Page 113 of Jane Deyre
“I knew one day you’d come back.”
“W-what makes you think I’m Charlotte Mason?”Edwina Rochester’s long-lost daughter??
A smug smirk. “Iknowyou’re Charlotte Mason.”
It’s like my brain has short-circuited. In a state of total shock, confusion, and disbelief, I let her continue.
“At first, I suspected it. The same black caterpillar eyebrows. Long, slender fingers. Wisp of a waist. Then, when you played poor Cinderella and lost your glass ‘slipper,’ I caught sight of your right foot. Not only the same exact size and shape as Edwina’s but also sporting a similar bump to hers where you, too, once had a sixth toe. Proof of the pudding!”
“That doesn’t prove I’m Edwina’s daughter!”
“Well, a DNA test does.”
My eyes widen; my pulse thickens.
“I confiscated your toothbrush... and sent it to a genetics lab along with Edwina’s...”
She stole it!NotJohn Reed.
“And guess what! The results came back and I will quote: ‘The probability that Edwina R. is the biological mother of Jane D. is 99.8 percent.’ It’s a shame I don’t have the report to show you; it’s in my office at Thornhill.”
I don’t need to see it. I believe her. A chill of certainty sweeps over me as her lips twist into a sinister snarl.
“Oh, and by the way,Ihad your sixth toe cut off and hand-delivered to Edwina. Gift-wrapped in a little Tiffany-blue box. So classy, wouldn’t you agree?”
Like the one I buried Stripe in.Suddenly, I make sense of all she’s telling me. My heart pounds so hard I hear my blood whoosh in my ears.
“Youkidnapped little Charlotte Mason?”Me?
She steps closer to me. Her shoeless footfalls loud and heavy.The thuds!“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that... would you, Bertie?” She casts her eyes down at him.
He’s part of this too?
Wide-eyed with terror, he shakes his head vehemently.
“Bertie and Iarrangedto have you kidnapped, Charlotte. Dropped off in Mexico. Tijuana. It was the perfect plan, and I knew Bertie would go along with it because he was tired of being emasculated. Tired of being Mr. Edwina Rochester. Tired of having no money to his name because it was all hers—thanks to a prenup.” She pauses. “And because he knew the baby wasn’t his. Poor Bertie was sterile.”
A tsk. The sound of her clicking tongue reminding me of Hannibal Lecter’s. Mocking. Contemptuous. Murderous.
“Our plan was perfect. He’d have his revenge. His freedom. And I’d have him. We would collect the ten-million-dollar ransom money and run off together. And live happily ever after. Edwina would get her precious baby back and get to keep her lesbian lover. And her lover’s bratty son, Ward.”
My mind whirs, still trying to work it all out. Bertrand was having an affair with Alice? Conspired with her to kidnap me?
The insidious woman rakes her sharp, claw-like fingernails through her long, Brillo-like hair. “It was easy peasy. With the help of Edwina’s sleazeball agent, Max, I orchestrated a little dinner gathering at Musso’s, knowing that he’d get Edwina and her lesbo lover plastered and they’d be there all night. While he backed out last minute—which fortuitously made him a suspect in the kidnapping—the two lesbos kept to the plan, and while they were out, I slipped that daft cow Grace a sleeping pill that knocked her out, and turned off her baby monitor. Bertie and I let the hired kidnapper in, and then, after he absconded with Charlotte, we celebrated with a little romp in the hay. A discreet one, I should add. He retired to the guesthouse, me to my chamber. We both had alibis. He was working. I was sleeping. And stupid Edwina had no security cameras.”
Another sharp pause. Another sharp jag of pain, violent enough to make me see stars while she rubs her wrists and goes on.
“Except things went terribly wrong. The idiot we hired to take Charlotte to Mexico got busted for trying to smuggle drugs out of the country and all he could remember is that he dropped the little crybaby off at some church.”
Is that where Juan and Maria Dere found me? And took me in?
“And then feckless Bertie here messed things up big-time. He changed his mind. He couldn’t go through with it. He confessed he loved the child, even though it wasn’t his, and threatened to expose me to Edwina. Which meant jail time for me. I could have easily exposed him too, but that wouldn’t solvemylittle problem...
“And I didn’t exactly want to lose him... it was quite nice having him as my lover... so I devised another plan that would...” She ticks off on her fingers. “One: keep him quiet... Two: keep him around... and Three: make him suffer for screwing things up.”
The witch wiggles the three fingers she’s holding up. As if she’s about to recite an incantation.
“So this time I arranged for a little accident to happen. I got someone to impersonate Bertie and take his sailboat out to sea. I remember the ocean was quite choppy that day. The starving actor I hired jumped off the catamaran with the life raft while the boat floated out to sea.” She tsks again. “Poor Bertie! Never to be seen again! Ruled an accident or suicide and presumably ravaged by sharks.”