Chapter 32
“You are my husband, but you cannot control my life,” Verity said as she realized she was shouting.
It was a long time since she had raised her voice like this. Had she even ever shouted? Perhaps as a child, but not an adult. Most of the time she thought a conversation could take place like reasonable human beings. They were civilized, after all.
But I have never felt so uncivilized before.
Her chest heaved and she could feel her hair was coming undone. Truthfully, every part of her was coming undone. There was a shaking to her bones. And for some reason, every part of her wanted to touch him. Maybe she wanted to shake him. Hold him. Push him out a window. Kiss him.
“Verity,” Dominic started plaintively.
What a stately man, the duke was. So stiff.
Even sitting on the edge of his desk had him appearing stern and handsome and so awfully irritating.
She wished she didn’t think of him as anything.
Not anything besides this dreadful man who was still holding to his secrets and privacy at the expense of everything else around them. Including her.
Why did I think I could trust him? When did I start trusting him when I was trying the other way? I don’t understand how I grew so distracted.
“I have lived a long enough life to know what I am doing,” Verity interrupted Dominic before he could go any further. “Before we met, I didn’t need protection. I didn’t need someone making decisions for me. Which means I can continue to do without you. All you’ve done is complicate everything.”
Inhaling deeply, Verity braced herself for his defense. Or his own argument to tell her that she was wrong, that she was at fault for all of this, that she couldn’t get out of her own way.
Except Dominic did no such thing.
He shifted his weight slightly on the edge of his desk as he proceeded to cross his arms and stare steadily back at her. He had nothing to say.
The gall of the man!
She couldn’t stand this. Moving her weight from one foot to the other, Verity felt the silence grow tighter and tighter.
She didn’t know what might explode first, the tension or her patience.
They couldn’t keep doing this. She couldn’t keep doing this.
Whatever was between, Verity realized they had to stop. They had to stop everything.
A final breath was pushed out loudly to break the quiet. “I am done with this. With you. We will return to what the marriage was meant to be. Separate without control over one another,” she added sternly.
It shall be a marriage without trust.
Dominic stood up like he was about to speak, a slight crease in his brow forming.
But Verity wasn’t ready to hear him. “You can handle your own matters and I will handle my own. I am not interested in… in any more cooperation. No suppers together. No social functions. There’s enough room in this house for us to never see each other again. So… Good bye.”
Her voice cracked in a way that expressed more than she was willing to admit to him or herself. So Verity left.
There was the smallest piece inside her that feared he would follow. Or that he wouldn’t. She could hardly breathe for all the hammering in her heart. But she didn’t look around. She kept going.
Out the front door, into a hackney, to the Ashbourne house.
Everything was familiar. Not a single thing had changed as she greeted the footman who welcomed her inside.
The grand hallway towered over her. There was the faint scent of florals from a bouquet she supposed one of her sisters had made or received on the table next to the platter for the daily post.
Usually, the sight and scent of home was comforting. Today it was terribly annoying. Her family, Dominic, had said. This was all about her family.
And it’s time I stop waiting for someone to tell me what is going on.
“Cassian. The viscount.” She glanced up the stairs. “Where is he?”
The footman, one of their oldest and the most charming, was wise to say little beyond noting, “He’s alone in his study, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Theodore.”
Taking long strides, Verity reached the study before long.
It had never been a comforting room. When their father was alive, he never permitted them entry.
She didn’t think her mother had even stepped inside.
Her uncle had asked to borrow it once or twice.
And now Cassian had begun to bury himself in it like a mole.
She didn’t bother waiting for a reply after she gave the door two neat raps. Pushing it in, she ignored her brother’s exclamation of surprise and swept right through.
“Verity!” Cassian was startled and annoyed. A rather familiar expression of his for his siblings, though rarely her. “What is it? What are you doing here?”
“I am here for answers.”
It was a general enough announcement. She had been ready with a fresh breath to launch into her spiel, but paused at the way he reacted.
Every bone in Cassian’s body seemed to lock. He tensed, nearly shrinking in on himself. His expression shifted from the shock to something else she couldn’t quite describe. But he wouldn’t meet her gaze. His head drooped slightly like there was something wrong.
