Misleading The Marquis

26 - Gina

"Where should I begin?"

"How about your choice in husband!"

"He's not what the rumors say, I promise you Caroline."

"Well then what is, my dear?"

"Sweet, bumbling - clever..."

"A love match then," Caroline concluded with a satisfied smile on her friend's newfound happiness. Gina only smiled back, not wishing to dissect that topic at the moment.

"There is something about him... about his family's past... I was wondering if you could tell me about his first wife?" she ventured, mouth feeling suddenly dry. She sipped at the spiced cider and glanced over the rim of her mug at Caroline. Her friend's expression was puzzled, her mouth twisted as if she was trying to recall the details.

"I do remember hearing something about her death..." Caroline paused, considering Gina, "Are you sure want to know this my dear?" she asked gently, "Wouldn't you rather hear it from the man himself?"

"Please," Gina urged, setting down the mug and leaning forward in her earnestness, "Please, there are strange things happening at the castle - and I can't wait any longer - I need to know about Cora."

"Very well," Caroline agreed after another long pause. The girl smoothed her skirt almost as a nervous habit, then folded her hands together and looked up at Gina once more.

"Her name was Cora Thorn... she wasn't born here, but her family took up residence in town about four years ago. Her father was a doctor, her mother assisted him and they had six children, Cora was the oldest. They had very little to their name, but were good and honest people and their practice was fair and healed so many residence in the surrounding area. Cora, though it's not right to speak so of the dead, well... she was different...."

"Different?" Gina urged when Caroline seemed as if she might stop.

"She beautiful for one thing," Caroline said with a quick roll of her eyes and Gina wondered if the two girls would've been in competition for the young men at the time, "I mean really beautiful, you know? Like Bonnie Voxley, do you remember Bonnie Voxley, dear?"

"Yes," Gina squeaked out in a deflated tone. Caroline was referring to what had to be the loveliest girl to ever attend their finishing school.

"Even more beautiful than her," Caroline concluded with a pitying look for Gina.

"Oh."

"Well, never mind that dear one - anyway - as I said - she was lovely, and ambitious and she absolutely could not stand that her parents were the working class. She believed all the way to her guts that she was destined for a title... and she was determined to get one."

"Now she met Malcolm Stefton - I heard he'd come home - well, she met him first you see, while his older brother, Lord Brisbane was off in teh Pear Wars - which I'm sure you know all about dear. Well you see she had it in her mind that Lord Brisbane - your husband- would die in the war, leaving Malcolm his title and fortune..."

"Only he didn't..." Gina pointed out more to herself than anyone else.

"Unfortunately for Cora, the younger brother was already in love with her when the older one arrived home a war hero. But what did she do? Well, determined for that title - she dropped Malcolm in favor of pursuing his brother."

"Both of them?" Gina scoffed, brow crinkled in a wince, Caroline nodded, delighted to see her story holding her audience so captive in that moment.

"Now, you've surely noticed the two have always been rivals? Yes, well this was no different, as you can imagine. Lord Brisbane had what Cora wanted, but Malcolm was madly in love with her. In a matter of months Lord Brisbane had proposed, apparently bewitched by her beauty just as his brother before him - and the two were to be married shortly."

"But what of Malcolm?" Gina whispered, as if a darkness had fall on the room, "Did Cora ever love him?"

"Oh dear," Caroline said with a shake of her head, lowering her voice as well, "This is the saddest part... apparently she'd never stopped her relationship with Malcolm when she'd taken up with Lord Brisbane. She was promising each of them to leave the other... and Malcolm believed her."

"Then how did she end up married to Bane?" Gina asked, feeling a shiver run down her spine as if Cora's ghost had come to join them.

"Lord Brisbane was furious with her relationship with his brother, you know how he is so insecure about his facial scarring. Well, determined to come out the winner, he talked Cora into marrying him whilst Malcolm was away from the mountain."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes," Caroline continued, "But you see Malcolm heard of the wedding and raced back home to stop it... only when he'd arrived... Cora was already dead."

"...Dead?" Gina whispered in a hush, the blood leaving her face. Caroline nodded, her eyes sad.

"No one really knows what happened... they say she fell down the stairs and broke her neck... or was pushed..."

"Not by Bane!" Gina cried, hearing the break in her voice.

"No one is for certain," Caroline admitted with a simple shrug, "But the day of her funeral, Malcolm Sefton disappeared... ran off to the Mart and has been there ever since... until you married Lord Brisbane..."

"But they were married?" Gina asked quietly, still using that whisper as if Cora herself would overhear them. Caroline simply nodded as she sipped at her own cider, almost like she was mentioning the weather instead of a gruesome, mysterious murder.

"And everyone suspects Bane still?" she asked next, falling backwards into her chair, stunned and numb... not just from the chill of the room around her. Bane... a killer? Hadn't he said it himself that he'd killed his wife? Then refused to discuss it again.

"I'm afraid so," Caroline said gently, and Gina felt as if her friend might actually mean it from the way she leaned over to pat Gina's knee sympathetically, "But no one knows a man like his wife," Caroline added in a smart little voice, "If you know him to be good and kind and clever and ...what did you say? Bumbling was it? Yes well, my dear, how could any man like that be a murderer?"

"He couldn't," Gina protested, with a shake of her head, then resting her forhead in her hands she considered this new information like a wave of the ocean coming into her chest all at once. She felt like she'd drowned. "He just couldn't," she repeated the words more to herself than to Caroline as scenes of Bane's face rolled through her mind's eye. He was a good man. He was kind to her, to his loved ones. He'd saved her even after he'd caught her in a terrible lie, he'd offered to find Ben, he'd mourned the death of a footman... this was not a man who threw women down stairs to spite their brothers... this was not Bane.

"And - and that's it?" Gina asked, realizing for the first time that there were tears streaming down her face as the cold air caught them.

"Well..." Caroline began, wincing, as if she'd hoped Gina wouldn't ask her this next bit, "There is one more piece to the rumor..."

"Tell me," Gina demanded, sitting forward, eyes wide.