The Other Cathy (32 page)

‘That was an unexpected stroke of luck for me. Either Jane imagined it, or else she was deliberately deceiving herself in
order to allay the guilt she felt for having despised Paget. It was an easy matter for me, merely a pillow held against his
face. He was already dead before I called Bernard. You’ve no cause to look so shocked, lass. Remember that Bernard him
self had declared Paget could not last through the night.’

‘That was no justification for – for murdering him! You
speak so calmly of these dreadful killings, as if your con
science is quite untroubled by them. And what of Matthew
Sutcliffe, a man who had done you no sort of harm? Yet you
allowed him to suffer the punishment that should have been yours.’

Randolph’s face was twisted with anger. ‘Why are you so
obsessed with Sutcliffe? Would to heaven I had never encouraged him in the first place, but I thought it was safer to have him friendly than not. When I saw the way things were
between you I tried to separate you. If Bernard had listened
to reason you would be in Bavaria now. Yes, and Cathy would
likely still be alive, so you needn’t hold me responsible for her
death.’ He read the disgust in her face, and his resentment
exploded. ‘I suppose you would have preferred
me
to have been transported instead of Sutcliffe. Your own flesh and
blood!’

‘It would have been justice,’ she said chokily. ‘It is right that the guilty should suffer for their crimes.’

‘Guilt and innocence – what do they count for when sur
vival is at stake? You of all people should know that, Emma,
because you and I are the same underneath the skin. Surely
you must have realised, over the years, that you mean more to
me than any other of the Hardakers? We have the same
strength and fighting spirit, the same determination to win
against all odds.’

Her body went to stone. ‘I am
not
like you! I used to ad
mire and respect you, Uncle. I used to love you. But now I
feel only loathing and contempt.’

Randolph flinched back as though she had struck him. Then
in an oddly humble gesture he reached out his two arms to
her, and his eyes pleaded for understanding.

‘Emma lass, you cannot know what you’re saying. You could
never find it in your heart to turn from me, to abandon me
when I most need you. Nothing and no one can harm us if
only we stay together and face the world together.’

Emma stared at him in horror. ‘I wish to heaven there was
no tie of blood between us. I feel tainted by it. I wish to heaven that you weren’t my uncle.’

‘I’m not your uncle!’ he shouted, his voice ringing with a strange, desperate triumph. ‘Do you not know it, Emma, can
you not feel it? We are closer kin that that, far closer. My dearest child, we are father and daughter!’

The shock came to her like a blow across the throat, knocking the breath from her body. She could feel herself swaying,
and struggled to regain her balance. At her feet a small stone
skittered down, and the sound of it bouncing against the rock-face was a warning of her perilous position.

‘Come away from the edge, for God’s sake,’ Randolph
begged. ‘Here, take my hand.’

Sickened and incredulous, she said, ‘You – you and my mother?’

‘Yes, Alice and I. Your mother loved me more than she ever loved Hugh. What use do you imagine he was to a
woman? And yet the fool believed you were his child, until I
disillusioned him that night at the mill.’

Emma felt a new intensity of emotion, a new depth to her
hatred. He was depriving her of everything she had clung to
since she was orphaned; the fond memory of her mother as a kind and gentle woman, a loyal, devoted wife; the memory of her father, who for all his weaknesses had loved and cher
ished his small daughter. And now, in a single shattering
moment, that man had become just Hugh Hardaker, her
uncle. And in place of what had been snatched away, she had
been given a mother who was an adulteress and a father who
was a murderer; a ruthless schemer, a man of villainy such as
Emma had never conceived possible. With every instinct she
possessed, with every part of her, she hated Randolph for be
ing her father.

He could read all this in her eyes. Read the scorn and
hatred, the bitterness – and her fear of him.

‘You don’t seem to grasp what I’m telling you,’ he raged. ‘I am your
father,
Emma, and I demand a daughter’s obedience
from you. Now do as I say. You are coming with me!’

As he spoke he stepped forward purposefully. Emma
turned away with a whimper of terror and stared wildly about
her. She had never before ventured so close to this outer edge of the Abraham Stone, and the vertical drop at her feet was petrifying. Then in a fleeting, panic-stricken glimpse she
noticed a narrow ledge of rock, six or eight feet down. Per
haps she could reach it, and from there somehow clamber from
crevice to crevice. She did not pause to consider if, dressed as
she was in those cumbrous skirts and petticoats, it could be
managed. As Randolph’s hand reached out for her she dropped down over the rim, sliding wildly, her clothing snagged by the
abrasive rock, until she landed heavily on her feet upon the ledge. For a moment she swayed there dangerously until her
frenzied fingers found a hold.

Randolph’s head appeared, and he stared down at her.

‘Emma, are you hurt? That was a foolhardy thing to do.’ He knelt on the very edge and extended his arm. ‘Here, let me
help you up.’

But she cowered away from him, crouching low so that his
hand could not reach her. Randolph said impatiently, ‘No more of this! If you refuse to come up, then I will come down
to you.’

Frantically she looked for a means of further descent, but there was none. The rockface fell sheer and smooth and un
broken, allowing no hand or foothold. Randolph had not
hesitated in starting to come down. His right foot, close
enough for her to touch, scrabbled for a hold, the toe of his
boot wedging into a small fissure. He tested it briefly before
giving it his full weight. She heard an ominous cracking noise,
and suddenly a chunk of rock split away. For an infinitesimal
instant Randolph seemed to hang in space, then his finger
tips lost their tenuous grip and his heavy body came falling
towards her, went past her, his arms and legs flailing wildly,
while a sickening scream escaped from his throat. Emma did
not hear the sound of the impact as he landed far below, for in that instant a fragment of the dislodged stone caught her
right temple. She recoiled, fighting down waves of faintness,
knowing that to lose consciousness now would be fatal.

