Chapter Twelve
T he next morning, Sander woke early and dressed, wondering how the governess and her charges had fared through the night. As tempting as it was to storm the corridors to her chamber, he resisted. Instead, he ordered a morning repast sent to her chambers in his stead.
He took his place at the table in the morning room, where it was much warmer. A dated copy of The London Times lay next to his plate and he opened it, accepting coffee from Hicks. It was strong and hearty, emboldening him for the day ahead.
The door swung wide and Damien entered as if he hadn’t up and disappeared the last week. “Why is the carriage on the sweep? Did you already frighten our maiden and ill-dressed governess into leaving? What the devil possesses her to wear such horrid, drab colors…”
Annoyance spilled through Sander and he glared at his brother. “As a matter of fact, the carriage is for the wet nurse you hired.”
Damien’s hand went up, signaling Hicks, who hurried over with another cup. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s a sot. Noah couldn’t wake her last night for Julius’s feeding.”
“Julius? Oh, the infant. Bring me some eggs,” he barked at the footman.
“Christ, Damien. He’s your son.” Sander compressed his lips, withholding a rare temper. Once he had his emotions under tight rein, he cleared his throat. “Where have you been?”
“Roaming. What do you care?”
“You missed a meeting with the governess.” That was a ridiculous thing to bring up. He hadn’t wanted to remind him of Verda.
“Ah. How is that lustrous wife of yours?”
Not quite mine yet . “Doing well. Noah appears to like her very much.” As do I.
“Good. Perhaps he’ll quit harassing me about attending school with Lucius.”
“Perhaps,” Sander murmured.
“Can’t believe the child isn’t dead yet,” Damien went on.
Shock reverberated through Sander, leaving him momentarily speechless. Hatred, even. Blood roared in his ears that rivaled the pounding in his chest. “How can you say such a thing?”
Damien leaned back in his chair, an elbow on the arm and leaning casually to one side, staring at Sander through a calculating squint. “Is he? Just like I was father’s son?”
The pain in his brother’s voice was barely discernable, yet it seemed to bound against the horrid portraits lining the walls. The sting wasn’t limited to Damien. It stole through Sander’s blood like poison. His insides constricted as if he’d ingested a handful of bitter horse chestnuts. “What are you saying?” he choked out.
Damien glanced at the footmen. “Get out,” he barked. He waited for the men to retreat. “I know that I was not sired by Father’s seed. You are the rightful heir.”
“This, again? I am not. You are and you have two sons to follow in your steps.”
Damien was suddenly leaning forward, his hand a hard pound on the table, sloshing coffee from their cups. “Quit lying to me,” he bit out. “I know the truth. I’ve known it for years.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow stream.
“That changes nothing.” Sander lowered his voice, but the words came out through a locked jaw.
Damien fell back against his chair once more. “I suppose that is true.”
Sander gave up all pretense of eating. “How did you learn?”
The devil’s own smile fleeted his brother’s expression. “Father blurted it out just before he bloodied my nose—”
The statement heralded Sander back to 1810. He’d been sixteen at the time, Damien a year older.
“Father’s a bastard. You should run away.” Damien’s indignance on Sander’s behalf touched him.
He shoved a handkerchief in Damien’s hand. “I can’t.” Though his greatest desire was to join the fight against Napoleon on the Peninsula, every day, Father grew more deranged and uncontrollable. Sander dared not leave Damien to their father’s wrath. Father would kill Damien just as soon as look at him.
What a blackguard their father was. No matter the past, Damien was the Pender estate’s future.
Sander’s build and coloring was more like Father’s, whereas Damien was slighter and more elegant, taking after their mother.
Damien couldn’t quite hide a shudder that shook his shoulders, further sinking Sander’s hopes for escape. Damien’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. “You’re an idiot,” he said with only the scantest tremor to his voice.
“Idiot or not, I’m not leaving.” The chances of Sander ever seeing his brother alive again if Sander were to abandon him was a real threat. “We leave together or we stay together.”
They locked eyes for a long moment, until Damien blinked. “All right, it’s your neck.”
And yours . But Sander bit the inside of his cheek. “Where’s Father now?”
“Hell if I know. Taking the long walk off the scantest cliff, I hope.” Damien turned away.
It pained Sander to see his brother so… so tormented. He reached out to take his arm, but Damien shoved him away with a bloodied hand, leaving a wide streak to stain his shirtsleeves.
Fury surged through Sander: at his father for treating Damien so harshly, and Damien for his sudden rejection. At only a year apart, there had never been a time they hadn’t had one another’s backs. “Where’s Father?” he demanded.
