Chapter Nine #3
Allaston didn’t want to tell him but she had little choice.
He was asking a civil question and expecting the truth.
Were she to lie to him, she suspected his questions would no longer be civil.
But, God help her, she didn’t want to tell him.
Yet, she had to. She backed away from him, rubbing her arm where he had gripped her.
“You wanted obedience, did you not?” she asked, having difficulty looking him in the eye. “I am simply being obedient.”
He grunted. “There is a difference between obedience and abject fear,” he said. “You are displaying the latter and I want to know why.”
She looked at him, then. “You told me when you left those weeks ago that I was to stay to the keep and to the hall, that I was to be obedient,” she said.
“I have done that. I have done everything you told me to do. So now I have done something wrong because I am doing what you told me to do? I do not understand.”
He saw a flash of the old Allaston, the fiery one, and it pleased him. So she was still in there, somewhere. He wanted to bring her out. It was that Allaston he liked.
“You behave as if I have a knife to your throat,” he said. “I have never done anything like that to you, even when I took you from Alberbury. I have never held a weapon to you in any way. Why do you fear me so now?”
Allaston met his examining glare, seeing something so brilliant and beautiful in his face.
Aye, it was true. She could see brilliance and beauty.
She simply couldn’t imagine he was behind the horror outside the walls, the horror of killing the Mother Prioress right before her eyes, but the truth was that the man was a killer.
He had made it clear that he was capable of atrocities beyond her comprehension.
It was this killer who was using her to lure her father to his doom.
So how on earth could she think he was brilliant and beautiful?
The dam she had held so tightly was beginning to burst and there was no stopping it.
She was so confused, so fearful, that she could hardly control herself.
“As you seek answers to your questions, I also seek answers to questions of my own,” she said quietly. “May I ask my questions first?”
He shrugged. “You may.”
“Will you be completely truthful?”
“I always am.”
Allaston considered that response before continuing. She was careful in the way she phrased her questions, not wanting to sound accusing or irrational. At least, not yet.
“When you were gone these past weeks, where did you go?” she asked.
Bretton met her gaze unwaveringly. “That is my business, lady.”
“It was to conquer another castle. I heard you and your men speaking.”
“Then if you already knew, why did you ask?”
Allaston’s scrutiny was intense. “Was there a lord and lady at that castle, too?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Did you bash their children’s brains out and put the parents on spikes like you did the lord and lady of Cloryn?”
All of the pleasant or warm reflections in Bretton’s expression had vanished. Now, he was looking at her with the eyes of a man who had no regrets in life, no matter what he’d done. He regarded her coolly.
“Where did you hear such things?” he asked evenly.
Allaston shook her head, firmly and with resolve. “It does not matter,” she said. “What matters is if those rumors are true.”
He didn’t hesitate. “They are.”
She swallowed hard, staggering back a bit as if he had struck her.
Even though she’d known the truth, it was still a blow to have him confirm it so callously.
Tears began to pool in her eyes but before she could respond, he was moving towards her, stalking her, as if he was the hunter and she was the prey.
His enormous body moved with grace and stealth.
“And before you think to denounce me for such things, remember this,” he hissed.
“Your father did such things along this border twenty-five years ago, such horrors as you cannot comprehend. Whatever I am doing, he did first, so before you tell me what a horrible murderer I am, you had better rethink your accusations. Your father was a brutal murderer who ran a spike through my father’s anus, up into his guts and through his chest so that the end of it came out of his shoulder.
Then he put one end of the pole into the ground and left my father, a truly good and decent man, to die an agonizing death, so every man I put to a stake, every woman I disembowel, and every child whose brains are splashed out over the walls has your father to thank for it. It is all de Velt’s fault!”
He was in her face by the time he finished, leaning over her as she recoiled from him.
Allaston couldn’t tear her gaze away from his angry blue eyes.
He was enraged, that was true, but oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid of him.
That pity she had felt for him before began to fill her veins yet again because she understood why he was doing it.
She’d understood it back when he’d first told her but now, it was more evident than ever.
“I know what my father did to your father, for you have already told me,” she said, her tone a breathy whisper.
“Now you are doing what my father did, but for what? To somehow punish my father? Do you really believe this will hurt him somehow by emulating his reign of terror? Nay, that is not why you do this. Deep down, you are still that hurt, shattered five year old boy and you are taking your anger out on the world. The only person you are hurting is yourself.”
Bretton was so close to Allaston’s face that his breath was lifting tendrils of her hair.
Her words sank in and his eyes narrowed, briefly, as a flash of anger rolled through him.
As fast as lightning, he reached out and grabbed her, pulling her hard against his broad chest. His fingers bit into her tender flesh and she gasped, startled by his reaction.
She could see something dark and painful brewing in his eyes.
“You know nothing,” he snarled. “What do you know of that five year old boy who watched his entire world go up in flames? What do you know of that child who saw his mother kill his sister and then herself because she knew what her fate would be at the hands of de Velt? I watched as my mother stabbed my sister in the chest and then slit her own throat, but I was too young and too powerless to stop her. I was too young and too powerless to stop de Velt from impaling my father and destroying my castle. I escaped with some of the servants, a lonely bundle of humanity, who then kept me for a while, tending me, until I became too much of a burden and they sold me into slavery. I was too young and too powerless to stop the man who bought me from raping me from the time he purchased me until I grew old enough to fight him off. I killed him when I was ten years of age to finally free myself of the abuse. So do not judge me, Lady Allaston, by the way I treat the world. The world has never been kind to me. Therefore, I am not kind to the world.”
Allaston stared at him, deeply surprised and deeply horrified by his admission.
Her heart was aching for the man. Now, so much of what he did and who he was made sense.
It was much more than Jax de Velt destroying his castle and killing his father.
It was everything that came after that. He blamed Jax for destroying his life, as he’d once said.
It would seem there was some truth to that.
“What you have had to endure is barbaric and terrible, and I cannot imagine the pain you must have felt,” she admitted.
“I would apologize for the sins committed against you but I do not believe that would make a difference. If… if my father apologized to you, would it help to ease this anger you carry?”
Bretton still wasn’t over the fact that he had just told her his darkest secret.
Gazing into those bright green eyes and beautiful face, it was as if he’d had no control.
It all just came spilling out. He was both embarrassed and strangely relieved, as if a burden had been lifted from him, a burden he had carried most of his life.
Now Jax de Velt’s daughter shared that burden, too.
Perhaps it was right that she did, considering her father had laid this heavy burden across his shoulders.
Perhaps it was right that a de Velt helped him bear the unbearable.
“Do you truly believe it that simple?” he asked after a moment, the grip on her arms loosening. “The destruction of a man’s life cannot be erased by condolences.”
“Mayhap not,” she said softly, “but mayhap it will ease you somewhat. You have a terrible burden to bear. If I could make it easier for you, I would.”
She had meant it innocently, in the course of attempting to be understanding about his situation, but Bretton didn’t take it that way.
All he could think about was physical comfort, sexual comfort, as sexual contact with a woman he was attracted to was something of a rarity.
In fact, he couldn’t even remember bedding a woman he felt something for.
Those kinds of relationships didn’t exist in his world.
Aye, she could make it easier for him. She could give him comfort where none existed.