He knows. He knows exactly what I’m here for because he’s been waiting for me to come to him. Why didn’t I do this sooner? I was a ninny to expect anyone might freely tell me anything.
“Verity…”
“What happened to Uncle Will?”
He inhaled sharply. Perhaps it was the lighting, but he even paled. “I was going to tell you everything.”
“Really? When?” She demanded. The seconds started to tick by when he offered no reply. So she gestured to his chair and then took a seat of his own. Back straight and hands perched in her lap.
It was not going to be a pleasant conversation. The twist in her stomach made sure of that. She could feel her body shaking still. She felt out of control. Was this what Dominic had wanted to happen? She pushed him from her mind to focus on her brother. “I’m waiting, Cassian, ever so patiently.”
He grunted like he knew it to be a lie. Of course she wasn’t going to be patient. But she would force herself to if that’s what it took to gather the answers here.
“Fine. I…” Cassian seemed to lose some of his usual confidence as he started to move back into his seat. He clutched at the furniture like he was afraid of falling out of it, only to spring back up. Around the desk he came, pausing suddenly, before sitting in the chair next to her. “I was.”
“Was what?”
He made a face. “I was going to tell you. I mean it.”
“Then you are in luck because I am right here and I am not going anywhere.” She braced herself for the worst.
Already she was beginning to be haunted by awful thoughts.
It had been a musing during the first scandalous journal piece.
She had thought maybe it was a ploy. He faked his death to escape punishment or because he had been framed.
For a second, she had dared hope Uncle Will still lived.
But then the doubts came. Her worries had come in, making her wonder if someone could have hurt him.
If something dramatic and darker had gotten hold of him.
“I only… I only want you to know…” Cassian rubbed his hands on his pants as though doing this might shake out his nerves.
When he couldn’t continue, Verity forced out a large exhale. “I know it wasn’t a sudden illness. His casket was closed. We never even got to see him again.”
He suddenly blurted, “because he wasn’t in the casket.”
The sudden revelation had her choking on her breath. “Then he wasn’t…?”
Grimacing, Cassian looked away. His hands gripped his knees so tightly that his knuckles were white. The truth was never a pretty thing. And he had been holding onto it for so long. Verity would have thought…
No. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know him like I thought I did. I don’t know Dominic at all. I hardly know anyone.
“Blast it. Verity, how am I supposed to explain this to you? It was never supposed to… It wasn’t…
” Cassian slumped into the chair suddenly.
He let out two shuddering breaths like he was collapsing in on himself.
Then he forced himself to straighten up and look at her.
She’d seen that bleak look before. Just before he had left for Uncle Will’s burial. “Once you know, you will never forget.”
“I know.”
Finally, Cassian seemed to accept that she wanted the truth and would take what it took to learn it. Enough time was wasted. Enough mistakes had happened.
“Uncle William was forced to go into trade when our father cut him off when he was a young man. He was well-educated and wanted to do some good in the world. He started with good intentions to become a banker. That much is true.”
She nodded. “Very well.”
“Over the years, he began to explore gambling dens. They held his attention for only a short time, but it was enough for him to learn about underground dealings. Shady financial dealings, to be specific. He learned about illegal schemes, bribery, and established dangerous connections.”
Frowning, she shook her head. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“He didn’t have to. Uncle Will believed that if he could start all over again, anyone else could. When a deal went wrong, he didn’t blame himself and he didn’t feel guilty,” Cassian explained. “At the start of last year, he spread word about a promising investment with a coal company.”
Verity frowned and asked, “Which one?”
“One that didn’t exist.”
“But…”
“He lied and stole the money from many people. Many important and dangerous people,” he added and gave a frustrated shake of his head.
“He was a fool. Uncle Will understood money but he had no sense. He was taking more money to close out old debts. It was a never-ending pattern. But this was the worst one. Fortunes were lost. Someone began to threaten Uncle Will. They started leaving letters here at the house, and that’s when I began to investigate what our uncle was doing. ”
Slowly, she shook her head. This didn’t make any sense. Uncle Will had been a good man. He wasn’t perfect, but surely he hadn’t hurt anyone.
