Free Ashton Park by Murray Pura

murder?” A few minutes later she added, “She does not even seek forgiveness. She is not sorry for what she has done.”
    Victoria was still up just before midnight when another cable arrived with the astonishing news that HMS Tipperary had picked up a handful of sailors from the Queen Mary and one of them was Commander Edward Danforth. The whole household—all those who were awake—seemed to relax and fall off to sleep in a kind of euphoria. But at four in the morning a courier brought unwelcome news of the sinking of the HMS Tipperary due to enemy action. Sir William did not inform his wife, he let her sleep on. Victoria, still up, sat with him in his private study as he talked and prayed and fretted.
    “I do not see God’s hand in this,” he groaned. “I do not see it. That does not mean it isn’t there but—”
    “Are there survivors from the Tipperary , Father?” she asked, pouring him tea.
    “I don’t know. I expect that will be in the next cable. It’s not unreasonable to suppose there were some.”
    At eight-thirty yet another cable relayed that twelve men had been plucked from the sea after the Tipperary had gone down. Most had been rescued by the Germans and were prisoners of war. Sir William shook his head as Victoria read the cable through twice. “I would not care. A son in a prison camp is better than one at the bottom of the sea.”

    Guests began arriving for the wedding after lunch. Despite the devastating news she awoke to, Lady Elizabeth greeted them with warmth and grace, clever work with cosmetics by her maid, Cynthia, disguising the redness and swollenness under her eyes. Tavy and his footmen ushered people to their seats in a chapel that gleamed with Emma’s colors of green and gold and with the afternoon light. Lady Caroline Scarborough, tall and slender and fair as sunlight—the woman that everyone expected Kipp to marry—gave him a proper kiss on the cheek and sat with her family. The bishop was about to begin the ceremony when Tavy took Sir William aside and handed him a final telegram—Edward was one of the few seamen the Royal Navy had pulled from the water when the Tipperary went down. Sir William gripped Tavy’s hand: “My boy is twice saved and we are twice blessed.”
    Ecstatic, he handed the cable to the bishop to read to begin the service. Many of the guests knew nothing about the sea battle or what had gone on at Ashton Park from one day to the next because of it. For Lady Elizabeth, the emotions that had ravaged her mind and body for the past day proved to be so exhausting she felt she was going to collapse in the tightly packed chapel. Aunt Holly bolstered her on one side and Sir William on the other. For Kipp and Robbie, who had both seen combat and knew the ending of the sea battle saga for their family was better than anything that could be expected, a marriage coming at the end of it all was something of a triumph, and they sat elated in their pew.
    But for Victoria, happy as she was to hear Edward’s life had been spared, the wedding was no more than a deeper cut in the wound of Emma’s betrayal of Ben. Emma could marry the man she loved but Victoria could not. That possibility had been stolen from her by the sister she had grown up with under the ash trees and worshipped God with at St. Mark’s. To her, the wedding was a scar on a perfect June day that had seen miracles. She sat rigidly next to Catherine without any expression on her face as Emma and Jeremiah exchanged vows. She knew something would have to be done about what her sister and Mrs. Seabrooke had set in motion against Ben Whitecross’s life. She did not know what that something was, but when the opportunity presented itself she was certain she would recognize it for what it was. And she would act on it.

5
1917
    February 1917
    He had finally come home to Ashton Park. It seemed to Edward that nothing had changed since he had last been here. Indeed, he wondered if Ashton Park could ever