“You were the first person who helped us. I never forgot your kindness. My father and I started to rebuild our family’s status and money. It was long and relentless work, made of late nights, begging people who hated us for favours, and humiliations. We worked side by side with clerks and builders, broke our backs to keep our land, and succeeded. People believed the relationship with my father was strained because I’d worked with him since I was a boy, thus they thought he’d forced me or been unfair to me. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. But I’m still fighting. I fear the fight will never end, as if I lived in a loop that gets tighter…” He swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. “People assume that, because I’m a lord, I don’t know what it means to be starving, be cold, or work so hard your body aches. I don’t take my fortune for granted. I wasn’t always surrounded by servants and wealth. I’m not complaining, but I’m not whom people think.”
Emotion tightened her throat at his suffering. She put her hand on his, and he snatched it back like a scared animal.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
A deep frown appeared between his eyebrows. He sat upright and buttoned his shirt. “I don’t know why I talked so much.” He tugged at his shirt and waistcoat hard enough to rip the fabric. “Bloody hell.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stitch that.” Her attempt to lighten the mood didn’t end well.
“I don’t usually bother people with my family’s history.”
“You didn’t bother me.”
He stood up, changing into the stony Marquess of Montcrest in the span of a moment. “Thank you for your assistance. I should leave now.”
“I should bandage the cut.”
He raked a hand through his hair, messing it. “No. It doesn’t matter. My lady.” He bowed formally and left the room in a hurry as if she told him she meant to neuter him.
She sighed and packed her tools.
Lord Montcrest’s problem wasn’t a cut on his abdomen.
