“I hated my husband because he beat me and raped me.”
A tortured groan lodged painfully in his chest, trapped there, deepening the ache.
“I hated him for lying to me and making me a whore and my children bastards.” She lifted her gaze, and the agony there sucked the air from his lungs. “But what you did, Grah… What you did,” she amended, “was so much worse. Because I”—his heart froze—“c-cared about you.” She stumbled over the word he’d ached to hear, even if it was in loss. “I cared about you and shared parts of my body and soul that I never allowed any man, not even my husband.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. Met by another, and another. “You are just like him: a bored nobleman playing with the stupid villager.”
Oh, God. Had she grabbed the fireplace poker and rammed it through his chest, it couldn’t have hurt more. But he was deserving of her mistrust and hate. All of it. It didn’t matter what had brought him into her life. What mattered was the lies on which he’d based her trust in him.
Graham sank to a knee beside her chair. “I—”
She looked at him with such loathing, a pressing agony shook his soul. “Get out.”
Get out.
It was done. Over.
An ending that had been inevitable, and not for the reasons he’d expected, but ones foisted on him.
He nodded. “Of course, Martha.”
“You’ve no right to my name,” she commanded, a queen on her chair, dealing with her unwanted subject. “Oh, and, Lord Whitworth?” Reaching into the pocket of her apron, she hurled a note that danced in the air between them. “You can tell your father I’d rather forage for food and feed my son with honor than take his monies.”
His father.
Ice stung his veins. The duke had discovered Graham’s whereabouts. And would have, of course, taken umbrage at Graham being here with her. But this? Martha’s hurt and sense of betrayal didn’t belong to Graham’s father. They belonged to him. “I’ll leave,” he said quietly, coming to his feet. “But before I do, I’ll have you know I love—”
She blanched. “Go,” she rasped. When he didn’t move quickly enough, she screamed, “Go.”
Collecting his belongings, he spun on his heel.
The door burst open.
“Mr. Malin!” Frederick cried excitedly. Then he took in Graham, the bag in his hand, and Martha. “What is happening?”
“Not now, Frederick,” Martha said in the gentle motherly tones she always reserved for the boy.
“I asked what is going on?” he cried.
“I have to go,” Graham explained, moving closer.
“Do not speak to my son,” Martha ordered, storming over.
“Why? What is happening?” Frederick glanced frantically back and forth between them.
Martha, however, was right in this. Graham had no place to speak for her about this, about them, with Frederick. That had never been his right. He bowed his head. “Frederick.”
With the boy’s shouts and Martha’s sobs echoing behind him, Graham left.
Chapter 17
Christmas was nearly here.
It had also always been one of her favorite times of the year because it had been her children’s favorite.
All her children had equally adored the holiday season. And once upon a lifetime ago, Martha had loved it, too.
Now, there was little love. And certainly no joy. As a mother, however, she still tried.
Hovering outside her son’s rooms, Martha fiddled with the clasp at her wool cloak.
Her son lay on his bed, his back to her, staring out the window. In the week since Graham had gone, it had become an all-too-familiar position. For both of them.
Martha scratched at the doorjamb.
“What?” he snapped.
“It’s beginning to snow again.” Martha glanced at the little flakes coming down. “I thought we might go outside.”
“Don’t you have laundry to do?”
She did… It was that hated time of week, and not even a month ago, she would have been hard at work in that familiar dunk-scrub-rinse-repeat pattern.
I trust you’ve also noted how much time your son spends working.
There is nothing wrong with finding happiness in life.
You would intentionally withhold those sentiments from yourself. You are the example Frederick sees, Martha.
Martha balled her hands, hating that even with everything Graham had done wrong, he’d been right in that important lesson for her and her son. “I do. But the laundry can wait,” she said instead.
“Maybe your chores can, but I have to muck out the stables.” This time, Frederick flipped over and glared at her. “After all, there isn’t anyone around but me to see to them.”
It was yet another clear reference to the man who’d changed both their lives. They now peppered every exchange between Martha and her son. Despite Graham leaving, however, Martha had been unable to shatter the boy’s illusion of him. And so she’d lain down on the sword and sacrificed herself to the memory of a man who didn’t exist so that her son could believe that there were men who were honorable and good. Frederick was never going to have seen her as good or worthy, anyway. At least let him believe there were respectful, hardworking men who were kind to horses and children and widows.
Knowing that did not diminish the palpable hatred Frederick had for her.
Nonetheless, she tried again. “I also thought I could tell you the story behind the tradition—”
“I don’t need to hear it. I’ve heard it for years.” He rolled onto his belly in a dismissive manner and grabbed one of the remaining books that hadn’t been sold off or taken by the Crown.
He’d always loved talking about the grandmother he had never known and who’d left behind the odd custom that her husband, Frederick’s grandfather, had carried on during the Christmastide. Martha made another attempt. “Very well, we don’t have to talk of it. We can go and do it.”
