Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“ I cannot believe he was under my nose, this whole time.”
The cold night air bit through Frederick’s coat as Sampson’s horse thundered down the path to his estate. His thoughts were racing, seemingly faster than the hooves that pounded the earth beneath him and he wallowed in regret.
Now that they had returned, vivid and sharp, his memories left a bitter taste in his mouth, reminding him of his failings and mistakes.
He had been there all along. Herbert, his half-brother had been under his roof, so close to Eleanor, the entire time. And Frederick never noticed or saw it for what it was.
The duke clenched the reins tighter and prayed to whatever God existed to spare his wife at least.
“Let me get there in time. Please let her be safe.”
The mere thought of his duchess in danger twisted his stomach.
He had made too many mistakes already and had let her down one too many times. If anything happened to her –
No , he shook his head immediately to chase away the thought. She will be fine. She must be .
Frederick’s heart swooned in relief as the estate came into view and he nudged the horse down the path to the entrance, startling the gatekeeper as he thundered past. By the time he had gotten to the courtyard, the butler was pulling the front door open with a bewildered expression on his face.
“Your Grace? Is there something wrong?”
Frederick did not speak as he dismounted the horse, brushing past Mr Bradley, walking into the manor with brisk, urgent strides. Some members of the staff were still wandering about, doing their nightly duties and they froze at the sight of the duke.
He barely paid them or their curious murmuring any mind as he hurried down a hallway that led to Eleanor’s room. Frederick was only a few doors down from her chambers when he heard her scream. Quickly, he burst into the room, frozen in place for a moment as he took in the sight before him.
His wife, Eleanor, was seated up in bed, clutching her covers to her chest as she stared across the room with wide eyes full of fear.
And on the other side stood Herbert, pointing a gun at Eleanor.
That was the last straw for Frederick, then and there.
Rage and panic surged within him like a wave and he lunged forward without thinking, his voice very much like a roar as he demanded,
“You dare try to harm my wife?”
It was obvious by how easy it was to knock Herbert over that he hadn't had enough time to react as he stumbled backward onto the floor. They struggled for the gun and a shot was fired in the fight, the sound deafening as it echoed across the rest of the estate.
Frederick managed to disarm Herbert, tossing the gun away from them and away from Eleanor as well. By the time Herbert was ready to try and recover his bearings, it was too late.
Although he was strong, despite his wiry frame, strengthened by his desperation, Herbert was still no match for Frederick who was driven by his unrelenting fury and pure wrath.
Herbert managed to land a punch on the underside of Frederick's jaw, but the duke only returned it in kind, landing a punch squarely on Herbert's nose.
"You think you can come into my home and threaten my wife?" Frederick snapped, drawing back his hand again before striking Herbert again, nonpulsed by the younger man’s gasp of pain. “I will make you regret the day you set foot in this estate.”
“Don’t pretend like you care about her! You never have! I’ve seen you both, I know your marriage is nothing but a farce!” Herbert spat angrily, still struggling beneath Frederick’s stronger frame. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself, selfish bastard. You’re no better than our father.”
If Frederick was angry before, he was livid now.
“You don’t know me, so you can’t tell, but I will show you that I am nothing like our father. For one, I am going to do what he should’ve done in the first place, instead of paying you to keep you away. I am going to end you. Permanently.”
Without another word, Frederick drew his clenched fist back and swung, over and over, catching Herbert on his face and chest, rapidly delivering hard blows onto the other.
The duke knew nothing other than the rage threatening to consume him whole and the thought that if he had been a little bit late, just a few seconds late, then Eleanor might have –
“ – stop it! Frederick, please! You’ll kill him!”
Eleanor’s voice cut through the dark swirl of his hateful, scared thoughts, bringing him back to the present. Herbert lay beneath him barely conscious as he bled from his nose and mouth. Frederick’s knuckles had been bruised raw, but he barely felt any, willing to do everything he could and more to ensure that Herbert would never once again try to come near Eleanor again.
“Frederick,” Eleanor called again, her tone worried but firm.
