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Sylvia continued to stare at him with that devilish little smile, as if she was actually considering it. “Please,” she finally said. That single, husky word burned through his brain as she stepped closer.
“The mermaid is named Margarita. She was my third and hurt the most by far. I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears. But this,” he began as he showed her his other arm, “was my first.”
“An anchor?”
Rafe shrugged. “Most sailors get that during their first voyage. I woke up in a Grecian port with the worst hangover of my life and that on my shoulder.”
“Oh dear.” Sylvia laughed.
“And this was my second.” He grazed his right pectoral muscle. Dark chest hair obscured it a little, so Sylvia had to lean closer.
Rafe’s breath caught as she reached out and brushed the letters with the tips of her fingers. “Mother.”
Their eyes met. Rafe had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I got it before my first visit home. She absolutely hates it.”
Sylvia gave him that adorable little side smile again. “I would too.”
Rafe took her hand by the wrist, brought it to his mouth, then gently kissed her fingertips. All while never breaking his gaze.
His cock jerked at the sound of her sharp inhalation. But then she quickly pulled her hand away and stepped back, now taking great interest in the battered wall to her right. “Was she upset when you joined the navy?”
So. It was tenderness that scared her most.
“Livid. I was supposed to be back at Eton. By the time my parents realized what I had done, I was already on my way to the Mediterranean.”
Sylvia whirled around. “My God. How old were you?”
“Fifteen.” Rafe continued in the face of her wide-eyed stare. “I absolutely hated school, you see. My father had taken a diplomatic post after he married my mother, and we traveled quite a bit when I was young. Turkey, Malta, Persia. My mother tried to put off boarding school as long as possible, maintaining that I was having a world-class education staying with them, and my father indulged her until I was twelve.” A shudder came over him at the memory, even now. His mother sniffling into a handkerchief, his gentle father trying his best to look severe, talking about duty and honor and how it was important for him to meet other boys of his class. But Rafe knew, even then, that he hadn’t a chance of fitting in.
“Then what happened?” Sylvia prompted, bringing him back to the present.
“I was sent away, in accordance with my birthright, and it was an utter disaster. I don’t think a day went by that first term without someone trying to fight me. I had been a scrappy boy, used to playing with the children who lived in and around the embassies. But these English boys were different. They were cruel in ways I couldn’t even imagine.” That was when he had first learned to use words as a weapon. His fists soon followed out of necessity. “My father assumed the scandal would have died down by the time I went to school, but my mother knew better. She knew those boys would eat me alive. And they very nearly did.”
Sylvia gave him a confused look. “The scandal? You mean, your parents’ marriage?”
Rafe nodded. “I assume you know my mother was an actress, but she was also born into poverty. The theater was her escape. She started as an assistant to a dresser when she was little more than a girl, until one day someone noticed she had become a beauty and put her in the chorus. But she took the craft seriously, working her way up to bigger and bigger roles. It was all she had, really. Her own mother worked herself to an early death as a laundress, and she never met her father, as he disappeared soon after her mother realized she was with child.”
“And those…those boys knew all that?”
Rafe nodded. “From their parents. They knew details even I didn’t,” he said with a bitter laugh. “A notorious actress from a lower-class background married a man who eventually inherited one of the oldest earldoms in the country. It was the scandal of the decade. They had to leave England.”
Sylvia’s eyebrows rose in shock. “How awful.”
“They were happier living abroad anyway,” he said with a shrug. “Not everyone is as obsessed with class and bloodlines as the English. For my father, the dutiful second son, it was the adventure he had always wanted. He married the woman his father told him to when he was barely twenty and had children immediately. The old earl didn’t have much faith in his heir, and rightly so. My father’s brother never did get around to getting married. He was too busy gambling and pickling his liver. My father, on the other hand, did as he was told. He gave my grandfather the heir he needed, after having three extraneous daughters. He was married to his first wife for nearly twenty years before she died. So he decided to live for himself for once in his life.”
“And then he met your mother.”
Rafe met her gaze. There was no judgment in her eyes, only sympathy. Understanding. Why had he never told anyone all this before?
Because no one had ever asked.
“Yes. When his brother died unexpectedly, my parents were already married.”
“And yet, after all they had endured, he still sent you to school in England?”
Rafe smiled at her defense of him. “He thought he was helping prepare me. And I was angry with him for sending me away for a long, long time. But he wasn’t exactly wrong. I did need to understand how those boys operated in order to interact with them.”
In many ways it was still the most valuable education he had ever received.
