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“Explain yourself,” Theo said once the two of them were relatively secluded in the park.
Giles looked woefully up at Theo. He’d tried so desperately to forget his miserable, anxious past. He’d taken great pains to separate himself from it deliberately and permanently, but it seemed that was not to be.
“I am the son of Augustus Pennyroyal,” he said with a sigh.
Theo blinked as if the name stirred something within him. “Augustus Pennyroyal the shipping magnate?”
“The very one,” Giles said, sighing more heavily and moving to lean against the trunk of a nearby tree. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms, debating how best to tell his own story. “I left his house two years ago.”
Another wave of understanding shook Theo, and he gaped at Giles in disbelief. “You are Giles Pennyroyal?” he asked. “The missing shipping empire heir?”
“The newspapers exaggerated my departure,” Giles said lamely.
Theo shook his head. “I remember now. There was a vast deal of speculation that you had been kidnapped by pirates or your father’s competitors on the high seas to be held for ransom. There were other rumors that you had been impressed into the Navy, or carried off by highwaymen. But no one ever demanded a ransom. At least, not publicly.”
“None of those things are what happened,” Giles said. He bit his lip for a moment, then confessed, “The truth is that I ran away.”
“You ran away?” Theo repeated, crossing his arms as though scolding him.
Giles pushed himself to stand straighter. “You would have run away too if you’d lived with a monster like that,” he snapped, defending himself.
“Tell me,” Theo said in a dark voice.
Giles blew out a breath and rubbed his hands over his eyes, loath to dredge up the story he’d kept buried for years. “You might refer to me as a devil in jest, but my father is one in fact. From an early age, he beat and…misused me.”
Judging by the blind rage that blasted into Theo’s expression, Theo did not need him to elaborate.
“He has always been unscrupulous,” Giles went on, wanting to get as far away from that admission as he could. “His sole aim has been to increase his fortune and his prestige. But my father is also a man of shadows who prefers lurking in darkness to walking in the light. Not only would he have cause to know things that could be used to blackmail the Chancellor of the Exchequer into granting him favorable business, he would have no qualms at all about using those things.”
“So you are saying your father has both the means and the motive to form a conspiracy that would reach to the highest places of the government to advance his own aims,” Theo said in a menacing grumble.
“I believe so,” Giles said.
Theo took a step closer to him. “And you are also saying that this bastard would abuse and corrupt his own son?”
Giles glanced away, nodding.
“For what purpose?” Theo growled, standing so close that Giles could feel the heat of his fury.
Giles glanced up at him with a smirk. “What purpose do you think?” he asked with more bitterness than he’d intended. He shifted into a sultry pose of the sort he used while entertaining his gentlemen at Perdition. “What purpose to you think any man has for paying for my company? I am pretty and pleasing.”
“He was your father,” Theo said, his voice shaking with fury.
“Sanguinity is hardly a barrier to a certain type of man when it comes to taking what he wants,” Giles said, tasting bile in his throat. His memory could taste more than that, which only made his stomach churn.
“But you ran away,” Theo said, his frown changing as he apparently sought to make sense of the whole thing.
“As soon as I was able,” Giles said, standing straighter. “After a chance conversation with a man who was part of my current profession and knew about Perdition. That brief encounter gave me more hope than I’d ever known. I already knew that I could do the job, so why not profit from it?”
The green pallor that came over Theo told Giles everything he needed to know about how his bear viewed the matter. “How could you do that?” Theo asked all the same. “How could you leave your father’s abuse only to prostitute yourself in a den like Perdition?”
Giles laughed without humor. “BecauseIwas prostitutingmyself,” he said, standing tall and daring Theo to criticize him. “Because I actually do enjoy the pleasure of it. You would be surprised at how having your virtue ripped away from you at an early age can free you from the chains of shame and guilt that the church and society bind everyone with.” He shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I enjoy sin? It isn’t as though I have anything precious to save for a holy union anymore.”
Again, Giles had intended to be glib, but a great sadness came over Theo’s expression. That softened Giles from his bitterness. He raised a hand and rested it on Theo’s chest, feeling the furious beat of his heart.
“Truly, it is no great sorrow,” he said, weariness beginning to envelop him. “I cannot change what has already happened to me. I escaped from my father’s torture. I was strong, brave. My only regret in the whole thing was leaving three younger sisters behind.”
Theo’s eyes shot wide. “Do they need our help? Do they need rescue?”
