Page 86 of The Hidden Heart

“My father…” she breathed. “That is my father’s handwriting.”

She reached into the drawer and pulled out the packet of papers. Both were sealed, the one from her father with his seal, which had been broken, as well as another, unbroken, wax imprint of the General’s seal.

With fingers that trembled slightly, Jessica broke the seal on her father’s papers and opened it. First was an official-looking document, stamped with the insignia of the navy and dated ten years earlier. Jessica looked at the date.

“Why, that is just a few days before my father died. What is this?”

Richard, looking over her shoulder, said, “I’m not sure. It looks like something to do with the war—movements of the fleet, men and material, rather secret sort of stuff, I should think. Wait!” He reached over her shoulder and snatched the paper out of her hand. “Look.” He pointed at the name written in flowing letters across the bottom. “Lord Kestwick!”

“His father?” Jessica asked. “The present Kestwick’s father?”

“Yes. He was quite high up in the government. My guess would be that this was a government document, probably meant to be kept secret. How did it get into your father’s hands?”

Jessica still held a sheet of paper in her hand. It was a letter in her father’s handwriting. “Here,” she said. “This explains it. It is a letter from my father to the General. Apparently he sent it with the document.” She read from the letter “‘As you can see, the secrets are slipping out through Kestwick’s office. I believe that he knows nothing of it, but he takes many of his documents home to look through and stores them in a locked safe there, believing them well kept. It is his son who is the traitor. He has been stealing them from his father and passing them to the enemy for money. I have managed to infiltrate the group, and that is how I got this. He meets the French agents at the house of a courtesan named Marie MacDonald.’”

“That is why he killed Mrs. Woods!” Richard exclaimed. “She knew what he used to do and when she saw him, she decided she would make a bit of extra money by blackmailing him. So he killed her.”

Jessica nodded, reading on. “‘Many of the young officers and other young gentlemen frequent it. My operation is now complete, and I can assure you that I wait eagerly for this terrible stain to be lifted from my name.’”

Jessica lifted her face, tears standing in her eyes. “This is what Kestwick wanted. Proof that he was a traitor during the war.”

Richard nodded. “No wonder he was so eager to have it. This would have ruined him.”

“It ruined my father,” Jessica said.

“Oh, my dear.” Richard wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. “I am so sorry. This was why your father was cashiered from the army, wasn’t it? It was a ruse so that he could infiltrate a gang of traitors.”

“Yes. Of course. I should have known. That was why Father could not tell me the truth of it. It was highly secret.”

Gabriela observed her guardian’s arms around her governess with interest, but it was the age-old scandal about which she spoke. “But what happened? Why didn’t anyone know about this?”

“The General must have,” Jessica said, her voice tinged with bitterness. “My father must have been found out and killed by Kestwick—or else he simply had the bad fortune to have been caught in a tavern brawl while he was acting out his charade of having fallen from grace. But obviously General Streathern received this letter, for it is in his possession.”

“So Gramps knew and never said anything?” Gabriela asked in a troubled voice.”

“Yes, I am afraid he did,” Richard told her. “I cannot imagine why.”

“I know why,” Jessica said in a leaden voice. “Because he loved Kestwick’s mother. Remember?”

She tore open the other letter, the one to her from General Streathern, and began to read:

“‘Dear Jessica,

By now you no doubt hate me. You have every right to. Not only have I kept this secret all these years, but it was I who sent your father to his death. Please believe me when I say I did not intend to. If I had had any idea who the traitor was, I would never have set the investigation in motion. Thomas was the best and brightest man serving under me, the one I trusted most completely. When we needed to find out who was leaking secrets to Bonaparte, I knew that he could do it better than anyone. For that reason, we pretended that he was cashiered from the army under a cloud of guilt, so that he could work his way into the gang of traitors. As you can tell from this document, he was successful. He discovered the traitor. I received this letter shortly after his death.

“I told you of a love I had for a woman all my life. It was Lady Kestwick, the mother of the traitor Thomas discovered. When I received your father’s letter, knowing he had died in the tavern fight, and saw who he had caught, I was devastated. I wrestled with the problem for some time. I could not, as it turned out, bring myself to condemn the woman I loved so much to the life she would have had if her only son had been revealed as a traitor. I took Lord Kestwick aside and showed him the document. Together we went to his son and made him disband his operation under threat of being exposed. His father, of course, resigned from his position immediately.

“I know you must blame me now for what happened to your father and for the cloud under which you have had to live for the past ten years. You have every right to. The things I have done for you, which you counted kindnesses, have been my poor attempt to compensate for the wrong which I did to you and to your father. I hold you in true affection, and it has been a bitter grief to me to see you having to make your way in the world. I should have told you time and again over the years; every thanks I received from you was like salt to my wound. But I could not bear to tell you and earn your enmity. So I have taken the coward’s way out, which you may feel is fitting, and I have left you these documents, which will prove that your father was wronged and that the present Lord Kestwick is a traitor. It will ruin my name, as well, but that is no more than I deserve.

“I beg your forgiveness and pray that you will remember someday the love that I felt for you. You have been like a granddaughter to me.’”

“But how could Gramps do that?” Gabriela asked plaintively. “It is so cruel!” She looked at Jessica with some trepidation. “You must hate me now.”

“No! Of course I do not hate you. Don’t ever think that. I love you dearly. Whatever your great-uncle did or did not do could not affect the way I feel about you.” Jessica enfolded the girl in a hug. “And though it does grieve me sorely that the General did not remove the stain from my father’s name, I cannot find it in me to hate him, either. I know quite well the things one is willing to do because of love, even things that are wrong.”

She cast a glance at Richard as she said this, remembering the way she had longed so much for his touch, wished so much to be with him, that she had been willing to throw away her reputation and live in sin with him.

Jessica saw Gabriela’s interested gaze follow her own glance to Richard, and she said, “Now, would you like to know something that no one else does?”