He paused in his reading. “Do what?”
“Cut down a tree and decorate it.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you’ve always loved to,” she said evenly.
“There was a lot I used to love.” The up and down he gave her along with the blatant meaning of his words cut to the quick. “Do you know who’d probably like to join you?” Frederick didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Creda and Iris.” He tapped the back of his hand to the middle of his forehead. “Oh, that’s right. You sent them away. Well, if you’re looking for someone who cares about your silly traditions, go find them.”
Forcing a smile to her lips, all the while feeling and fearing every muscle in her face would crack and shatter, Martha nodded and took herself off.
She kept that smile on as she gathered up the saw resting at the door and walked out into the snow and continued walking.
Once the cottage had faded from sight, she ran and continued running, pushing her legs farther and farther. She wanted to run and never stop, until she reached a point where pain ceased to be and there was only a blissful emptiness.
Reaching the heavily wooded copse, Martha stumbled and staggered and then fell to her knees. Her lungs raw from her exertions, she tossed her head back and screamed into the winter sky. Dropping the saw, she covered her face and screamed and screamed, until her throat was ragged and her screams became noiseless.
Collapsing back on her haunches, she stared overhead at the whorl of tiny flakes drifting down, the gray-white sky peeking out through the barren branches overhead.
For a brief, brief time, she’d been happy again. She’d smiled, and Frederick had smiled, and they’d felt like a family. Until they weren’t. Until Graham had left. Nay, not Graham.
“Lord Sheldon Whitworth,” she whispered into the quiet.
The pompous name didn’t suit a man unafraid to work with his hands, mucking out stables and rubbing down horses.
Why should he have done those things? Why would a duke’s son have wanted
to, or have the skills to rival any servant overseeing those onerous tasks?
Nearly everything I told you, Martha, has been in truth. About my love of horses and my relationship with my father and my brothers. All of it.
Not for the first time, the seeds of doubt grew, rich and fertile, in a mind that wanted to believe his being here hadn’t been just another ruse carried out by a bored nobleman. For Lord Waters had played at the country husband, but in all the years of that hated false union, he’d never lifted a hand to help her. Only to hurt her. Nay, he’d not have sullied his hands with work meant for servants. So how, then, to explain Graham… Lord Whitworth?
None of it made sense. Not any of it.
Didn’t it, though? a taunting voice of reason mocked.
“You are p-pathetic,” she said, her teeth chattering in the cold. She’d guessed all too correctly the reason Graham had been there. His duke and duchess papa and mama had been attempting to maneuver him into a marriage with some entirely, appropriately innocent, ladylike bride. A match he’d wanted no part of, and in a bold act meant to turn his nose up at their intentions and exert his own control, he’d gone off and found the most unsuitable, most inappropriate woman that that noble pair would never approve of.
She wanted to see that which wasn’t there and never would be—honor and genuine caring from the man who’d stolen her heart.
Giving her head a shake, Martha shoved herself upright. “It is done,” she said firmly. All of it. No good could come from that. It was time to move on… no matter how lonely that would be.
She collected her saw and started on the path to the evergreens, bypassing the older, taller ones for the small ones she could manage on her own.
She walked onward, the tranquility of the winter snow and the silent landscape filling her with a slight calm. Not peace. There would never be that. There would be…
Martha slowed her steps.
With a frown, she stared at the large, fresh footprints upon the snow.
A chill that had nothing to do with the frost hanging in the air tingled at her nape. Clutching her saw closer, she did a sweep.
You’re being silly. You are being irrational. It was simply that she’d had Graham here and had allowed herself to rely upon him.
All lies.
She’d failed to heed those instincts before. Each time she had, she’d fallen or faltered.
A faint whirring hissed through the copse.
Martha gasped and fell to her knees.
The arrow vibrated overhead, then thrummed, shaking back and forth in a tree trunk.
Crumpled on the ground, Martha stared up with horror. It would have hit me.
Terror pounding at her breast and her mouth dry with fear, she unclasped her cloak, and with painstakingly slow movements, she divested herself of the garment and crept out from under it. Leaving it behind.
All the while, she braced for the next arrow. Or attack.
That didn’t come.
Just silence.
She trusted silence as little as she trusted strangers.
And then it came, the faint crack of dry branches giving way under the heels of heavy footfalls.
Oh, God.
Frederick.
Fear sprang her into motion, and she crawled through the brush. Keeping low. Squirming on her belly, she wound a reverse path through the forest, and then started back towards her cottage. Each sound she left in her wake, deafeningly loud in the still.
Somewhere up ahead, a twig snapped.
Her heart climbed into her throat, and Martha stopped alongside a rotted-out tree. Fear kept her momentarily frozen as she waited.
And waited.
There they were… again.
The steps drew closer, closer. And stopped.
He was there. Close. Just beyond her hiding space. Above it? Was he even now toying with her?
