Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Godric had never particularly liked Luther’s estate.
There had been something heavy in the air when he had moved from the home he had once shared with his parents, to live with his uncle. Then, at that young age, still stricken with the horrors he had witnessed and the loss he had incurred, he had assumed it was the grief.
The grief they shared, which now bound them together tighter than anything else.
He had not been close to his uncle Luther, having only met him on a handful of occasions after his father had begged and begged for Luther to join them for a celebration or at an important event.
And perhaps if he had been asked where he would have liked to stay, following the death of his parents, the odds were, Luther’s name might have been the last to leave his mouth.
If Godric had even managed to recall his existence at all.
But Luther had showed up the next morning upon hearing the news, his eyes bearing heavy pain that Godric felt resonated deeply with the one in his own heart.
And when he had stated that Godric would live with him, the young heir had not refused or kicked up a fuss. He simply followed what he thought was a natural course of action.
But then, life at Luther’s estate had been so bleak, he had found it hard to breathe for months.
He could never explain it if he tried – not that he had someone to speak about it to – but there was an unbridled rage and emptiness within the walls, that threatened to suffocate him if he dared let his guard down.
Even after nineteen years, the discomfort he had know growing up was still noticeably present. Only now, he had an idea of what it really was now.
“Your Grace,” the butler opened the door with a look of surprise across his aged featured.
“I didn’t – we did not know you would be visiting.
I regret to inform you that the master is currently not present.
But you are more than welcome to wait for him in the drawing room, though I am afraid we are unsure as to when he will return.
If you would like to leave a word for him, we would gladly –”
“No need,” Godric stated, stepping past him and walking into the house. “I only need to retrieve something quickly and I will no longer be a problem of yours.”
As he stepped further into the house, the butler tried to run after him, saying that his uncle would be upset to find out he had come and left in his absence. However, Godric had already known Luther would not be home, which was why he had come over in the first place.
“My word,” the housekeeper gasped as she nearly ran into him, her eyes wide with shock, “Y-Your Grace! What a wonderful surprise! Oh – did they not tell you that the master was away from home at the moment?”
“They did,” Godric nodded, trying to be as patient as possible.
“But as I said earlier, I only wish to collect a document that I had given him to sign for one of our business ventures. He insisted that he hold onto it so that he could study it closely for any weaknesses in the terms and clauses – you know how meticulous he is. But I must turn it in soon and I need to go through it once more before I do that.”
The housekeeper glanced at the butler and faced him with an uncomfortable expression. “I am sorry to hear that, Your Grace. It is truly unfortunate, but due to the master’s absence, I'm afraid –”
“I do not intend to leave this estate without that document,” the duke cut her off calmly. “It is one thing to have come here without seeing him, but to also return empty handed? That would render my entire visit pointless. It would only take me a few minutes to fetch it. Do not fret.
He continued to walk down the familiar hallway, turning left down the corridor that led to Luther’s study, ignoring the pleas of the staff that followed him. Soon, the study came into view and he slipped inside, locking the door behind him.
Godric exhaled deeply and glanced around aimlessly, wondering where he should begin.
After a moment of deliberation, he began on his right, rifling through the cabinet that contained many old documents and important papers he had often seen his uncle store there.
After a few minutes of searching, he found nothing suspicious and he moved to the table that carried a silver platter that bore Luther’s wines and spirits.
It had a drawer beneath and he rifled through it feverishly, hoping for a sign of what it is he sought after. When he noticed nothing more than some cigars and a letter opener, he finally moved to Luther’s desk.
Luther was by no means a tidy person, but he kept his study organized because he feared he would lose things quite often if he did not have some semblance of order. And as such, everything had its place.
Godric kept that in mind as he rifled through envelops and folders stacked atop the desk.
Moments later, he moved to the drawers on each side of the desk, starting with the ones on his left.
Once the search does not bring anything note worthy, he angled his body in the other direction, pulling out the drawers rapidly on the right side.
There were only three of them and he pulled the first and second in quick succession, finding nothing of consequence before he moved to the third.
But before he could put his hand into the third drawer to rifle through it, he paused with a frown.
Slowly, he closed the last drawer, then pulled the second one out again. Then he pushed that in and took a good look at the first one for a few seconds before opening the second on again, having confirmed his suspicions.
There was a false bottom that had been set up to hide something within the drawer, likely beneath the panel of wood that made up the ‘fake bottom’.
To anyone else, it would have seemed as though nothing was out of the ordinary. But Godric realized almost immediately that the second drawer seemed to have a shallower depth compared to the other two drawers.
He tapped against the ‘bottom’ and immediately got a sense of the hollowness on the other side. With a letter opener he retrieved from the desk, he managed to prop the panel open and discovered a lot of... letters.
Countless envelopes were bound together into separate bundles, all of them hidden behind the panel in such a way that would never give away what lay beneath.
Quickly, he picked out a bundle and began to open up some of the letters.
Almost immediately, he recognized his uncle’s handwriting, while a few more letters contained handwriting that was unfamiliar.
Godric read through the earliest and discovered that his uncle had been enquiring about a person – a man, seemingly – and their ability to handle a certain task discreetly.
