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“I’m still not sure I believe you.” But Ranelaw could see that at last she did. With a shaking hand, Cassie dashed moisture from her eyes. “If it’s true, it was unforgivably wicked of Papa.” Her voice strengthened. “But it’s not my fault.”
He scowled even as his conscience stabbed him yet again. “Your father needs to know how it feels to witness the destruction of someone he loves.”
Cassie’s glance sharpened. “Did Eloise ask you to avenge her?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know she wants this?” she asked urgently. “Surely she wouldn’t wish disgrace on another woman, a woman who has never harmed her.”
His lips tightened. “She deserves recompense.”
To his utter shock, Cassie placed her hand on his arm. His muscles tensed with rejection, but she curled her fingers and clung. “You love her very much, don’t you?”
He glanced at her as if she spoke absurdities. “Of course I do.”
“She’s lucky to have such a brother.”
Suspicion rose in his gullet. “Don’t think to sweet-talk your way into making me let you go.”
“I wouldn’t.” She looked innocent. Too innocent. She must have some scheme in mind. Although for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what. “I see you’re determined.”
“I am,” he snapped, the declaration ringing hollow.
“You know ruining me won’t change anything. It won’t bring Eloise’s baby back or return her lost years.”
How dare the chit try to sway him with logic? “Your father will suffer. It’s enough.”
Cassie’s hand tightened. “Antonia won’t forgive you if you go through with this.”
He’d almost wavered until she overplayed her hand. A vast black wave of rage swept away any whispers of contrition. The same black rage that had gripped him since Antonia had refused his proposal, then strutted out of his life as if he was only a passing fancy.
“I don’t give a rat’s arse what Antonia thinks.” He lifted the reins, ready to drive on. “It’s a good few hours to Hampshire.”
The girl had the wisdom to withdraw her hand from his arm. Otherwise he thought he might strike it away. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught bitter regret in her face.
“You’re a fool, my lord marquess,” she said grimly. “You have a chance at happiness and you’re throwing it away for nothing.”
His mouth tightened and he whipped the horses to a gallop. He refused to grace her asinine comments with a response.
But no matter how fast he urged his horses toward the coast, he couldn’t escape the low voice echoing in his soul. The voice that insisted Cassie’s words were bleakly accurate.
Ranelaw stared at the road ahead of him. Recounting Eloise’s story to Cassie had revived all the thwarted misery of those events. Now he couldn’t help remembering.
He’d felt so bloody helpless, so uselessly young as he’d turned the carriage home after Demarest refused to see his sister. There were repercussions once they reached Keddon Hall. This time their father beat Eloise with an unrestrained savagery that still made Ranelaw’s gut heave with nausea. Her terrified screams had echoed through his nightmares for years.
Eloise spent weeks locked away under such tight supervision that her brother only managed to speak to her in snatches. When he did, her lethargy and misery broke his heart. How had his vibrant, laughing sister become this pale ghost with glazed, lifeless eyes? With each day, his rage built. Not just for the spineless Demarest, but also for his sire. He’d never liked or respected his father. Now he actively hated him.
A couple of months after that agonizing London journey, Eloise bore a dead daughter. Ranelaw remained convinced that the marquess’s violence had contributed to the child’s death.
For days, his sister hovered close to dying herself. Ranelaw tried to break in to see her, but the room remained barred to him. He strove to find out where they buried the child. Even that was denied. He was an eleven-year-old boy, powerless to defy the adults ranged against him. His frustration and anger during those weeks had been so bitter, he could still taste them.
He’d braced to hear that his beloved sister joined her daughter in the hereafter. Nobody told him anything, apart from the fact that Eloise was still alive. He only knew she’d recovered at least some of her strength when the marquess informed him that she’d left the house forever, exiled to a convent in Ireland. Her brother was forbidden any further contact with her.
Nicholas had bowed to his father with a contempt he knew the older man noted, turned on his heel, and promptly stolen a horse to rescue his sister.
His father, for all his moral turpitude, was an intelligent man. Nicholas managed to evade the guards on the family estate. He’d reached the highway before two brawny footmen waylaid him and dragged him, kicking and fighting, back to Keddon Hall and a week’s incarceration in the cellars. By then, Eloise was untraceable, no matter how Nicholas schemed and connived to discover her whereabouts.
The next term, Ranelaw broke out of Eton with wild plans to quarter Ireland in search of his sister. This time, he made it as far as Fishguard before his father and his minions caught him and forced him back to house imprisonment at Keddon Hall. No more school for the headstrong young Earl of Gresham. No entertainment of any kind until he went up to Oxford and to nobody’s surprise, launched a career of roistering and debauchery that had never abated.