With a sigh, Frederick released his grip on Herbert's shirt which kept the other man positioned just right to take every strike from the duke. Quickly, Mr Bradley rushed into the room, providing ropes that they used to securely bind Herbert’s hands,
Frederick pushed himself up to his feet slowly, breathing slightly labored as he stared down at the other man who groaned in pain, relieved that finally, it was over.
The constables arrived a few moments later and Mr Bradley, along with some other male servants were able to hand the culprit over to them.
“We shall return in the morning to collect your statement, Your Grace,” the inspector said, regarding the situation with a grimace.
“That is fine. I wouldn’t have wanted to give any this night, anyway. My wife has been through enough as it is and I need to make sure she is all right.” Frederick replied.
“I understand. Enjoy the rest of your night.” The inspector nodded before leaving.
Quickly, Frederick returned to Eleanor’s room, relieved to find her seated at the edge of her bed, with her maid standing by her side. The moment he set his eyes on her, something in him craved to hold her, to make sure she was unharmed.
Instantly, he reached for her, his hands caressing her face and arms tenderly as he asked,
“Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere? Did he touch you?”
Eleanor shook her head, her lips parting to likely respond to his questions when her gaze seemed to notice something and her eyes widened.
“Frederick, your shoulder – you’re bleeding,” she gasped, horrified.
Frederick looked down at it, noticing the blood trailing from a gash across his shoulder. It seemed that when the gun had gone off earlier, he had been shot.
“It is nothing, just a scratch,” he said dismissively. “Are you sure you’re unhurt?”
He couldn’t seem to let her go, couldn’t keep his hands from seeking out the warmth of her skin to make himself fully aware that she was just fine.
“I am sure. He did not touch me but you – you’re hurt. Please stop moving so much,” she instructed, then turned to her maid to order, “Fetch something to clean his wounds.”
After the maid left, Eleanor hesitated for a moment as her gaze searched through his momentarily. “Why… why have you returned this time?”
Guilt shot through his heart and not for the first time, since he left, he felt ashamed of himself for walking away from her, time and time again.
“I… I am sorry that I endangered you. It was never my intention to put you at risk like that or to leave you in such a vulnerable state. I should have been more careful, especially when I had an idea of how dangerous the situation was. I am truly sorry.”
Eleanor pursed her lips and nodded.
“You need to receive treatment for that graze. Before it gets infected or worse,” she told him, trying to steer him in the direction of the door.
“No –” he stood where he was firmly so she couldn’t move him at all. “I want to talk to you first. I have a lot I wish to say.”
“We can talk later. I’m not going anywhere,” she told him, eyes alight with worry.
“It can’t wait. Please,” he begged sincerely.
Eleanor sighed and nodded, gesturing to her bed.
“Sit, then. I’ll address your injuries while you speak.”
When Alice returned with the things to clean his wounds, Eleanor instructed her to leave them on a table and got straight to work, soaking a cloth in warm water and using it to wipe at the dried blood on his knuckles and hands.
It wasn’t until she asked him to take off his coat and shirt did he finally felt the pain of his gunshot wound, although faint.
Eleanor was meticulous and gentle, carefully cleaning his injuries with a deep frown that made Frederick's heart hurt for causing her pain.
When she began to wrap some bandages over the graze on his shoulder, Frederick finally spoke up.
“That man was my half-brother, Herbert Norwell. I did not even know of his existence until a few months ago, and I found out a mere handful of hours before my accident. I had been sorting through his ledgers when I found out that he had been making large payments to a man, dating back years. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the money had been going to a child my father had borne with his mistress. It did not surprise me – he had never shown my mother an ounce of love, much less loyalty, but I was shocked that he had managed to hide it so well somehow. Seeing as my father had passed, I had no reason to keep making the payments, giving money to a stranger who had done nothing to earn it. And so I confronted him and told him as much.
"He did not take it so well and angrily informed me that my father had been paying him to stay away from his 'real' family, whilst knowing that his other son had no one else. Because Herbert's mother had passed when he was just a young boy."
That was the only part of his memories about that event that had struck a chord of sorrow within him.
