Kathryn Smith (22 page)

“I don’t have much choice.” She was slouched so far down into the chair now her knees almost touched the armrests. “Do you ever feel like so much is expected of you, and you just don’t know if you can ever do it?”

Brave chuckled drily. “Sometimes I feel as though I’ve spent my entire life trying to be something I’m not.”

“Truly?” She sounded genuinely surprised.

He met her gaze. “I’ve grown up under the shadow of my father—a remarkable man as you know.”

She didn’t look as though they were in complete agreement. “Well, he was a good friend of my father’s and always treated me well.”

“He treated everyone well. Ever since I was a child I tried to live my life in a way that would make him proud.” He thought about his behavior after Miranda’s death, the drinking and the whoring. His father would not have been impressed with him then. He would have been very disappointed.

“I think you’ve succeeded.”

“Do you?” At her nod, he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to emulate him so much since his death. I wanted to prove I could fill his shoes. People loved my father. They respected him.”

Her expression was dubious. “And you don’t think you’re loved and respected?”

“I know my servants, tenants, and employees harbor a certain respect for me, but sometimes I wonder if it’s as deep as the esteem they had for my father.” He couldn’t believe he was telling her this. He’d never spoken to anyone about his insecurities, not even Gabriel or Julian.

“What about love? Surely you’ve known that.”

“I know my friends and mother care about me very much.”

The look she gave him made him uneasy. It was as though she could look right through him to his very soul and read his deepest fear—that he just wasn’t worthy of true love, that somehow he couldn’t be what everyone expected him to be. That he was a disappointment.

The silence stretched between them and still she sat there staring. Finally, Brave straightened and moved away from the desk.

Clearing his throat, he turned his back to her. “I owe you an apology for my behavior yesterday. I was in a foul mood and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you when you were merely being curious and concerned for my welfare.” It had sounded much smoother when he’d practiced before.

“Apology accepted.”

It was an effort to keep his shoulders from sagging in relief.

“And I am sorry as well for prying. I overstepped my bounds.”

Bounds? He met her gaze over his shoulder. “Rachel, I would like to think that we are on intimate enough terms for there not to be boundaries between us.” Perhaps
intimate
hadn’t been the right word. It conjured up images of that night in the library, when he’d felt the damp heat of her against the head of his cock.

She smiled, but it was sad, as though she didn’t believe him, and he realized that he’d just lied to her. He wanted her
to feel like she could tell him anything, but he didn’t plan to let his own walls crumble. And she knew it.

Trust. It had to go both ways.

“I think I’m going to have a drink,” he announced, already halfway across the room. “Would you like one?”

“Brave.”

He stopped. Something in her voice made him reluctant to face her. It took every ounce of strength he had to turn and face the unabashed concern and trust in those blueberry eyes of hers.

“I just want you to know that you can talk to me. About anything. I’m here if you need me.”

If he needed her? He’d never needed anything in his entire life like he needed her! Physically she drove him insane. Emotionally, she made him want to be whole again, to toss all of his fears to the wind and take a chance. She was his salvation. And she had no idea.

But before Brave could reply, the door to the study came flying open. A harried Reynolds stood in the frame.

“Reynolds.” More surprised than angry at the intrusion, Brave could only stare at his butler. “What the devil is the matter with you?”

The little man’s anxious gaze darted between Brave and Rachel. “Forgive my impertinence, Lord Braven, Lady Braven, but there’s something of an emergency out front, my lord.”

“An emergency?” Rachel echoed, rising to her feet.

“Well, spit it out, man!” Brave cried as she came to his side.

“It’s Lady Westhaver, my lord, she’s—”

But Brave didn’t give him a chance to finish. He raced from the room and down the hall as fast as his legs would carry him.

Behind him, he could hear Rachel’s panicked shouts, demanding that he wait for her. He ignored her cries. He had to get outside. He’d only seen that horrified look on Reynolds’s face once before.

The night his father died.

R
achel ran.

Skirts hiked up around her knees, heart hammering in her chest, she chased Brave into the entrance hall with Reynolds hot on her heels.

Ohgodohgodohgodpleaseletherbeallrightpleasepleaseplease…

Her legs felt as though they were asleep—heavy and weak. Each step seemed to take forever and yet the walls streamed past her and the floor blurred beneath her feet. Every inch of her filled and tingled with fear.

Sir Henry had reverted to his violent nature. She knew it. What else would bring her mother to Wyck’s End? What else could fill Reynolds’s face with revulsion and terror? She knew the feeling. She’d felt it herself the first time her stepfather beat her mother.

