Chapter 28 #2
And Hudson continued to look at her, waiting for her to finally admit what she had done. Surely now, she would? Is this not what she wanted? Was this whole thing not to do with how much she hated him? He bit his lip, refusing to let go of her, still staring into those eyes...
There was no remorse in them, however, and he could tell right away that his apology wasn’t going to be enough.
“I just pray that Florentia gets better,” he continued, now through a clenched jaw because the anger was starting to take him. “She wanted nothing more than to see us work out our differences, and I hate to think she might not live to understand the effect she has had on us both.”
“As do I. Let us both pray.”
“She has always liked you,” Hudson continued, his leg now shaking. “Even when I told her why I felt the way I did, she urged me to try and see things from your side. She fought for you.”
“And I have always liked her too,” Caroline said simply. She didn’t appear sad or distraught. She certainly didn’t look as if Florentia’s health was on her mind. “Hopefully, this trend will continue, for I am sure she will find health soon.”
“I just wish there was something I could do.” His grip tightened further, his stare turning cold. “I am at a point where even if someone had done this to Florentia, if they were to come forward and help put things right, I would not blame them. I just want her to get better.”
“But who would do such a thing?” his stepmother said with a shake of the head. “I cannot imagine. Sadly, this sounds to me like...” She sighed. “Like bad luck.”
“Bad luck?”
“Fate, as horrid as it is to say. Sometimes, terrible things simply happen.”
She isn’t going to say it. She is content to look me in the eye and lie to me while my wife dies slowly at her own hand. I am sorry, Florentia, but in this instance you are wrong. My stepmother is a monster.
“Fate...” Hudson repeated the word with a growl, no longer keeping calm.
“I did not mean it to sound callous,” Caroline said. “I simply meant…”
“Fate did not decide this,” Hudson spoke over her.
“Fate did not come to my home and poison my wife. Fate did not plan to murder my wife as it looked me in the eye and feigned compassion. Fate did not—” He caught his tongue, a glare now held on his stepmother.
“It was you, Caroline. I know it was you.”
She leaned back as if struck. “Excuse me?”
“I know what you have done,” he hissed. “Do not lie to me.”
“What I have done?” She tried to pull her hand free, but he would not release it. “Hudson, dear, I understand that you are upset but—”
“Upset does not come close to how I feel.”
“Which is why I am willing to forget this most insulting of accusations. To imply that I...” She scoffed. “To even think I might have something to do with this. You go too far.”
“Caroline, you have no idea how far I am willing to go.”
“I wish for you to leave.” She wrenched her hand free. “Now, thank you.”
“I am not going anywhere.”
“Do not make me take action,” she said. “You think you can...can intimidate me? You think I fear you? You might be a duke, but you are not above the law, and if you continue to threaten me, I assure you that it will be the last thing you do.”
“Why did you do it?” he snarled at her. “Tell me, why.”
“I did not do this! Your wife is sick, which has brought you despair. You are searching for a means to blame someone, as if that might make you feel better. I am saddened by this, Hudson. And it is only because of how upset you are that I will be willing to forget that this...” She scoffed again. “That this conversation took place.”
He was shaking, his hands curled into fists. “You hate me. You always have.”
“I told you, I do not hate—”
“And maybe I do deserve it,” he spoke over her.
“Maybe I should have treated you better than I did. God, I wish that I had. If I could go back in time and change my actions, I would do it in a heartbeat. But please, Caroline! Please! My wife is innocent in all of this. Do not take your feelings toward me out on her.”
She stood up quickly and stepped around Hudson. “As I have said, I had nothing to do with this. It is a tragedy from which I pray that your wife recovers.”
“You are really going to let her die?” he looked ahead, not willing to turn back as watch as she walked the room. “Are you so cold? So...so evil?”
“I am not letting anything happen! Now, if you do not mind...” She reached the doorway, turned, and pointed past it. “I would like for you to leave.”
