Chapter 24
“Burn the world down?”
Caroline had stared at the closed door for a long moment after he had left, his words still ringing in her ears even days later.
She shook her head as she picked up another knick-knack from the parlor’s fireplace mantel and scrubbed at it hard with her cloth.
She desperately needed to do something with her hands, no matter how improper it was for her to clean.
“He cannot possibly mean that,” she murmured to herself. “He is always so severe with his words, but... A man like him cannot possibly feel so intensely for someone like me.”
Can he? She could feel her heart fluttering violently at the thought.
“Are you talking to yourself?”
Caroline gasped and whirled around, nearly dropping the bit of glass in her hand. When she saw Jeremy leaning in the doorway with his usual cheeky grin, she groaned and threw her rag at him.
“Do not sneak up on people!” she scolded, fiddling with the glass object in her hands.
“I have been here the entire time, you silly goose,” Jeremy said, shrugging as he pushed himself away from the doorframe and walked into the room. “Apparently, your invisible friend was so loud you could not hear me.”
Caroline felt her cheeks turn red, and she hid it by turning around and putting the glass knick-knack back on the mantel.
“Give me my rag back, please,” she muttered, reaching for another.
“Talking to invisible friends and cleaning?” Jeremy mused as he came closer. “My dear, must I remind you that you are not some servant girl waiting for your prince? Yours has already arrived.”
Caroline clucked her tongue as she turned to Jeremy, ready to ask him to stop with his playful banter. Yet as she faced him, she found his smile gone and a look of concern in his eyes.
“He is not my prince,” she muttered, accepting the rag he held out to her. “And I know I do not have to clean. It sounds strange, but I thought tidying up would soothe my nerves.”
Jeremy raised a curious brow.
“And does this thing help?” he asked.
Caroline looked at the rag in her one hand, twisting it, and shook her head.
“My stepmother used to make me clean for her,” Caroline explained, taking a seat.
“I know she did so to make me feel lowly, but in truth, I did find some enjoyment taking care of the many little things that could not take care of themselves. I thought maybe it would help me now, but it seems I am more frustrated than before.”
“Your stepmother sounds lovely,” Jeremy said with heavy sarcasm as he took a seat across from Caroline, and she let out a tired laugh.
“Oh, yes, the loveliest,” she replied with equal sarcasm.
She glanced at him and found only the barest of smiles on his usually grinning lips.
“Perhaps you need to speak to an actual friend,” he offered gently. “I am sure your invisible one is nice, but something tells me they do not reply.”
Caroline let out another tired laugh and reached out to bat at his knee.
“I do not have an invisible friend, I was just talking to myself,” she explained. “And yes, I would love to speak to my best friend, but Elara is not here. I write to her, but it is not at all the same as having her at my side.”
“Well, perhaps I could be of assistance then,” Jeremy offered, opening his arms. “I may not be your best friend, but I could be a friend.”
Caroline giggled as he beckoned her with his fingers while wagging his eyebrows, feeling her kinship toward him grow.
“It would stay between us?” she asked tentatively.
Jeremy’s mouth dropped open as he pressed a hand to his chest, as if offended she would think otherwise. Then he chuckled and slashed a cross through the air.
“Cross my heart,” he replied, then leaned back into his chair.
“It is Damien,” she confessed, her smile already fading as she began to speak. “He frustrates me so.”
“How so?” Jeremy asked, his tone soft and sincere.
“The way he speaks so fiercely,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “When I was stung a few days ago, he wanted to burn all the roses! I do not know why he says such things to me. A man like him cannot possibly feel so intensely for me.”
“And why not?” Jeremy asked, his face forming a slight frown.
“You know him better than I do, so you realize just as well as I do that Damien is not the kind of man capable of such feelings,” Caroline replied.
“Ah,” Jeremy said, steepling his fingers together as he crossed his legs. “And he has shown this to you?”
Caroline’s brows furrowed in confusion.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You are annoyed with his words, so let us take a look at his actions,” Jeremy explained. “Does he ignore you? Force you into situations you do not wish to be in? Make you feel lowly? Or as if you are beneath him or the status his marriage provided you?”
Caroline worried her bottom lip as the answers came instantly to her head.
“No,” she confessed.
“So, his actions are aligning with his words,” Jeremy offered.
“Even if they are,” Caroline countered. “It has to be an act. What people say... Damien is a man who destroys people, not nurtures them. You know this.”