It was different from the way she’d felt when she’d seen her father’s body after his death. A dead person—particularly one hit by a carriage—was expected to have marks
upon him. One did not expect to see a body that battered get up and move about. One did not expect to hear the voice of a loved one coming out of a face so battered they didn’t recognize it. That was real horror, the knowledge that beneath all that awfulness lived a real person—a person who must suffer greatly. A person you could barely bring yourself to touch because just the sight of him brought the bitter taste of bile to your mouth.

That, Rachel knew, was what she would find when she saw her mother.

At least a dozen servants clustered together in the foyer. The dowager stood on the stairs, one hand pressed to her mouth in horror. One footman knelt beside the body of a woman lying facedown on the marble floor. He was checking her wrist for a pulse.

Rachel ran faster.

Brave fell to his knees beside the body—beside her mother. He yelled something, and the footman helped him turn her mother over.

Rachel collapsed beside him, banging her knees on the hard stone. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Brave tried to block her view, and she shoved him aside with all the panicked strength in her body. “Get out of my way!”

She looked down.

Oh sweet God.

“That’s not her.” Turning, she met Brave’s stricken gaze. The scream bubbling inside her came tearing out of her throat.
“That’s not her!”

Warm hands cupped her trembling shoulders. “Rachel, it is her.” His voice was low and calm, but his eyes…his eyes were black with despair.

“No!” she cried, pulling free of his grip. “It’s not her! It’s not!” She knew her own mother, knew her face like the back of her hand, and the face of the woman on the floor looked nothing like her mother’s.

It looked like nothing she’d ever seen before. And it was
not
her mother.

Brave turned to say something to one of the footmen, and Rachel’s gaze went back to the woman on the floor. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t help herself.

Something awful had happened to this woman. She must have been in a horrible accident. No one human could possibly be capable of such evil. No one could possibly inflict so much pain, so much…
damage
upon another person.

Perhaps her carriage had overturned, and she had been thrown from it. That would explain all the blood and bruises and the dirt on her clothes. That’s what had to have happened because Rachel couldn’t think of any other explanation—
wouldn’t
think of any other explanation. And somewhere this woman’s family was waiting for her to return. They would be so worried.

Rachel turned to tell Brave that they should contact the woman’s family when something brushed her knee. She froze, cold stabbing through her veins like shards of ice. It shivered up her spine, along the back of her neck to dance along her scalp.

Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

She looked. A dirty and bloodstained hand rested heavily on her leg. The woman had put it there.

“R-Rach…el.”

She knew that voice. It was her mother’s voice and it was coming out of this…this thing! And then realization came crashing down around her, hot and stifling as it broke through the layer of denial she’d built in her head.

Blackness swam before her eyes. Bile rose in her throat as she jerked away from the bloody fingers. She looked up to see Brave and the servants staring at her. Brave spoke, but she couldn’t hear him above the roaring in her ears. He reached for her, and she fell to her side to keep him from
touching her. The movement put her face inches away from her mother’s.

Her mother.

She just managed to roll to the other side and lift herself up onto her hands and knees before her stomach rejected its contents and heaved them onto the floor.

“Drink this.” A tiny splash of liquid spilled over the rim of the glass onto Brave’s fingers as he thrust it toward her.

Rachel’s red-rimmed gaze narrowed suspiciously as she eyed the snifter in his hand. “What is it?”

They were in his study waiting for Dr. Phelps to finish with Rachel’s mother. Rachel sat in one of the chairs near the window. The heavy green-velvet drapes were tied back with gold cord, letting in what was left of the day. The fading afternoon sun cut a bright, unsympathetic slash across her ravaged features.

“It’s brandy. It will help calm your nerves.” He waited for her to take it.

She didn’t. Instead, she fixed him with a gaze that was almost mutinous. “I don’t want to be calm. This is not the kind of thing one should be calm about.”

“I beg to differ,” he replied, not so calm himself. “This is exactly the kind of thing one should deal with in a calm and rational manner. Heightened emotions lead only to rash decisions and more heartbreak.” Something he was all too familiar with.

Rachel raised her chin. Her eyes were dark with anger, not at him but at the situation. “I am her daughter. Do you expect me to be
rational
about what that…that…
animal
did to her?”

“I am your husband,” he told her in a matter-of-fact tone. “I imagine I shall expect a lot of you over the next forty years. Right now, I expect you to drink this.” This time, he
seized one of her hands in his and forcibly wrapped her fingers around the bowl.