He curled his lip, head bowed, still not looking back. “Then I was right about you. This whole time, I was right.”
“Excuse me?”
“And not just me...” He laughed bitterly. “My father too. I always wondered why the two of you married. It never made much sense. I thought perhaps that he loved you...” Another bout of bitter laughter. “Now I see there is nothing to love.”
“How dare you!”
“No doubt he tried,” he continued. “No doubt he did everything he could for you. My father was nothing if not resilient. But you, Caroline...” Finally, he looked back over his shoulder at her and snarled.
“You are as unlovable as a corpse. My father, for all his faults, was at least a man of honor and integrity. But where you were concerned, he never stood a chance.”
Her eyes widened with anger. “Is that what you think?”
“I saw your marriage with my own two eyes. It is not what I think, but what I know.”
“Ha!” she cackled. “You saw what you wanted to see—as a spitting image of your father, it is no wonder you refused to see the truth of it. You...Your Grace,” she spat.
“You are the same as him, and here I am, forced to watch history repeat itself. I am saddened by what is happening to Florentia, do not mistake me. However, a part of me sighs with relief because at least she will not have to suffer as I did.”
“Suffer?” Hudson was on his feet, body shaking, hands clenched by his side. “You were welcomed into our home. You were given everything you could ever dream of. Do not speak to me of suffering.”
“Is that how you saw it?” she cried. “Welcomed into your home? I never felt like more of an outcast than I did under that roof! Forced into that marriage, held against my will like a dog on a leash...”
Her lip curled and her eyes seethed with rabid anger. “Do you know the only thing that I ever asked of your father? The one thing I wished for—not love. I did not care for companionship. I wanted...” A shake of the head as if in amusement. “I wanted a child of my own.”
“Which he gave you.”
“Which he took from me,” she exclaimed angrily. “He refused to accept that my pregnancy was his doing! Then he forced...” She was shaking violently, her body turning red. “Then he forced me to kill the child that was growing in my womb. He made me drink...”
Tears welled in her eyes and she sniffed them back.
“He made me murder the one thing in this world that might have brought me happiness, and in so doing ensured that I could never carry a child again. He stole that from me! This man who you idolize and worship at the feet of! He is the monster! Not me!”
Hudson had not known that. He was aware of the miscarriage, but had no idea it was forced upon Caroline by his father. He winced with shame, glad now that he no longer saw the need to follow in his father’s footsteps as he once had.
“And I suppose that I am to take on some of this blame, am I?” Hudson shot back. “Is that why you have done this?”
“You!” she cried shrilly. “You who are so much like him. You who could never understand what it means to love someone more than you love yourself. I do not blame you for what your father did...”
She laughed maniacally, as if she was losing her mind. “I only seek to ensure that men of your kind might never burden this world again so that others do not have to suffer as I did. It might not bring back my child, but it is a task I happily take on.”
It wasn’t a confession. Not in the literal sense.
But it was enough to explain why Caroline had poisoned his wife.
She was so drunk with misery and vindictiveness, so taken by her rage and sense of vengeance, that she honestly thought that she was doing his wife a favor by killing her. The woman has lost her mind.
Hudson’s first instinct was to accuse her again.
He wanted to storm up to her, grab her by the arms, shake her and scream in her face until she relented and admitted to what she had done and then told him how he might save Florentia.
The anger and the hate that brewed inside of him was like a fire through his veins.
And he just might have too, had he not stopped to take another look at his stepmother. To really see her, perhaps for the first time.
Yes, she was angry. But it wasn’t that on which he focused.
Before him, Hudson chose to see a woman living in utter misery, suffering through a tragedy nobody else could ever understand, forced to live a lie of which she alone carried the weight.
It had broken her. It had destroyed her.
It was the reason for all of this, and threatening her and hurting her wasn’t going to make a difference.
Another sensation rose inside of Hudson, one he had felt before. Guilt. Shame. Sadness too. For no matter how much he hated his stepmother, now more than ever, he also felt sorry for her. And in realizing that, he knew what he had to do.
