Chapter 14 #2
“I had my suspicions about her long before she and I met to discuss the marriage. However, it barely took a minute to confirm those suspicions that day,” Damien explained. “The way she spoke about you. How she tried to make Lilian look like the better choice. It made her animosity obvious.”
Caroline fell silent, remembering how often she used to catch Damien quietly watching her from afar.
She had thought it strange and alarming at the time, but now, she was starting to understand that he had his reasons.
He had somehow sensed her unhappiness; all this time, he had been trying to figure out where it stemmed from.
She could not help but feel comforted by that.
“My relationship with my stepmother and stepsister has always been a little…” she paused, searching for the right word.
“Strained?” Damien offered.
Caroline nodded.
“Even before my father passed away,” she went on.
“True, Agatha and Lilian could put on a great show for him when the four of us were together. They spoke to me so sweetly, as if we were some loving family brought together by destiny. However, when my father was not home, it was quite different. Lilian liked to tease and belittle me, and Agatha made it clear from very early on that I was not allowed to retaliate. She, too, would throw little barbs in Father’s absence.
She would criticize my dresses. The way I preferred to have my hair styled.
My facial features. She found something to despise about every single part of me, it seemed. ”
She sighed and bowed her head.
“If I had known what was to come after Father’s death, I would have stopped wishing for them to desist and cherished those small slights.”
A shiver passed through her, and she willed her body to relax so she could burrow a little further under her covers.
“Are you cold?” Damien asked.
“I am not sure if it is cold or nerves,” she confessed, letting out another small, humorless laugh as she glanced at Damien.
His eyes were riveted on her, his face a mask of utter seriousness. For a moment, as his hand reached out, she thought he was going to reach for her again. Then, as if realizing what he was about to do, he wrapped his other hand around his outstretched fingers, and he stood.
“Either way, warmth will help. I shall light a fire in the hearth. Tell me what happened after your father died.”
Caroline almost made a quip about not having to follow his orders, but as she opened her mouth, she realized that she wanted to talk about her past. For the first time in her life, she wanted to tell this man everything. The urge of it unnerved her.
“After my father died, the little slights grew worse,” she explained as Damien started the fire. “I would find nails in my shoes some mornings from Lilian.” She winced, remembering the pain in her feet when she first did not know to check for such things.
“One time, I was getting ready for bed, and when I pulled back the covers, I found a dead mouse. Lilian was trying to come up with every way she could torment me. I shrieked so very loudly it woke up Agatha, and that was the first time she struck me.”
She watched as Damien’s back went rigid as he kneeled before the fireplace. Then, as if he needed to force it, his body expanded as he drew in a deep breath.
“First time?” he echoed, still not turning back to her. “Not the only time?”
Caroline anxiously dragged her teeth back and forth over her bottom lip.
“No,” she finally whispered.
With the fire roaring now, Damien stood and turned to her. His face held a mixture of rage and worry as he came back to sit beside her.
“Tell me,” he commanded. “What did she do to you?”
“When I began to cry after she struck me, Agatha said that I was weak and spoiled. That I needed to know what real life was truly like and harden myself. She said that making me a servant would teach me how to do that,” Caroline explained.
“She moved me to the servants’ quarters after that.
Which, in one way, was a blessing because Lilian no longer tampered with my things.
She no longer wanted what I had because it was all so beneath her.
She was given my room, most of my dresses and possessions, which I assume was what she had wanted from the start. ”
Caroline wrinkled her nose as more bad memories came flooding back.
“I did try to please Agatha,” she confessed.
“I thought that if I did things the way she wanted, she would start to treat me like the other servants. That she would think I did not quite exist other than to clean. But no matter what I did, it was never good enough. She found new reasons to punish me. Strike me. Starve me. Lock me in closets.”
She flinched.
“The closets were the worst,” she rasped, drawing her eyes up to Damien’s hard expression. “The darkness, the smallness of the space. It shrank in on me as if it were going to disappear and take me with it.”
“Caroline,” Damien said after she went silent, “Why did you not tell Adrian about this? Or Nora? Elara especially. She would have helped you.”
Caroline shook her head.
“Even before Evander went missing, their family was having enough troubles. Nora, as you might remember, had always been of a frail constitution. Though it certainly was Evander’s absence that pushed her off the edge.”
She took a steadying breath and went on.
“Elara and I... We found our own way to deal with our problems. That is partly why we started to sneak out at night. We wanted to help find Evander, yes, but we also needed to be someone different than who we were forced to be during the day.”