Because it was a terrible thing, how many people his father had hurt, how easily he dismissed the feelings of others once they were not important or failed to satisfy him in any way.
Perhaps if things had been different, Herbert might have grown alongside him and they would have been raised as brothers. But all their father had done was pit them against each other unknowingly.
"He said he would expose me to the ton, claiming to be my father's bastard son to ruin our legacy. I told him I did not particularly care for what the ton thought of me, especially considering that I wasn't keen on living off of my father's reputation and prestige. In fact, I wished to burn it all down. He did not appreciate my nonchalance to his threats and was greatly angered by my decision not to give him a single dime moving forward. My mistake was turning my back to him, because he used the opportunity to attack me, hitting me at the back of my head with a rock. A friend of mine only just discovered his name in my father's ledgers earlier today and when he informed me of it, I regained the rest of my memories and knew right away that you were in trouble. He likely infiltrated the household in search of an opportunity to finish me off, once and for all. Eleanor, I really am sorry for endangering you. No matter what I do, it seems all I am good for is failing you. I should have been here –"
“But you came back. You got here in time and you saved me. If you had not arrived when you did…” Eleanor’s voice broke slightly and she trailed, her lower lip wobbling as she tightened his bandages to secure them.
Frederick reached out with the hand she wasn’t tending to and cupped her face gently.
“For you, Eleanor, I would stand and face a hundred bullets if it guaranteed your safety. Please don’t cry.”
Eleanor sniffed and stepped back, out of his reach and his heart twisted painfully.
“If… if that is true, then why did you leave? How you just abandon me and suggest that we get divorced, as though I meant nothing to you?” she demanded quietly.
The pain of his injury was nothing compared to the guilt that felt like a knife twisting into his heart at the sight of her putting distance between them. Frederick wanted to reach for her, ached to hold her, and grovel. But he wanted to earn her forgiveness rightly.
“It always felt as though I’ve been haunted by my father’s sins all my life. I told you the sort of man he was and how I despised him, but I haven’t told you how deeply my hatred for him was. After I witnessed the way he had disregarded my mother up until her death, I knew that there was nothing humane about him. He was merely an empty shell that reeked of greed and was determined to thrive in greatness through his heir – me. And I was not going to give him the satisfaction of feeling like my life belonged to him. So I vowed to destroy it all. Everything that he had placed above my mother and me, all that he had valued more than he cared for us I wanted to ruin. He had beaten me for hours over the importance of a good reputation and I was determined to burn his to the ground. That is why I lived the way I have been. Part of my plan was to swear off marriage, because I refused to take a wife, only to force her into a lonely life. After all, I did not care for her enough. I was not going to bind anyone to me for the sake of simply siring a child together. For the longest time, I held those vows above everything else.
"But tonight, when I learned that I might have brought danger right to your doorstep and it might result in you getting hurt, I realized that living without you by my side was worse than breaking my vow. I've been a coward, Eleanor. Hiding and running from my feelings, ignoring them because I felt as though I was far too tainted for someone as good as you. To me, the best I could do for you – the honorable thing to do – was to release you from the shackles that kept you bound to me. I thought it was the right thing to do because I believed that you deserved a better man than I was. You deserved someone who wasn't as selfish or as much of a coward as I was. Rather than stay and try to work on our marriage with you, I chose to run, thinking there was nothing to fix. But that was not true, none of it. It wasn't honor that was guiding me, but fear. I allowed myself to be controlled by everything that had scared and haunted me in the past and I put it all on you – you who had done nothing but care for me."
Frederick inhaled sharply, his throat tight with emotion as he hesitated to go further because he wasn't familiar with leaving himself open like this, his heart beating and vulnerable for all to see.
But when he looked into Eleanor's eyes, there was no judgment to be found, just deep understanding. It gave him the courage to press forward.
“I thought that you could live a happier life without me. And rather than change, I let myself be haunted by my fear of failing to be the husband you deserved. But I see now that walking away from you and suggesting a divorce was the worst mistake I could ever have made. Could you ever forgive me for bringing it up? I promise, I will do anything, - whatever you want me to – if it means that you will forgive me.”