“You really think that of me?” His voice softened, as did his stance. “That I am my father?”
“I see it as clear as I see you standing before me,” she snarled. “You are him. You have forced a gentle soul to marry you, intent on ruining her life for no other reason than that you do not care for anyone! Anything! That is who you are.”
“You are wrong,” he said, his shoulders slumping, his expression turned to pity. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”
“Ha! I spoke to your wife, remember. I know how she feels about you. And you, her! Don’t you lie to me.”
“I do not lie,” Hudson said. “And you are right, that when you spoke with Florentia, we were fighting.” He smiled at that, although he did not know why. “My fault, I confess. I suppose I am like my father in many ways, as stubborn as a mule and as blind as a bat.”
“Do not tell me what I already know.”
“Do you know why we were fighting?” He started carefully across the room, not wanting to spook her. “Did Florentia tell you the reason?”
Her nose flared and her lip curled. “I can take a guess.”
“No need to guess, as I will tell you. We were fighting because Florentia had confessed her feelings of love for me—” He saw Caroline’s eyes turn wide. “—and I, self-loathing fool that I am, refused to believe her. Worse than that, I refused to believe myself capable of falling in love.”
“Wh...so, I am right!” she cried out, her voice cracking with a sense of unease. “You hurt her. You are just like your father.”
“No, I am not.” He was halfway across the room, stopping so as not to get too close. “Unlike my father, I do not hate my wife. In fact, I have since come to accept that I love her.”
“No! You’re lying! I know you are lying.”
“I am not lying.” He spoke almost at a whisper, his expression pleading. “I love my wife. I love her more than I have ever loved anything or anyone. I love her so much that to see her dying as she is has brought me such pain that if she does not recover...”
His stomach twisted at the thought. “I do not know what I will do. How I will go on. I love her more than life itself, and that is why I am here, Caroline. Not to apologize. Not to force a confession from you. I am here because I need you to understand the truth of it.”
“The...the truth...” The rage was leaving her, doubt creeping in.
“Florentia wants a child and when she gets better, if she gets better, I intend to give her one.” It was the first time that Hudson had given children a thought, but now that he had spoken the words, he knew how true they were.
“But I cannot do this for her if she does not get better—and it is for her, Caroline. All I want is for her to be happy. All I want is for her to live.”
“No...” She was shaking, knees buckling, hand touching her stomach as if in pain. “No, I...you are lying...you are...I do not believe you.”
“Hate me all you wish.” He started toward her again, reaching her this time, resting a hand on her shoulder and looking down at her.
“But my wife does not deserve what you have done. And if you are half the woman that I know you are, you will tell me how I can save her life. Please. And not for me...”
He met her eyes and held them. “Do it for your child. One unnecessary death is enough, another will only tarnish their memory and prove my father right.”
“Oh, God!” she broke into pieces before him.
Hudson was quick to drop to his knee and catch her before she hit the ground.
“I am sorry...” She began to blubber thickly, her entire body shaking as if to dispel the evil of her actions.
“I am so sorry. I did not want...I did not mean for it to go this far!”
“What did you give her?” he urged, voice hard now.
“She was not meant to die,” Caroline continued. “It was only meant to sterilize her, so that she could not fall pregnant. I promise!”
“What did you give her?” he pressed again.
Caroline’s face was one of utmost agony but she looked up at him, and he knew in that moment that she was finished with her lies. “The same thing your father forced me to drink. Pennyroyal tea.”
“Only pennyroyal tea?” Hudson had heard of its use before, aware that women were known to drink it to avoid getting pregnant. But he had never heard of its effects being so severe.
She whimpered. “The herb was old, I feared it would not work. So...so...” She sniffed. “So I added some mercury—but only a little. I did not think it would be so fatal.”
“Mercury...” Hudson’s face paled, and he felt like he would be sick. “Caroline....what have you done?”