-though there were a thousand others-to be removed?

She drew Sir Charles’s letter toward her and opened it. Her eyes went straight to the body of the letter, closely written and in just as steady a hand as her own letter.

“You listened kindly to me a few days ago,” she read, “when I told you my sordid, long-held secrets before the Viscountess Whitleaf could do it for me. I have never had a high opinion of blackmailers or of those who allow themselves to become their victims. You were even gracious enough to refuse to accept my resignation-at least until we saw how much the lady talked and what the gravity of the resulting scandal would be.

“The situation has become far graver, however. Now that her original threat to come to you with my story has been thwarted, she plans to go to the world with another story of how I have molested and even ravished her. It would be a silly lie, perhaps, if not for two facts that will surely make her story generally believed. One is the truth of the other story she will now undoubtedly share with the world. The other is the mild gossip that arose around the lady and myself in London last year-and the truth of the fact that yes, for a while we were lovers. My mistake-one of too many to count in my life-was to try ending our liaison myself instead of waiting until such time as she chose to end it herself.

“It distresses me to have brought so much potential scandal to you and your family and this home. You will not be able to continue to champion me. I am ruined and may even be facing criminal prosecution. I see no way out but to do what will already be done by the time you read this. Perhaps my death will silence the lady and so prevent all scandal except what will be the inevitable result of my suicide.

“But I cannot wait until after I have left Fincham. There is Susanna, you see. She has long been all that is truly precious in my life. Lady Markham and Miss Markham have always been remarkably kind to her, for which I cannot possibly express the full extent of my gratitude. Be kind to her in one more thing, I beg you. Send her to my father with the enclosed letter. He is an honorable and good man. He will give her a home and kindness and even love.

“I thank you, Sir Charles, for allowing me the privilege of serving you…”

Susanna did not read the last few sentences. She set the letter down on top of the other one.

She had been right, then, though not in the way she had thought. Lady Whitleaf had driven him to his death. That little snippet of conversation she had overheard between them had meant something a little different from what she had thought, but the outcome had been the same.

Except that he had died not because he loved the viscountess, but at least partly because he had loved her.

She has long been all that is truly precious in my life.

… my dearest child.

She must have been dilly-dallying a great deal over the letters, she realized, when after a brief knock the door opened and Theodore came back into the room. He had been gone for a whole hour, she saw when she glanced at the clock on the mantel.

“I have brought you a cup of tea,” he said, coming to set it down on the desk before going to poke the fire into renewed life.

“Theodore,” she said, “what had my father done in his past that was so very bad?”