Damien tore up the stairs two at a time without looking back. “How the bloody hell should I know? Leave me be.”
The rage tearing through Sander was both abrupt and precipitous with nowhere to go.
The door blew back and the swirling wind appeared a life of its own, and within its midst, his father but a blackened silhouette. The man stepped into the low-light of the sconces. One hand wrapped a leather strip.
Father stopped, his eyes drawn to the dark streak along Sander’s arm. “Where is he?” he growled.
Sander put his arm at his back while stepping away from the seething violence that mingled with the swirling wind. Fear gripped him by the throat and he shook his head.
Father started to the staircase.
“Outside,” he said quickly. “I-I don’t know where. H-He was upset, said something about the cliffs.”
“Bastard.” Father spun on his booted heel and disappeared into the blinding, blowing blizzard ravaging the Northumberland night.
“You remember, the night you sent him to his death.” Damien laughed, a maniacal ripple that turned the morning room into a medieval torture chamber, complete with the winds howling and branches rapping the windows.
“Yes.” Sander rose from the table, went to the windows, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He stood looking out at low, black clouds and dark skies that were all too common in his nightmares. “Yes. I remember.”
*
Verda’s hand, poised to push the latch, letting her into the morning room, froze, two things slamming into her fogged brain: the missing earl had returned, and Mr. Oshea had killed his father.
The gloom in the corridor grew sinister. In the space of seconds, a long clock’s pendulum ticked loudly, seeming to scrape against her throat. If she didn’t move, she would collapse to the floor in a pool of her own blood. Cobwebs would fall from the rafters to suffocate her. It took considerable effort to drag her mind from the self-debilitating fancies she’d concocted.
The accusation lobbed at Mr. Oshea from his brother should have terrified her. Had her running to gather her own trunk to accompany Mrs. Lyall from this castle of horror.
Instead, a surge of empathy encased her heart. She had no desire to see Mr. Oshea embarrassed or humiliated. She, more than anyone, knew the heaviness of a loved one’s death at one’s hands. The fear, the guilt. The questions pounding through one’s head. What if this had been done differently? What if that hadn’t happened? What if she’d been older—
Her head jerked back, rejecting the awful recollections.
She forced herself to breathe. Twice. Then, slowly, she backed from the door without entering, then hurried to the servants’ stairs for the kitchens to speak with Mrs. Knagg directly, regarding Julius’s feeding and care now that Mrs. Lyall had been relieved of duties vital to the babe’s very life.
Noah and Julius were now her most urgent undertaking, though grimly, she had to acknowledge that protecting her virtue was as well now that the Earl of Pender had since returned.
Alas, that wasn’t the most frightening aspect. It was her own attraction toward Mr. Oshea that posed her the greatest threat. A threat that could only lead to ruin.
*
Damien let out an impatient huff. “Your martyrdom grows tiresome. You didn’t kill Father, Sander. It’s true you sent him over the moors. But it was to protect me . As much as that grates, he deserved what he got. It’s years past, besides.”
Sander didn’t turn from the windows. “I’m not looking for absolution. I know what I did.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
A question that plagued him every night when he crawled into his cold and lonely bed. Her . He wanted Verda Fairclough. She enticed him to an absurd degree. But how could he offer for her when he had sent his own sire to his death? He couldn’t bear witnessing the censure, the accusations, the disgust that would surely follow.
“Now, about our new and enticing nursemaid—” Damien’s drawl, dripping with sarcasm, penetrated Sander’s despondence, sending a shock of black waves of rage coursing through him.
In an instant, he had hold of his brother’s neckcloth and was yanking him to his feet without any recollection of having crossed the room. “She was not engaged for her services as a nursemaid. And certainly not to provide you with entertainment,” he ground out. It was a tyrant of a move, as Sander stood a head taller than his brother and weighed a good two stone more.
Intimidated? Of course not. Damien laughed, sending not just shivers, but raw fury snaking up Sander’s spine, squeezing each vertebrae. Damien shoved him away.
Astonished and appalled at his own loss of control, Sander dropped his hold. “Leave her be, Damien, or rest assured, I shall kill you, just as I did Father.” He shoved him away.
Damien’s eyes narrowed as he dropped back into his chair. “I’m unused to threats.” His voice was a low growl that didn’t discompose Sander in the least. “Especially those issued by you.” Genuine amusement curled his lips, as if mocking Sander. It only served to infuriate him to the point of doing his brother great bodily harm.
Damien shoved away from the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe it’s time I met with the lovely Miss Fairclough.” He sauntered out.