Caroline looked up as Jeremy grew quiet.
She suddenly remembered that Jeremy was not just a friendly guest but Damien’s brother.
Worried she had gone too far with her complaints, she leaned forward, ready to apologize and ask him to forget everything she had said.
Yet as she opened her mouth to speak, Jeremy spoke.
“I know the destruction my brother is capable of,” he said quietly, staring off into the distance. “It was such destruction that saved my life.”
Caroline snapped her mouth shut in surprise.
“I am going to tell you something, Caroline dearest, and just as you had me promise to keep your secrets, I am going to ask you to keep mine,” he went on.
Caroline readily nodded.
“My brother does not show it well, but he can care and love for someone deeply,” Jeremy began. “Deeply enough to take on horrible things.”
He glanced down at his hands and began rubbing his thumb in a circle over his other palm.
“Our father was a horrible man,” Jeremy rasped. “He loved destruction. Especially when it came to me. He put me through horrible, horrible beatings. For no reason other than liking to hear my screams of agony, I would suspect.”
Cold slithered down Caroline’s spine. Damien had made comments here and there that alluded to a difficult childhood, but she had no idea it was that awful.
“When Damien found out what he was doing to me, he fought our father. But he was only a boy, just as I was, and he lost. Poorly. Yet even so, after our father bloodied his face and broke his ribs, Damien demanded a trade. Himself for me. I was to go to boarding school, far away from my father’s reach, and Damien would stay behind to take on whatever our father gave him. ”
“He did that for me,” Jeremy rasped, tears brimming in his eyes. “He took all of that on because he loved me so very much.”
“Jeremy,” Caroline whispered, reaching toward him. “I... I had no idea. I am so, so very sorry you both went through something so horrendous.”
“You want to know where my brother got his penchant for violence?” He went on as if he had not heard her.
“He got it from taking on our father. He was not going to cower from his beatings; he took them on, and as he grew older, he grew stronger and better at fighting. And one day, when my father came for him, Damien finally won.”
Jeremy’s eyes finally shifted to Caroline, and the look in his eyes broke her heart.
“Damien paid for that success in many ways. It hardened him. He does not always know how to control his anger, but he would never take it out on an innocent person. He bottles it up. Saves it for someone who deserves it, and when he finally unleashes it on such a person, well… We both have heard the stories of Damien’s rage. ”
Caroline buried her head in her hands, torn apart from Jeremy’s truth.
She thought of every moment she had flinched from Damien.
Every time she had invoked the contract like a shield, convinced that he was no different from the people who had hurt her before.
She had been so certain. So sure that a man with his reputation could only ever mean her harm.
And yet.
He had never once raised his hand to her. Never once made her feel small or worthless or afraid, not truly. That had been her own fear talking.
“I have misjudged him so horribly,” she whispered. “I came into this marriage expecting the worst of him because it was all I had ever known. And he has been nothing but...”
Good. He has been good to me.
She looked up as she felt Jeremy’s hand on her shoulder, and found him standing before her with a kind look.
“He will forgive you for that,” he stated earnestly. “But please, stop seeing him as the man you thought him to be and start accepting him for the man that he is. You have no idea how wonderfully your life can change because he cares for you. Let him show you.”
Caroline nodded as she blinked away a few tears.
She cared for him as well. More than was safe, more than she had any right to, given the terms of their arrangement, but she could at least try to keep her guard down from now on.
“I will,” she vowed.
Jeremy’s playful smile returned, and he gently nudged her chin with his knuckles.
“Head up, Caroline dearest,” he insisted. “I cannot have you so weepy for my ball. It is only a few days away now.”
Caroline let out a weak laugh as she took Jeremy’s offered hand and rose to her feet.
“You mean the ball that is supposed to be all about you?” she teased.
Jeremy chuckled, fully returning to his usual playful self.
“Of course, it is all about me, darling,” he said dramatically. “But that does not mean you are not going to be the belle of it. I need you to be beautiful and smiling as you are going to be presented as my sister-in-law.”
Caroline’s brows drew up in surprise.
“I am?” she asked.
“Now come along, enough with this moping,” Jeremy ordered, offering her his arm. “Let us lace some tea with brandy, and have ourselves a merry afternoon.”
Laughing, Caroline took his arm, and they left the parlor—and her judgments behind them.