Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
On New Year’s Eve, we do well not to look ahead, but back. The man who cannot learn from past mistakes has faint hope of avoiding future ones.
Felicity sat frozen, uncertain how to understand him. “You mean, because she killed herself for love of you—”
“No. She never loved me, and she didn’t kill herself, not for love or anything else. I killed her.”
Her hands began to shake so much she clasped them tightly together in her lap. “I-I don’t believe you. How could that be?”
He sighed heavily. “I should start at the beginning. The year I reached nineteen, I spent a long holiday at Chesterley with my father. We fought about everything. My aunt and uncle were often around during those battles. Uncle Edgar always took Father’s side, which aggravated matters. But my aunt ...”
His voice softened. “My aunt tried to smooth things over. She listened to my complaints with understanding, having endured my uncle’s formidable temper for three years.
Although she wasn’t much older than I, she was a sensible woman who offered sound advice, so I turned to her a great deal.
We spent so much time in each other’s company and she was so kind that I came to care for her very much. ”
The carriage hit a rut, jolting them both, but Ian hardly seemed to notice.
“And yes, I suppose I was infatuated with her and even desired her, although at that age young men desire anything in a petticoat. I doubt she realized my feelings. Despite the tales you’ve heard, Aunt Cynthia was always conscious of her duty to my uncle and never behaved toward me with anything but the most circumspect propriety. ”
Though he looked at her, she could tell he didn’t see her.
He saw his own past, and his despairing expression tore at Felicity’s heart.
She wished he would come sit by her while he told his sad tale, but he wasn’t the sort of man to want a woman’s coddling at such a time.
And she feared stopping the flow of words.
“One afternoon,” he went on, “I was walking past a cottage on my uncle’s estate when I heard noises coming from within. The unmistakable sound of flesh colliding with flesh. A woman weeping. A man shouting. I recognized my uncle’s voice.”
His large hands tightened into cannonball fists where they lay on his thighs. “I’d noticed bruises on my aunt before without realizing that her seemingly plausible explanations for them were lies. But I couldn’t mistake what I was hearing. So I stopped outside the door.”
It was so like her dear husband to leap to the defense of a woman. She could imagine how painful it must have been for him to hear his aunt being mistreated.
He uttered a low curse. “If I’d taken even a moment to think, I would have realized that any direct interference on my part would only further enrage my uncle.
I could have either found my father and begged him to come, or knocked on the door with some lie about needing my uncle’s assistance. ” He paused, as if unable to continue.
She willed him silently to go on.
He turned his gaze out the window. “But I didn’t take a moment to think. I acted in exactly the thoughtless manner my father always criticized. I burst through the door.”
He was silent so long that she finally whispered, “And was he ... Had he—”
“Hit her? Oh, yes. She already had red marks on her cheeks and a black eye. She was huddled in a corner, sobbing as he stood over her with his hands still fisted—fisted, mind you!” His voice grew hoarse and thick.
“My God, she was half his size, a little wisp of a thing. And the bastard had been using his fists on her!”
Horror filled her, deepening even more as she thought of how the sight must have tortured her beloved husband. “Oh, Ian,” she murmured sympathetically.
But he seemed not to hear her. “I went a little insane. I launched myself at his back. We ... fought, but he was no match for a hotheaded lad of nineteen nearly twenty years his junior. I soon had him on the floor and was pummeling his face over and over ... My fury was so feverish it blotted out everything but a lust for his blood.”
He dragged in a long breath. “And when my aunt came up behind me and grabbed my arm to stop me before I killed him, I shook her off with such strength she ... she ...” He broke off, nearly losing his voice.
Then he squared his shoulders, his tortured gaze shifting to her.
“She lost her balance and fell back against the stone mantle. She ... hit her head. The doctor said she died instantly.”
“Good lord,” she whispered, “your poor aunt.” But it wasn’t his poor aunt her heart broke for. It was him, her sweet husband. Who’d held all this blackness in him for so long in silence. She wished she’d known sooner.