Not wanting to talk about it anymore, Caroline pressed her lips shut and closed her eyes.
“All of this. What your stepmother and stepsister did to you... That is why you were drawn to the orphanage?” Damien’s deep voice broke through the silence. “Why are you so very gentle with George?”
Opening her eyes again, Caroline nodded.
“All children deserve love and care,” she replied, a hint of steel in her tone. “No matter if they are orphaned or illegitimate. I understand that George’s presence might not be ideal for you, but he is not at fault. He needs to be cared for by his father.”
Damien’s jaw ticked as resentment glittered in his eyes.
“I have already told you, Caroline. George is not my son,” he stated pointedly.
Growing exasperated with such a ruse, Caroline sighed and shook her head.
“How can you say that? There is no point in lying to me; this is not even a real marriage. Besides, you cannot deny that he looks like you. And everyone knows that you were a rake when you were younger.”
“We merely share the same hair color. One could say that he also looks like you,” Damien countered, ignoring her slight.
For a moment, Caroline faltered.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“He might have my dark hair, but his eyes? His eyes are the same color as your eyes, Caroline. Does that mean he is yours?”
“Do not be ridiculous!” she hissed, sitting up again. “Several people share the same eye color. It does not mean that we are related.”
“Precisely,” Damien replied quickly. “Resemblance can happen among strangers at any time. Just because he shares the same hair color as I does not mean I am the father. Though I suppose he could be Jeremy’s.”
Caroline looked at him questioningly.
“Who is Jeremy?” she asked.
Damien’s hardened gaze softened a little as she said the name, and she realized that whoever he was, it was someone Damien cared about.
“He is my little brother,” he confessed. “Though when I think about it, it is highly improbable. He was always drawn more to parties and adventures than to books, but he was in boarding school before he set out on his Grand Tour.”
“So he is traveling now?” Caroline asked.
“Yes, I have written to him to come home. In the meantime, I have my men looking for the woman who brought George here. George told me, before he became too frightened to speak with me, that he was born in October five years ago. I have my solicitor searching through birth records in every town and hamlet in England as well as Scotland.”
Caroline studied him intently for a long moment.
“You truly do not believe it, do you?” she asked. “You are thoroughly convinced that George is not your son.”
Damien frowned, a brief look of offense passing over his handsome features before settling back into a mask of resolve.
“If I truly believed George was my son, I would have accepted him as such,” Damien stated with great seriousness. “Even as I believe he is not, I am still not returning him to the streets. I will find his rightful parents and decide what to do from there.”
“And if you cannot find them?” Caroline asked, watching him rise to his feet.
Damien’s hardened gaze glittered.
“You may find me incapable of love, and perhaps you are right. Even so, I would not cast an innocent child to the streets. I would never do that. I would keep him as my ward.”
Hurt laced through his deep voice, and Caroline chose to drop the subject. She watched him walk to the door, trying to figure out whether to say something else or just let him leave as he so clearly wanted to.
“I am glad it was just a nightmare,” Damien stated before she could decide. “And I am sorry to hear that you experienced so much pain from the people who were supposed to love and care for you.”
Caroline’s mouth dropped open at his words and sincere tone, and she watched as he picked up the busted-down door as if it weighed nothing.
“Just so you are aware, you do not have to worry about such punishments here. You are safe, Caroline.”
Her heart and head pulling her in opposite directions, she merely nodded.
“Try to get back to sleep,” he gently commanded, walking the door over to the frame. “I will have this fixed for you first thing in the morning.”
Still at a loss for words, Caroline again only nodded as Damien leaned the door by the frame, providing her at least a little privacy for the night.
Alone again and this time wide awake, Caroline mulled over her thoughts for a long time afterward. She was good at finding patterns in people’s behavior, but with Damien, the more she interacted with him, the less he seemed to have one.
She had thought him rough and violent, yet Damien had busted down the door to get to her because she had had a nightmare. He had listened to her story without judgment, and even as she accused him of being a poor father, he still had not argued or even raised his voice to her.
Still, she was wary. Even though her dream-self had sunk willingly into his arms, she was certain that she could not do so in reality. Damien had not garnered the reputation he had for no reason, and she could not let a few moments of tenderness allow her to forget that.
This is why I cannot let him touch me.
What she could do, she decided, as she finally drifted back to sleep, was try to create a paternal bond between him and George. Because no matter what he said, Caroline had not been entirely convinced that there was no possibility that Damien could be the boy’s father.