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“There was a box lying beside her, with papers scattered all around it. They were letters she’d written to my father but never sent. I don’t know if she’d been too afraid to send them, or perhaps she simply did not know where to address them to, because none of them had any. But the letters spanned the years, and upon reading a few of them, it was clear she wished for him to come back. She told him how much she loved him, how much she wished he would return so that they could be a family again. But the letter I’d found in her hand had been far more important than all the others.”
He swallowed, remembering the scribbles that had brought tears and anger to the fore. Now, the tears were long gone but the anger was the same.
“It was a letter from my father. In summation, he’d told her all the things she did not want to hear. That he would not be returning. That he was enjoying himself in India and that she should take a lover because he was doing the same. He did not ask how I fared, nor anything about me, but simply went on to talk about himself. I believe that letter was what drove my mother to take her own life. But, of course, when my grandfather learned of how she died, he made sure to cover up the reason so as not to bring more shame to the family. And I…I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Not even you.”
“Oh, William, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t have to look up to know that Elizabeth’s eyes were filled with tears. He went on, not caring to stop. “Finding her body and that letter began an entire host of events. My father finally returned to England once he learned of my mother’s death, but he showed no remorse. It clearly didn’t matter to him that his wife had passed away, nor did he care that his son was so distraught at having found her first. As soon as he was back in England, he began to take lovers again, and began gambling away whatever riches he had left. It had caused such stress to my grandfather that it caused him to fall ill. That sickness claimed his life only a year later.”
The next part stuck in his throat, bringing back a wave of sickening emotions he’d tried his hardest to be rid of. But William had learned long ago that this was part of his life he would never be able to forget.
“I hated him,” he stated bitterly. “With everything in me, I despised my father. I believed he was the reason for my mother taking her life, and he was the reason for every other bad thing to happen to me. But I was weak. When he returned to England, I gave in to that hatred, using it to help forget how sad I was at my mother’s passing.”
He could feel bits of that familiar rage right now, but it didn’t last under Elizabeth’s gentle gaze.
“I was so…angry. My grief transformed into something terrible, something evil, and I wasn’t thinking properly. Most of my rage was directed at my father, but he was rarely ever home. Returning to England meant he spent all his time in the clubs, wasting away our wealth. And so, I took my anger out on everyone else around me—including my grandfather. I…he…”
He didn’t know how to say it, how best to reveal what had happened without making Elizabeth hate him. Even though her eyes were tender, he was afraid they would become unyielding and hard once he managed to tell her the full truth of his misdeeds.
“I fell into a bad crowd and no matter what he said, I would not listen to him. Rather, I would spend my time in the London slums, surrounding myself with gang men who stole and killed for a living. My grandfather caught wind of the things they would do, believing I’d gotten caught up with such things myself. One night…he went out himself to find me, intending to drag me home. But the men I’d considered my friends saw him as a perfect victim to rob and…they did just that. Once they’d learned of my status as a noble, they turned on me as well, but I knew not to bring valuables along with me when I went to such areas. They attacked me nonetheless, beat me until I was powerless to stop them from turning on my grandfather.”
“Oh, William,” Elizabeth murmured gently.
Tears pricked William’s eyes but he chased them away, forcing himself to continue. “They took no mercy on him. They stole everything he had on his person, then attacked him as viciously as they did me. I wanted to help, wanted to protect him, but a few of the men had me pinned down so that I couldn’t move. So I had to watch as they maliciously beat my grandfather until he stopped moving. Only a few months after my mother had passed away, so did the only other person in my life who cared for me.” He drew in a shuddering breath, letting it out through his nose. “It broke me. I became nothing but a shell of my former self, a ghost weighed by the death of my family. And I was left with that cur of a man who only cared about the inheritance my grandfather had left behind.”
