“For to match that chain—there were three other chains. And they were sewn upon a black cloak with a lining of purple silk, the cloak Captain John wore the night he fought Lord Pembroke.”
My lord pushed back the settle very slowly. His face was in the shadow, but for all that it was not pleasant to behold.
“Has the child these mad fits often?” he asked, with a jerk of the chin. “She will be wishing Jack at Newgate next.”
Barbara would not take her eyes from him to glance in the direction of her mother. Had she looked at Anne Purcell she would have seen a plump, comely woman grown old suddenly, and trying to make anger shine through fear.
“The cloak did not belong to John Gore, my lord. Nor did he know that I have the chain from it that I found in my father’s hand.”
She rose suddenly, and, swinging the chair before her, knelt with one knee on it and steadied her elbow on the back.
“Father lay over there—near the table. There is a stain on the floor still—though Mrs. Jael was set to scrub. It was I who found him. You may remember that.”
They both looked at her askance, cowed and caught at a disadvantage for the moment by this knowledge that she had and by her hardiness in accusing.
“My dear young madam, you had better go to bed.”
Her bleak imperturbability turned my lord’s sneer aside like granite.