‘You don’t think it’s enough?’ she whispered.
‘What’s not enough?’ he answered.
‘Love.’
He turned his head, his eyes glancing over her before returning to the fire. ‘What would I know of it? It’s the Fentons and the other grand families who seem to have an ownership over that emotion as well as everything else.’
His childhood again—but there was more. Maybe he was an outsider because he chose to be.
‘I never understood why you hated this town so much,’ Alice said.
‘I never said that I hated it.’
‘You never had to. I heard it when you talked to William. I watched it while we grew up. You never tried to make friends here—you always held yourself apart.’
‘Unlikeyourfamily.’
She loved her family, but all families had flaws. Her father and his mistresses were only one of them. ‘My family isn’t perfect. You know that.’
‘Is that what we’re to do? Speak of the past? Haven’t I done enough of that tonight?’
Hugh didn’t want to remember those days. As far as he was concerned he was from Shoebury. That was all he told anyone. Of course, the King, Robert and Eldric knew otherwise. After all, he couldn’t have trained as a knight if he’d had no connections. Swaffham and his father, such as he was, were necessary. But this town—he didn’t want to remember at all. And yet here he was, actually living here again.
‘What else are we to talk about?’ she said.
‘What do you want me to talk about? The past you know or the past you don’t?’
‘Tell me,’ she whispered, so softly he shouldn’t have heard.
Maybe he hadn’t but had simply wanted to hear those words. For her to give him permission to tell a tale he’d never intended to tell.
‘What is there to say? That I was born in Shoebury and my mother was sick, and that for unknown reasons she sent me to my father when I was only five?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Of course you didn’t. I didn’t letanybodyknow. As far as any of you were concerned my life consisted only of this town.’
‘Then tell me about it.’
Alice had never thought of Hugh’s childhood before Swaffham. People had talked about it in vague ways, but never with any kind of salacious whisper or sympathetic murmurings. He had been but a mere child when he’d arrived.
But now she could visualise it all too clearly. Shoebury was to the south. There would have been warmth, a mother who loved him. Loved him enough to find the man who had abandoned him. A father who had taken no responsibility for him before. Knowing Hugh, who had his pride, she had no doubt his mother had had her pride as well.
She thought of her own happy childhood and her practical mother, her very impractical father, and her two sisters. Hers had been a busy home, a happy childhood, and one to look back on fondly.
But for Hugh something had been taken from him. Cruelly, forcefully. And he had been brought here to Swaffham. Brought to a knight, a man who hadn’t taken responsibility for him in the first place. A man who had served the King, but who had changed over the years. Who had become cold, callous, his drinking increasing as his viciousness grew out of control. If Hugh had been five when he’d arrived, he had been part of the downward spiral that his father had taken.
The whole town had watched it happen. For herself, she’d never forgot that day when Hugh had picked his father up from the middle of the road.
‘I wish I’d done something differently that day,’ she said. ‘When the rains came and your father—’
‘Was covered in mud and everything else.’ His brow furrowed. ‘You were too young to comprehend.’
‘Still...’ she said. She had watched like everyone else. But she often looked back to that day and wished she had done something. But nobody had. Nobody.
‘I’m glad you didn’t. That you couldn’t comprehend the shame of it all.’
And there was the difference in their pasts, she didn’t see any shame at all. She saw only a good deed, and strength. ‘Tell me something of Shoebury.’
