I don't much like what I see. I make no
excuses, except to say that I am my father's son, and was raised
without..... Nevermind. I am sorry, too, that you had to endure his
wrath for so long. There was no other way. Had I spoken before I did,
it would simply have made matters worse."
The woman could only stare at him in disbelief.
"And now all you ask," she replied, "in exchange for my own freedom,
is that I turn an innocent young woman over to the man who burned her
mother at the stake, and threatened to violate my son's grave. To say
nothing of what you yourself have done. Why should my answer to you be
any different than the one I made your father?"
His face flushed with anger, which he then suppressed. "First, because
I am trying to protect her. And you, though you don't believe it.
Second, because he didn't kill her mother, or even strike her, as he
told his men. She was dead when we arrived..... You don't believe me.
Here. She left this note for Mary."
He handed her a single sheet, on which was written the woman's dying
message to her daughter.
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