Chapter Thirty-Five #2
in the north,” he said with a faint laugh. “She married against his wishes, but she had her own money she’d inherited from
her parents, and she brought that small fortune with her. Together, they invested it in several industries, including textiles,
rather than try to force the land to be productive.”
A chill stole through me despite the press of his hip against mine.
“A year into their marriage, I came along. And eight years after that, my father was injured on a hunting trip and never recovered.
The new Duke of Glenmoor returned from school at once to survey his new kingdom and realized quite quickly that his inheritance
was not as simple as he had led himself to believe.”
“Reddy told me that your mother’s dowry wasn’t entailed to the estate,” I said gently. “That Glenmoor was enraged when he
discovered she would keep it.”
“Yes,” Hugh said, releasing a long breath. “On the third night after Glenmoor returned home, something happened—to this day,
I do not know what it was.”
And it tormented him. I could hear it plainly in his voice.
“That night, my mother woke me in a panic and began packing a case for me. We left on foot, just the two of us, and never returned.” His eyes screwed shut, as if he were imagining it all over again.
“She was fearful. Paranoid. But she knew how to survive. With her pin money, she rented a house farther north. We were never meant to be found.” His gaze went distant, as if pulled back through time to that place.
“It was winter, then. And the far north was cold . . . so much colder than either of us knew.”
My hand closed over his.
“For a while,” Hugh continued, “she was quite brave about it, singing me to sleep each night, telling me stories about her
travels, where we would live on the Continent come spring. At the time, I thought she was being prideful not asking for help
from her uncle, and the shame of it will never leave me, because now I know she was afraid—of Glenmoor looking for her there,
but also of Uncle Giles turning his back on her.”
“You were all of, what, eight?” I reminded him. “How could you have known?”
“I should have,” he said, shaking his head. “She wasn’t herself. Have you . . . no, I know you do. You know exactly what it’s like,
watching someone extinguish themselves for you out of the sheer desperation of their love.”
Yes. Yes, I did.
“Finally, after I’d had a bout of illness, that stubbornness broke. She contacted Uncle Giles. The response came sooner than
either of us had expected,” Hugh said, his voice going softer, fainter. “Because it wasn’t from him at all. Glenmoor had intercepted
her message and learned where we were hiding.”
A heaviness settled over me as I realized where the story was headed.
“She brought it in from where it had been left at the door,” he whispered. “I was across the room, reading, as she took the
letter from its wax wrapping. She threw it into the fire at once, but it was too late. I caught only a trace of that perfume—that
bloody perfume—” He crushed his fist to his mouth, shuddering. “Her pain . . . my God. Nothing I did stopped it. I couldn’t help her. She pushed me outside and locked the door. I pounded and pounded on it until
my hands bled, begging her to let me back in. I watched her through the window. I saw her take the knife from the kitchen
and . . .”
His voice was hoarse with emotion, with unspent tears.
“I couldn’t stop her. By the time I got the window open and reached her, she had already done it. I was too late.”
“My God,” I said. It was the only thing I could say. “My God, Hugh.”
Of all the stories I had imagined, of all the tales the scandal sheets had spun, the truth was so much darker, so much more horrific, than I could have ever imagined.
“I lay down beside her on the floor,” he said tonelessly. “I lay there for hours with her, until a priest rode past on his
way to his new parish. He and his wife helped me bury her and brought me with them to the nearby village, Elmsberry.”
He paused, swallowing roughly.
“They were able to contact Uncle Giles, who came to fetch me himself,” he said, with a shuddering breath. “Later, we returned
for Mother’s body, so she could be interred in the family mausoleum, and I found the wax wrappings where she had dropped them.
Scattered around them were withered white rose petals streaked with pink—they’d been sealed inside of the letter. From the
bush Father had planted for her at the manor the day I was born.”
He finally looked at me then, his eyes desperate.
“You were right, of course,” Hugh said. “It is a matter of pride. My world ended that day in the snow. I am still there, at the window. Unable to help her. Unable to do
anything but watch as everything was taken from me. There is no end to the hate I feel for him.”
“I’m not sure you hate him enough, frankly,” I said.
His soft laugh faded all too quickly. “If I walk away, he will have won. I won’t be able to save the King, or protect Eleanor,
or clear your name.”
“I don’t want you to walk away,” I told him. “You are not the little boy in the snow anymore. No matter how many years were
lost to that pain and darkness, you have still built the beautiful life you deserve.”
“I can’t risk anyone else,” he choked out. “The thought of anyone else dying for me is unbearable.”
I drew his hand to my chest, flattening his palm over my heart. “You are alive. I am alive. Your mother’s only regret in all of this would have been leaving you.”
He reached into the collar of his shirt, mussing the crisp white cravat to yank a thin leather cord out from beneath it. I
caught a glimpse of the silver pendant, three linked silver knots, before he yanked it off him and shoved it into his pocket.
His essence overtook me, drowning me in its comforting depths. I gasped, my hold on his hand tightening as the full depth
of his anger, his pain, and his fear swirled around me like ravening ghosts.
But there was that deep sweetness of love, too. Vanilla—smoky, heavily dusted with the cinnamon of pure, unbridled desire.
It stripped away my defenses, leaving me utterly at the mercy of my feelings. But there was clarity in that intensity, in
that place where his truth met mine, because I now had a name for the storm raging in me, and I had no reason to be afraid
of it.
Mama’s young face hovered at the edge of my vision, aglow with firelight. She had been younger than me when she had lost her