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Regret bowed William’s shoulders. His foray to the Venus had been devastating to his marriage, yet that event was but one piece of a long tale, one he had never explained to anyone. There was no one besides Augustus he would trust with such a private matter, yet honor was only part of the reason he sat mute in the carriage.
Holding his head in his hands, William felt his pride dissipate painfully. “Bloody tortuous, admitting my failures. I’m the eldest. You’re supposed to turn to me. I’m the husband. But Bea no longer wants or needs me.”
“One of the first things I learned in the army was that Dalfour or not, a lance through the flesh makes me bleed as much as any other soldier. Being the eldest? The Marquess? The husband? None of that makes you any less vulnerable to life’s lances, William.”
Adrift without Beatrice these past two months, William’s spirits had been low, but it was now, reunited with his only sibling, that the last of the bindings holding him together gave way. He and Augustus were night and day; so different, yet one could not be defined without the other. Who else could ever understand his fears and mistakes but the only person in the world who had shared his upbringing?
Without sparing himself, William told Augustus of his dreams for his marriage and family. His achievements and his missteps. His dashed hopes. By the time he revealed his misadventure at the Venus and their mother’s revelation of it to Bea, he had one muscular arm clasped around his own midriff, as if his belly had been flayed and his guts would spill.
“Finally, I found the conviction, the nerve, to change things with Bea, and it was too late. Since she left, I was hoping the time apart would help heal the injury of my misdeed. But it’s not just one night I have to make up for, is it? It’s what I did to her for ten years.”
After William finished speaking, the noise of the wheels traveling over the rough country roads were the only sounds in the carriage for a long time, yet the conveyance was unmistakably filled with sadness and anger—his own and his brother’s.
“You couldn’t hide it earlier—you’re afraid for me if we go to war with Russia.” Augustus slammed his fist onto the cushion next to his thigh. “I’m not. I’ll face an attack from that foreign enemy and do my duty. I’ve trained for it. Hell, I sought that life. But neither of us deserved what happened to us as children, William. There is no preparing a child for war against their parents! No enemy more dangerous than the one within a family!”
Nodding, William stared out the window, the passing greenery a blur. “Remember that quarrel we had as boys? Oh, I was fourteen. You, twelve? Both our noses bled that day. I said I wished Mother visited us more. You said—”
“We would be better off if she never returned. Father ignored us, at least.”
“You had the right of it.”
“Don’t you see, William? Damn it! I knew this had Mother’s stink all over it. The damage she’s done!”
“It’s unbecoming for a man to blame others. I can hardly stomach the idea of being in the same room with her ever again, but I’m the one who went to the Venus.”
“You poor bloody fool.” Augustus cast himself back against the cushions, his expression grim. “The greatest damage our mother wrought occurred long before she asked you and Beatrice about your theater plans! Why the hell do you think you couldn’t trust Beatrice? Good God, look at your face! You still don’t realize!”
“TrustBeatrice? That never been the problem.”
“You didn’t trust what youhadwith Beatrice, I mean. Why would you, when every bloody time you loved someone, Mother snatched her from you? Our nursemaids. Our governesses. Our tutors. All sent away, one after one, any time we shared any fondness. Mother never wanted to care for us. But she wouldn’t stand for anyone else doing it, either.”
“Yes, but…” William’s pained words trailed off and he winced at the familiar and unwelcome hurt that spread in his belly at the memories of all the goodbyes. The woman he’d known only by his childish name for her, Nursey. What she looked like, he could not recall, but he remembered how raw his throat was from crying for days after she left. He couldn’t have been more than five when his mother sent her away. Then Miss Laurel. Miss Elizabeth. Miss Mabel.
Oh, deep down, he had known they’d no choice but to leave. They had been dismissed from employment by a marchioness! Theycouldn’thave stayed. Their misery at parting ways with him, sometimes after years of attachment, was evident—but he had always hoped against hope that one of them would take a stand for him. Insist on staying or taking him away with them.
“You were always the clever one between us, William. No, don’t deny it.” A grin split Augustus’s face. “You may have the fairer visage, butIwas more charming with the wenches. Fleeter of foot.” His expression turned serious again, and his voice dropped. “In your cleverness, first you tried hiding it from Mother when she visited—telling her you didn’t like the new governess when she asked. You never could lie worth shite. So then you just stopped caring about them. A governess could come or go, and you were always polite. Always did your lessons. But you didn’t attach to them anymore.”
William slid a hand over his forearm. Hidden under the fabric of his shirt was a long, thin scar. Shadowing the lead cowherd on the Candleton estate, William had wielded the man’s whip with all the confidence and ineptitude of a thirteen-year-old who believed he knew everything. After slicing himself open, the stinging pain and sight of his own bone had sent him into the bushes to wretch. Minutes earlier, he had felt as much of a man as the wiry, trusted estate hand; suffering the injury had reduced him to a babe. But he had stifled his urges to cry for his governess. Sitting in the grass, staunching the flow of his own blood, he had told himself to be a man. Reminded himself he was the future Marquess. Recalled that if he revealed any warmth toward his governess, she would be taken away from him.
Augustus, however, had embraced rebellion, and William said so. “You stood up to Mother. Refused to hide how you felt. No matter the consequences.”
His brother made a sound of disgust. “The result was the same for both of us, regardless. She sent everyone away. Now here we are. You married, but have held yourself apart. I haven’t had the mettle even to marry.”
William pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.Good God, he’s right.Every damned time he had come close to indulging his love for his wife in full, awful terror in the pit of his stomach had pulled him back. Until Augustus invoked the memories of all those farewells to their caregivers, he had not realized—the trepidation he had allowed to paralyze him with Bea was so familiar. It was the one he had decided as a boy never to go through again.
His throat closed as if a hand tightened around it, choking him. Beatrice was his everything, but he’d pushed her away time and time again, hurting himself and her—in the bloody name of not being hurt again!
“You weighed yourself down with so much armor, you felled yourself.” There was no gratification in Augustus’s voice, only regret.
William closed his eyes tightly, making a raw sound of pain as he recalled Bea’s face the moment she learned he had been at the Venus. “By the time I shed the armor, it was too late.”
Augustus clucked his tongue and kicked at William’s boot. “William Dalfour, The Most Honorable Marquess of Candleton, giving up? I think not. What’s in that box?” He gestured to the stationery case bouncing lightly on the seat next to William.
“It’s what poured out of me after Bea left for Candleton Hall. Letters to her. I wrote one every day she was gone.” The tips of his ears burned as he thought of their intimate contents. “I couldn’t leave them behind and risk a nosy servant finding them. I should have cast them in a fire.”
“What are they doing in this carriage, then?”
“Part of me believes that if Bea could just read them, could know what’s in my heart for her and always has been, she might forgive me. If nothing else, she would know she hasn’t been alone all those years—even when it felt that way. That I yearned—”
