It was the way he said please. Not pleading, but not sharp either. Just an earnest need for the truth. She licked her lips, blushing as she tried to find the right place to start. She supposed there were some parts she was willing to explain, but she certainly was not going to tell him how the dream had started. She blushed just at the thought of it.
“Was it about your stepmother?” Damien asked.
Her eyes flicked back up to his, surprised that this was his first guess.
“How did you know?” she whispered, shaking her head. “I have never told anyone. Not even Elara.”
A small, humorless smile flitted across Damien’s lips for the briefest of seconds.
“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 shewantedto 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. Starveme. Lock me in closets.”