The seconds passed and dimly, through the fog that
clouded her mind, she thought she heard a voice calling her name. Matthew’s voice! She summoned all her strength and
shouted back.

‘I’m here, Matthew. I’m here! ‘

When he found her Matthew wasted no words of horror,
but started at once to climb down. Realising his intent, Emma begged him to leave her and fetch help. But he ignored her
plea and continued down with slow, sure-footed movements.
Very soon he was standing beside her on the narrow ledge, his
arm protectively around her.

‘You are safe now, my love. You are safe now that I am here.’

For a few moments she clung to him in a flood-tide of relief.
Then she gasped, ‘How did you know? How did you know I
was here?’

‘From Ursly. When you didn’t come to meet me this after
noon, I went to her cottage to see what she could tell me about
your cousin’s death, and what led up to it. She seemed re
lieved to see me and confessed everything – all that she’d been
holding back before. Emma, I know it was Randolph who
killed your father.’

So Ursly hadn’t told him quite everything. As with herself, the old woman had baulked at that final revelation.

‘Ursly knew somehow that you were in terrible danger,’
Matthew was saying. ‘She broke off suddenly and told me to
get to the Abraham Stone as fast as my horse could carry me. “Miss Emma needs you”, she said. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, and I can only thank God that her sense of urgency impelled me to come.’

Emma added her own prayer of gratitude for Ursly and her
mysterious powers. If the old woman had not sent Matthew
to her aid, what then?

With Matthew there to give her courage, the climb back to
safety seemed almost easy. He found footholds for her and
supported her weight, and at the top he took her hand and led her down, step by step, to the base of the Abraham Stone.
From there on horseback, leading Randolph’s horse by the
bridle, they descended from Black Scar Rocks and skirted the ridge to where Randolph’s body lay. Dismounting, they stood
together looking down at the crumpled heap that had so re
cently been a living man.

Matthew said sombrely, ‘He didn’t stand a chance, of
course, falling from such a height. But it was him or you, Emma! Your uncle would have killed you without compunction.’

‘He wasn’t my uncle,’ she said, her throat aching with un
shed tears. ‘He told me that just now. It was the cause of the
quarrel that night at the mill which ended in his brother’s
death. That message found scratched on the stone floor must
have been Hugh Hardaker’s last despairing attempt to claim
me as his daughter. I was
his,
he was trying to insist, in spite
of what Randolph had told him. Perhaps he still believed it,
but I think he must have known in his heart that it wasn’t
true.’

‘You mean –
Randolph
was your father?’

She nodded wordlessly, and the shocked surprise in
Matthew’s eyes softened at once to compassion. He reached out and drew Emma into his arms, holding her face to his shoulder, gently stroking her hair.

‘And would he have killed you, even so?’

Her voice was very faint, muffled by the tweed of his
jacket. ‘I cannot be sure, Matthew. I shall never know the answer to that question.’

The breath of both horse and rider clouded into the frosty
air, and the jagged outline of Black Scar Rocks was blurred
by a soft lilac haze. Emma wasn’t hurrying, for it was another
half-hour yet before Matthew was due to meet her at Ursly’s
cottage. Reining in, she sat motionless in the saddle and gazed
across the expanse of winter-brown heather to the flat-topped
Abraham Stone. It had all started there, she thought, when Matthew had appeared out of the summer mist that lay like a
veil across the moor. And it was there it had ended, too, with Randolph Hardaker’s fall to his death. Emma had never again climbed the Abraham Stone, and never would as long as she
lived. This, the direct route between Bracklegarth Hall and
Ursly’s cottage, was the closest she had come.

Tomorrow a train would bear her and Matthew away from the Brackle Valley; first to Leeds, then by the main line to
London. And there in three days’ time, at a quiet little church
in Kensington, they would be married. No family and no friends would be present. There was no one she wanted in
attendance at her wedding. Tomorrow would be her final
goodbye to this moor, to Bythorpe, to the West Riding, and soon even to England. There would be few regrets at leaving the country of her birth, few fond memories she would carry
away with her.

Except of Cathy, her cousin – no, her sister! The thought
of their closer relationship brought Emma no warmth, for it
was a painful reminder of the man who had fathered them
both, the man her mother had loved.

Looking back, Emma understood mama’s reluctance to visit Bracklegarth Hall, to have more than a minimum of
contact with the other Hardakers. She had believed it was
entirely on account of Chloe, but now she knew it was more
because of Randolph, and mama’s feeling of remorse. And that
dying message her husband had scratched on the weaving
room floor.
He lies ... mine, MINE –
had she guessed its
true meaning? Had she been able to deduce that Randolph was Hugh’s killer? Emma would never know, but the thought that perhaps her mother, like Paget, had allowed an innocent
man to suffer for Randolph’s crime was something that would
haunt her for ever. There was one other thing they would
never know for certain, she and Matthew – how his muffler
came to be found at the mill on that fatal night. Matthew
had missed the muffler a few days before, and they could only
conclude that the light-fingered pedlar had found it, or stolen
it, and later dropped it in his hasty escape from the scene of
the crime.

During the past five weeks a new closeness had grown up
between Emma and Seth’s grandmother. Ursly was living in greater comfort now. With winter fast approaching, Matthew
had wasted no time in engaging a builder to make repairs to the lonely moorland cottage, and at Emma’s request he had
also arranged for the old woman to receive a regular payment
sufficient for her simple needs. As for Seth, he had returned to his employment at Bracklegarth Hall. But one day, when
his grandmother finally let go her tenacious hold on life, he
would take a ship and join Matthew and Emma in the far-off
land where they were to make a new beginning.