Chapter 5 #2
Her gasp was only inaudible because of the louder gasp that Edmund made. Molly’s head jerked up and she stared at him, as though she could read in his grey eyes the same shock of heat that rushed through her body as their fingers had touched.
“One knot down.” Her voice sounded strangled, but Edmund did not seem to trust his own. He merely nodded.
Molly attempted to focus on the task at hand, but it was impossible. Each time her skin touched his there was another sear of heat, and her knees touched his as she focused on the knots, and it was too much. She felt overwhelmed, intoxicated by his presence.
She had to do something – had to distract herself and him from the intimacy of the moment.
“Wh-Why did your family disown you?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Molly cursed them. All of the world’s polite conversation before her, and she had to ask about what was undoubtedly one of the most painful questions available?
Edmund smiled. “What a question, on Christmas Day too. Do I not receive any gifts?”
“I should not have asked,” she said hastily, dropping her eyes back to the last unforgiving knot.
“Why not? You have a right to be curious, even if you do not have the right to know.”
His voice was low, dark, with just a hint of misery. Molly dared a look at his face and found her heart warm to him, despite herself.
Edmund was not looking for glory, or attention now. This was him at his most vulnerable, in a way she had not seen him before.
“Families are…complicated.” Molly tried not to think about just how much of an exaggeration her words were. At least he was not asking about her family.
The knot was tight, twisted, pulled to almost a nub of rope. Her fingers slipped as she tried to loosen it and heat seared through her once again.
“Would you like the polite version or the honest version?” Edmund’s voice had been quiet but there was no bitterness in it now.
Molly kept her eyes on the knot. “Always the honest version.” She had had enough of secrets and lies.
The knot came free and the ropes fell to the floor. Edmund stretched his hands, wriggling his fingers with a look of discomfort on his face.
“It will take a little time for the feeling to be fully regained,” Molly said quietly.
Now was the moment that she could move, away from him, away from this intensity.
But she did not. She did not want to.
Edmund grinned. “You are an expert in rope tying? My word, Molly Kimble, you continue to surprise me.”
Molly felt her cheeks darken and she went to get up, but suddenly his hands were holding hers and he was keeping her close on the sofa.
“The honest version of how I lost my family,” he said quietly, “is because of my father.”
Molly hesitated. She could pull away, he was not holding onto her hands that tightly. But there was a vulnerability in his words, in his eyes. As though he had not told this story to another soul in a long time. As though he needed to tell it.
“Your father?”
Edmund nodded. “A disgusting man – a dark one. One with no idea of what truth, or justice, or honour could possibly be. Far more interested in wealth, reputation. I feared him, all my brothers did.”
“You have brothers?” Molly could not keep the disgust out of her voice, her personal revulsion with her own brothers seeping through.
“I have four brothers, all of them younger, though I doubt any would own me now,” said Edmund drily. “Not after I came home one day and thought to sneak into the kitchen for some lemon curd, and found my father…my father beating a servant nigh on to death.”
Molly’s jaw dropped. “I…I had heard of such things in the great houses, but never suspected…”
Edmund’s laugh was bitter. “Of course you did not suspect, but you heard for a reason, Molly. Because there are men out there like my father, who think that people are there to serve him and ask no questions. If something was not perfect, then it was not for him and that person would be…punished.”
The wind whistled at the window and Molly shivered. “What happened to the servant?”
Her hands were still being held by Edmund’s and they shook slightly as he continued.
“I wrenched the whip from my father’s hands and stood between them.
I told him that no offence could be sufficient for such treatment, nothing.
The look my father gave me…as though I had taken the whip in my hand and turned it upon him.
But nothing was more of a betrayal than making him look weak before an inferior. ”
Molly stared at the gentleman before her. For all her talk of wealth and breeding, he had endured just as much violence, it seemed, as she had.
Edmund heaved a sigh. “And from that day, my father did not trust me. It became harder and harder to have decent conversations with him, even about the land, the property. Four months later, I found him at it again – but this time, he was…he was beating a woman, and with his bare hands.”
The revulsion in his voice was palpable. Molly’s mouth fell open.
“That was the last straw. I went to the Peelers, not that they heeded me, and my father went to Bishops, Bishops, Needham and Sons.”
Molly frowned. “Who?”
“Our lawyers,” Edmund said with a smile. “I was disowned, removed from the family line, expunged from all privilege and fortune.”
He spoke in such an airy way that Molly had to think for a moment to take it all in.
Then a word that she had not noticed demanded her attention. “Privilege?”
His hands were warm around hers as Edmund grinned, a lock of hair falling over his eyes. “Oh yes. Before I was just Sir Edmund, knight and card shark, I was Edmund, Marquis of Dewsbury, eldest son and heir of the Duke of Northmere.”