“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. “Heloved destruction. Especially when it came to me. He put me through horrible,horriblebeatings. 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,sovery 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 wouldnevertake 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.
