Her lip curled and her eyes seethed with rabid anger. “Do you know the only thing that I ever asked of your father? The one thing I wished for—not love. I did not care for companionship. I wanted...” A shake of the head as if in amusement. “I wanted a child of my own.”
“Which he gave you.”
“Which hetookfrom me,” she exclaimed angrily. “He refused to accept that my pregnancy was his doing! Then he forced...” She was shaking violently, her body turning red. “Then he forced me to kill the child that was growing in my womb. He made me drink...”
Tears welled in her eyes and she sniffed them back. “He made me murder the one thing in this world that might have brought me happiness, and in so doing ensured that I couldnevercarry a child again. He stole that from me! This man who you idolize and worship at the feet of! He is the monster! Not me!”
Hudson had not known that. He was aware of the miscarriage, but had no idea it was forced upon Caroline by his father. He winced with shame, glad now that he no longer saw the need to follow in his father’s footsteps as he once had.
“And I suppose that I am to take on some of this blame, am I?” Hudson shot back. “Is that why you have done this?”
“You!” she cried shrilly. “You who are so much like him. You who could never understand what it means to love someone more than you love yourself. I do not blame you for what your father did...”
She laughed maniacally, as if she was losing her mind. “I only seek to ensure that men of your kind might never burden this world again so that others do not have to suffer as I did. It might not bring back my child, but it is a task I happily take on.”
It wasn’t a confession. Not in the literal sense. But it was enough to explain why Caroline had poisoned his wife. She was so drunk with misery and vindictiveness, so taken by her rage and sense of vengeance, that she honestly thought that she was doing his wife a favor by killing her.The woman has lost her mind.
Hudson’s first instinct was to accuse her again. He wanted to storm up to her, grab her by the arms, shake her and scream in her face until she relented and admitted to what she had done and then told him how he might save Florentia. The anger and the hate that brewed inside of him was like a fire through his veins.
And he just might have too, had he not stopped to take another look at his stepmother. To reallyseeher, perhaps for the first time.
Yes, she was angry. But it wasn’t that on which he focused. Before him, Hudson chose to see a woman living in utter misery, suffering through a tragedy nobody else could ever understand, forced to live a lie of which she alone carried the weight. It had broken her. It had destroyed her. It was the reason for all of this, and threatening her and hurting her wasn’t going to make a difference.
Another sensation rose inside of Hudson, one he had felt before. Guilt. Shame. Sadness too. For no matter how much he hated his stepmother, now more than ever, he also felt sorry for her. And in realizing that, he knew what he had to do.
“You really think that of me?” His voice softened, as did his stance. “That I am my father?”
“I see it as clear as I see you standing before me,” she snarled. “You are him. You have forced a gentle soul to marry you, intent on ruining her life for no other reason than that you do not care for anyone! Anything! That is who you are.”
“You are wrong,” he said, his shoulders slumping, his expression turned to pity. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”
“Ha! I spoke to your wife, remember. I know how she feels about you. And you, her! Don’t you lie to me.”
“I do not lie,” Hudson said. “And you are right, that when you spoke with Florentia, we were fighting.” He smiled at that, although he did not know why. “My fault, I confess. I suppose I am like my father in many ways, as stubborn as a mule and as blind as a bat.”
“Do not tell me what I already know.”
“Do you know why we were fighting?” He started carefully across the room, not wanting to spook her. “Did Florentia tell you the reason?”
Her nose flared and her lip curled. “I can take a guess.”
“No need to guess, as I will tell you. We were fighting because Florentia had confessed her feelings of love for me—” He saw Caroline’s eyes turn wide. “—and I, self-loathing fool that I am, refused to believe her. Worse than that, I refused to believe myself capable of falling in love.”
“Wh...so, I am right!” she cried out, her voice cracking with a sense of unease. “You hurt her. You are just like your father.”
“No, I am not.” He was halfway across the room, stopping so as not to get too close. “Unlike my father, I do not hate my wife. In fact, I have since come to accept that I love her.”
“No! You’re lying! I know you are lying.”
“I am not lying.” He spoke almost at a whisper, his expression pleading. “I love my wife. I love her more than I have ever loved anything or anyone. I love her so much that to see her dying as she is has brought me such pain that if she does not recover...”
His stomach twisted at the thought. “I do not know what I will do. How I will go on. I love her more than life itself, and that is why I am here, Caroline. Not to apologize. Not to force a confession from you. I am here because I need you to understand the truth of it.”
“The...the truth...” The rage was leaving her, doubt creeping in.
“Florentia wants a child and when she gets better, if she gets better, I intend to give her one.” It was the first time that Hudson had given children a thought, but now that he had spoken the words, he knew how true they were. “But I cannot do this for her if she does not get better—and it is for her, Caroline. All I want is for her to be happy. All I want is for her to live.”
“No...” She was shaking, knees buckling, hand touching her stomach as if in pain. “No, I...you are lying...you are...I do not believe you.”