Fear turned her mouth dry. Frederick. He was alone. Everything in her said to take flight; to race back to the cottage and her son. Only the thin sliver of logic she held onto, reminded her that she would do no good to her son, dead.
Martha clenched her eyes shut and fought to keep absolutely still. All the while, the winter cold battered at her body, the snow melting on her face, freezing her skin.
Please. Please. Please.
And then there was silence.
Now.
Martha jumped off and took off sprinting. She ran so fast, her lungs burned, aching from the cold and exertions. And with every stride, she called forth her son’s face. Creda and Iris. Even Graham slipped forward. Graham, who’d urged her to bring her daughters back.
For this?
To be hunted and tormented by the people of High Town.
This would be the fate that awaited them. Preyed on by villagers for their bastardy. No, they were safer away from Martha. They all were. Frederick deserved more.
Her pulse hammering in her ears, Martha quickened her strides. Her children. She needed to see them again. Frederick…her daughters. Please do not let anything happen to them.
Keeping your girls in hiding will not change who they are or the circumstances surrounding their births. They’ll come to believe there is something wrong with them. That your sending them away was… is because of a defect in who they are.
Martha sprinted so fast her lungs burned, and through the panic, she found a soothing calm in just remembering his voice. His words.
She broke through the clearing and found her way down the same path she’d run, following the broken branches. Only, there were no other tracks. Only her own. Martha staggered to a stop. “What?” she whispered. It…didn’t make any sense.
There were…no tracks.
Martha reached the tree where the arrow had struck, she tugged at it, wrestling it free. She studied the arrow a moment before resuming her march. And then slowed her steps.
A deer, a matching arrow stuck in its chest, lay with a crimson stain upon its fawn fur, the blood spilled onto the snow around it.
A deer. Of course. Someone had been hunting a deer. Not her.
Coupled with relief was sadness for the fallen creature.
“You’re going mad out here,” she whispered to herself. Imagining monsters in High Town.
Nonetheless, Martha moved with quickened steps, relief swamping her as her cottage appeared over the slight rise. Then she broke into a full sprint, stumbling, her skirts dragging through the snow.
And then she stopped.
A slow tremble shook her body, greater than any cold. Her teeth chattering, she drifted closer to the front door.
Bigamist.
The crude letters, charred into the old oak panel, stared back jeeringly.
Punctuated by… an arrow through the B.
She’d been wrong yet again.
Frederick.
Bile climbed up her throat. Her son was in there alone.
Clutching at the handle, Martha tossed the door open. “Frederick?” she cried, shoving the panel closed with the heel of her boot. “Frederick?” she begged, stumbling around the cottage; tripping over her sodden skirts. “Fred—?”
“Mother?”
That small, child’s voice slashed through the panic.
She spun.
He hovered at the kitchen; a worried gaze on her.
With a sob, she launched herself across the room at him, and yanked him into her embrace. “You are safe,” she whispered. “You are safe.” It was a mantra she repeated over and over, to both of them. For the both of them.
“Of course I am,” he said gruffly, but she clung to him, refusing to relinquish his small but sturdy body.
And yet, as she held her son, she acknowledged the truth…she was, in fact, being hunted.
But by who?
Chapter 18
Graham sat at a familiar table in a familiar place in London—Forbidden Pleasures.
It was one of the most scandalous hells in England, where whores could be had for any price and men of the peerage lost and won f
ortunes with the mere turn of a card.
As one of Society’s most notorious rogues, this was where anyone expected to find him.
And that was why he was there now.
When you return to London, play your usual part. You’re a rake. Act it.
With that order from his superior officer, he’d done precisely what was required of him. Oh, it had been all too easy not to return to his family’s house party. After his father’s interference, the duke could go to the devil. And so, with that, when most of the peerage had abandoned London for the holiday season, Graham remained with the small number of other dissolute, wicked lords with reputations to rival his own.
Graham stared into the amber contents of his snifter.
How empty all of this was. How meaningless. The gaming tables. The whores. The drinking. All of it.
Graham swirled his brandy in a circle, studying the smooth circle. The rub of it was, he’d always known his existence had been largely without purpose. He’d learned it early on as a duke’s son who’d not received the attention his brothers, the ducal heir and spare, had. His reason for being, the same as all third or fourth or any other number thereafter sons, had been this amorphous, ambiguous question that neither Society nor his own family could answer.
It’s why he’d wished to join the navy. Only to find himself relegated to a post that protected him as the third ducal son, a man spared by tragedy and useless in that endeavor.
Again, he’d tried after that. Swallowing his pride, he’d sought a post at the Home Office, humbling himself by asking his father to coordinate an interview on his behalf.
He’d sought to build meaning into who he was and what he offered the world.
That was why he’d chafed at the first assignment given to him, to play the role of servant to a widow and her son.
What irony that the short time he’d spent with a widow and her son should prove the most significant, meaningful part of his whole life thus far.
Graham tossed back a long swallow and welcomed the path it burned down his throat.
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