“I met him coming back from a duel where he shot someone who accused him of such misdeeds. The Baron of Levoy.” He paused for her to gasp as she recalled the older gentleman who had left behind a penniless daughter and son.
It had been a tragic story. The children, barely adults, had fled the continent to America.
“Dominic was close by when I stopped William to confront him. He had given over his carriage to the second, a friend of his, and they needed it to… Well, you can assume. He had come to see what was taking so long and came upon William and I.”
Dread settled in Verity’s gut as she realized that this story was beginning to take a turn she didn’t like. Maybe she didn’t want to know the truth after all.
But she couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe.
Muttering quickly now, Cassian said, “You have to understand it was an accident. I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t want to believe William could do anything like that. All I wanted were answers. I was ready to believe a lie. But that made it undeniable.
“I couldn’t… He wouldn’t stop! I was shouting and then he was shouting.
He was threatening me. Told me I had gone insane and I was raving like a lunatic.
There were so many excuses. I didn’t understand who he had become.
Why would he threaten to expose himself just to hurt me?
To hurt our family? He would put everything at risk.
Everything! Our reputation, our honor, our lives.
The Crown could take everything from us.
We argued. We couldn’t stop. He was raving like a madman and I grabbed him and I just… I didn’t think…”
Her hands covered her mouth in horror. “Cassian.”
“He fell in the Thames.” Her eldest brother looked at her through glassy eyes.
“Do you remember the frost? He fell on the icy edges and went right under. I couldn’t…
I couldn’t do anything. He never came back up.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. I would have jumped in if Dominic hadn’t pulled me back to my senses. ”
So this was it. The truth that lived under the skin of their lives, mocking them and poking them and haunting them. Verity felt dizzy. She believed her brother, every word.
And how it hurt.
Cassian had carried this secret alone. He’d kept the truth from the family. What it must have taken to convince the world he was dead, especially without a body, she didn’t know. And all the financial ruin that could have overcome them…
Minutes ago, she had stormed in expecting satisfaction with the truth. She had braced herself for the worst.
But how can one know what is the worst if they don’t know what it is?
There was a gnawing root of hurt buried deep in her stomach.
It began to dig within her as she felt the grief of losing her uncle resurface into something new.
It nearly choked her. How could she not have known this about her uncle?
How could he have hidden so much from them?
“I… Verity, say something.”
She licked her lips slowly. “What do you want me to say?” Slowly she lifted her head to meet his gaze, searching for something.
Peace, maybe, or comforting. “I mourned Uncle Will so much. I defended his memory. I have so much pain inside me for a man I never really knew. How do I trust the past in a family that wasn’t real? I…”
“I’m sorry,” he tried and reached for her.
But Verity couldn’t do it. She couldn’t touch him.
Scrambling out of her seat, she put out a hand.
“That isn’t even the worst of it, Cassian.
I can overcome it. All of it. I will, in time.
But the worst part is… Is that you let me grieve a lie.
You stood beside me over the casket and watched me as I cried.
You held my hand and you let me suffer. Why could you not have told me the truth? ”
Her brother shook his shoulders uselessly as he came to his feet. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You could tell me you are sorry!” She cried out to the stranger before her.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. They couldn’t be controlled any longer.
Her heart was breaking all over again and everything hurt.
“You could tell me that you won’t keep lying to me.
That you will be honest with me! What sort of family are you? ”
There was no comfort in this house. None, at least, that she wanted. Verity shook off Cassian’s attempt at grasping her and darted for the door.
Out into the hall she went, finding the rugs that Uncle Will used to playfully trip over to make her laugh. The windows where he would stand outside and make silly faces at her and her sisters. Past the hall where he would appear almost daily with a broad smile and wave.
Everything in the Ashbourne house reminded Verity of him and she couldn’t take it another second. She had to get out of there.
The only problem was that she didn’t know where to go. No place felt like home any longer.