After a while, the letters turned into a correspondence between Anthony Brown and Luther, with Anthony promising whole heartedly that he could deliver on what was discussed.
It was unclear what their objective was, but the mere consideration of Anthony Brown being the one who killed Godric’s parents had his stomach sinking.
The next letter form Luther contained details of Godric’s childhood home, how the back door had a faulty latch not many had noticed since Luther himself had only discovered it by accident.
Then his uncle went on to describe the physical appearances of Godric and his father, specifying that only the two of them were to be dispatched.
That information sent Godric’s mind racing back to that unfortunate night, when the killer had raised his knife to strike him, but his mother had shielded him with her body.
“Just as a thought. Her death was merely an accident. Simply... collateral damage,” Godric choked out, suddenly overcome with rage as his fingers clenched around the letter in his grasp.
When his mind cleared once more, he attempted to flatten the letter once more and returned it to its envelope. He had gone though a majority of the small bundles and they basically confirmed what he had feared to be true.
Just like Anthony had eventually confessed after Godric gave him more money – Luther had orchestrated his parent’s deaths.
And after he had killed them, he raised Godric to seek revenge, filling his head with nothing but rage and guilt for surviving, pushing him to desire nothing more than his parent’s killers beg for mercy before he ended the culprit’s life.
Only that when Godric was old enough to pursue the revenge, he had been raised to find the killer responsible, his uncle had pointed him in the wrong direction, away from himself.
“He must have thought me a fool, all those years. He must have laughed behind my back, proud of the fact that he had rendered me into nothing more than a puppet he could control,” Godric mumbled, unravelling the last bundle.
Luther had wanted Godric and his father dead. It was obvious that his uncle wanted to do away with his brother and his nephew – the only heir to the dukedom – so that no one would obstruct his inheritance of the dukedom.
But why had he been so insistent to spare Godric’s mother’s life? He had mentioned it several times in his letters to Anthony, that not a hair on the woman’s head was to be hurt.
Did he think that she would not have contested against his inevitable inheritance? Or rather, did he not want to spill more blood than necessary – only interested in disposing of those who stood in the way of the wealth he desired?
He rifled though the last bundle and at first, the sight of his uncle’s handwriting made him think he was simply going through more plots to kill Godric and his father.
But the first one was a poem. A love poem.
The second one was another poem, as well as a declaration of love. At the bottom, it was a request, made of three simple words.
“Be mine, Amelia,” Godric read out in a whisper, his heart sinking and twisting with disgust.
Amelia. His mother’s name.
Luther had been in love with his mother.
There were a few more letters detailing Luther’s endless affection for her, some bemoaning the fact that she favoured Godric’s father instead of him and his pleas for a chance to make her happy.
In the last letter, the handwriting was unfamiliar, but carried a nostalgic sense about it.
Within the paper, Amelia apologized for being unable to love Luther back the way he had wanted her to, the way she believed he deserved.
Instead, she told him that she had found the greatest love and companionship in his brother, the duke of Ironwell, and that they would be wed.
She expressed her pity to him that they would not be what he wanted them to be, but inevitably, they would become family, which was a bond as great as any.
At the end, she told him rather kindly that as an only child, she envied the fact that Godric’s father had grown up with a sibling and she felt blessed that Luther would be her brother too.
When Godric was finished reading it, he sat there for a moment and his heart mourned his parents once more.
He mourned his good father who had grown up with a man who despised him and wanted his fortune and inevitably his wife for himself. A man who had no problems spilling his distaste to a stranger and ordering them to murder even the duke’s young heir in cold blood.
He mourned his kind mother, who had been gentle and thoughtful in the way she had tried to dissuade Luther from pursing his feelings for her. His kind mother who had been excited to still have Luther in her life as a family member.
Godric could barely remember a lot of memories from when his parents had been alive, but he recalled their warmth and kindness. Especially to Luther. How they had tried to ensure he was not alone on holidays, sending out invitations for dinner to him every month.
And yet, Luther had not thought twice about ending their lives coldly. Even when things had not gone according to plan, he had raised no alarm or tired to atone for his sins.
Instead, he had further desecrated their goodness by twisting Godric into a tool.
With a sharp inhale, Godric willed his mind to focus and began to pack up the letters, slipping them into the pockets of his heavy coat. Then he worked to rearrange the office back just as he had found it, trying his best to ensure nothing appeared out of place.
Before he slipped out of the study, he picked up a document from the desk in order to keep up the ruse he had planted earlier. Only the butler was waiting in the hallway as he left the study and he was quick to hold up the document.
“It took me a while to find it. Uncle Luther might not be a messy person, but he is still terribly disorganized. I shall have a word with him about it soon.”
The butler nodded, looking relived.
“If you would like, Your Grace.”
Godric nodded a curt farewell and left the estate, his heart feeling hollow in light of all he had learned.
He had been right before. Nothing really had to change.
He would still seek justice, but its recipient would be different now.
Godric was intent on doing exactly what Luther had groomed him to do.
He would make his parents killer face justice. Luther had better prepare himself.