“Yes, my poor aunt.” The words were heavy with self-reproach. “Caught between two violent creatures like me and my uncle, she had no chance for life or happiness.”
He buried his face in his hands. Desperate to comfort him, she leaned forward and laid her hand on his back.
For a long moment, there was no sound inside the carriage save its creaking, the pounding hooves of the horses, and Ian’s tortured breathing.
When she could bear it no longer, she said, “I understand your suffering, my love, but it wasn’t your fault. ”
“How was it not my fault?” he cried as his head snapped up. “I stepped in where I had no business being! I let my temper so possess me that I shoved a tiny woman hard enough to make her fall and kill herself!”
Frantically, she searched for words that would assuage his guilt. “She could have fallen on a cushion instead. That she didn’t was tragic, I agree, yet you can’t blame yourself for bad circumstances. Besides, your uncle might have killed her anyway if you hadn’t stepped in.”
His eyes blazed into hers. “But he didn’t, don’t you understand? I did!”
“You were trying to protect her! No one could reasonably blame you for that!”
“My family did!”
A chill struck her heart. “If you mean your uncle—”
“Not my uncle.” His expression hardened into stone.
“I mean, he blamed me—he still blames me—but there’s not much he can do about it.
He’s no fool. He knew even then that if he accused me outright of murder, I’d accuse him outright of wife-beating.
He had no desire to drag the truth out before the world.
Nor did he wish to reveal his true character to my father. ”
“So, the two of you didn’t tell your father what really happened?”
He sat up, away from the reach of her hand.
Shifting restlessly, he tightened and untightened his fists.
“By the time Father was summoned and found me holding her body and raging at myself, Uncle Edgar had regained his composure enough to present his own version of what happened. It didn’t include any mention of wife-beating, I assure you.
He told Father he’d caught me seducing Aunt Cynthia, and in the struggle between us she’d tried to stop us from fighting and had fallen. ”
“The bastard!” she said, even more furious at Ian’s uncle than before.
How dare the man blacken Ian before his father when the old viscount had already been so distrustful of his son?
“Well, at least your damned uncle is consistent in his lies. That’s a variation on the tale he told me.
” She added dryly, “He didn’t mention wife-beating to me either.
Though I’m surprised he didn’t just accuse you of killing his wife. ”
“I think he’s always feared that if he did, I would simply lie and accuse him of murder.
It would be more plausible to most hearers.
I was nineteen and fairly young; he was a grown man.
The woman was his wife. I have evidence of his wife-beating—Miss Greenaway would be only too happy to testify to it, for she witnessed it once herself. ”
Which explained Ian’s continued interest in the woman, she thought. As usual, he’d been strategizing, keeping Miss Greenaway on his side until he might need her. And Felicity had assumed the worst. No wonder he’d been so angry at her.
“No,” he went on, “I’m sure my uncle thought that telling you I’d seduced, even raped, his wife was far less risky.
It fed into the tales circulating about me and made me look like the evil seducer while he played the betrayed husband, a role more to his liking.
Even so, he never circulated his story about me generally.
He must have known that if I realized what he’d told the women I courted, I might take stronger measures against him.
And I would have, if I hadn’t married in time to produce an heir. ”
“What I don’t understand is why your father wrote such an abominable will. You did tell him what really happened that day, didn’t you?”
“I told him,” he said hollowly. “He simply chose not to believe me.”
“His own son?” The enormity of it cut her to the heart.
“He believed his brother over you? What kind of father would do that?” Oh, her poor love, enduring so much torment and guilt at the hands of his own family!
She squeezed his leg, wondering how much more it must hurt him if it made her hurt so badly for him.
Ian shrugged, as if it hardly mattered, but she knew it mattered a great deal. “Father already blamed me for Mother’s death. He thought me a rash and intemperate young man, which I suppose I was. It took little to convince him I’d seduced my aunt. I’d been fairly obvious in my adoration of her.”
She sat there speechless. What possible comfort could one offer to remedy the pain of such a terrible betrayal? It was a good thing Ian’s father was dead. Otherwise, she’d be tempted to kill him herself.