She held it stiffly, but didn’t drop it to the carpet as some women he knew would have. Rachel was willful, but not spoiled.

Miranda would have dropped it.

The comparison gave Brave a bit of a jolt. He supposed given the fact that he’d decided to help Rachel because of the mistake he made with Miranda that it was normal to compare the two women. The fact that the comparison had been unfavorable to Miranda came as a bit of a surprise.

Miranda had faults, this he knew, but he’d always overlooked them as a man in love was wont to do. His guilt over her death only intensified his perception of her as an innocent victim in his memory. Now, to hold Miranda up against Rachel and find that memory wanting…Well, it wasn’t something he was certain he wanted to think about.

Especially when the woman he’d compared Miranda to was being so obstinate. “I don’t want to be foxed when Dr. Phelps comes down from examining my mother.”

Brave rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. His head was beginning to ache. “You don’t have to drink the whole thing.” He lowered his arms. Blinking to straighten his vision, he turned to her. “Just sip it. Please.”

It was the “please” that got to her. He could see it in her face. Raising the glass to her lips, she took a drink. He smiled as she swallowed.

“What?” he asked when he caught her staring.

Rachel shook her head. “Nothing.” Another drink. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”

He caught his breath, not sure how to respond. He’d seen men beaten as badly as Marion Westhaver that had lived to tell—brag even—about their injuries. But he’d never seen a woman so brutalized before. He didn’t know if women were built to recover from such violence as men seemed to be.
Men were by nature the more violent sex, and Rachel’s mother was such a tiny little thing.

“Yes,” he lied, because he couldn’t bear the fear on her face. “I think she’ll be fine.”

She looked up. Her gaze was bright with hope. So bright that it broke Brave’s heart just to look at her.

But it was better than the stark terror he’d seen there when she’d first seen her mother’s battered countenance. Her fear had struck deep into his soul, because he knew exactly how she felt. He’d felt the exact same helplessness when he’d pulled Miranda from the pond—that same denial. In his heart he’d known she was dead, but his mind kept screaming over and over that it couldn’t be true, that it wasn’t her, that there had been some kind of horrible mistake.

At least Rachel still had hope that her mother would recover. He hadn’t been given that. Miranda was dead when he found her. She’d been dressed in the same clothes she’d worn to visit him. Which meant that she’d killed herself immediately after his rejection.

“It’s all my fault.”

His head snapped up at the sound of her voice echoing the thoughts in his head. “I beg your pardon?”

Her mouth trembled as her gaze met his. “It’s all my fault that he—” Her voice broke. “That she’s hurt.”

“Rachel—”

“I’m to blame for it all.”

An expert in self-punishment, Brave couldn’t see how she could possibly blame herself for her mother’s injuries—or for anything for that matter. Ever since she’d walked into his life, she’d done nothing but plan to free her mother from Sir Henry’s cruelty. She was the last person who could claim responsibility for any of this.

“You’re not to blame for any of it.” It came out harsher than he intended.

She laughed—a hard sound that made him wince. She
took a long swallow of the brandy and Brave regretted giving it to her. He hoped to calm her with it. Now he realized she wanted the numbness it would bring. She wanted a respite from the guilt that threatened to consume her.

But at least that was a mistake that he could fix.

He snatched the brandy from her hands before she could take another drink. He was tempted to finish the remainder of it himself, but he walked over to the mahogany mantel and placed the snifter there, far from her reach. And his own.

“If I’m not to blame, then who is?” She demanded as he walked toward her.

He paused for a moment in mock contemplation. “Oh, I don’t know. Sir Henry, perhaps?” He didn’t like this self-deprecating talk coming from her. Rachel was a doer. She didn’t wallow or waste time lamenting the past.

Not like he did.

But that was different. He truly was to blame for Miranda’s death. The only thing Rachel was guilty of was trying too hard.

She laughed again. It sounded more like a sob.

“Oh no. You can’t put all the blame on Sir Henry. My mother knew what he was when she married him. Of course she had no idea just how bad he could be, but she knew.” Her eyes brightened with tears. “And you can’t blame my mother, because she didn’t have a choice but to marry him.”

Brave raised a brow at that, but wisely said nothing.

“But—” A tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away with her sleeve. “You can blame me because if it hadn’t been for me, she would have had a choice. She wouldn’t have had to marry him just to put a roof over my head. She married him because she wanted to provide for me!” Her face crumpled. “And look what it got her in return!”

She buried her face in her hands as great sobs wracked her shoulders. Despite this being the second time in their short marriage that Brave had seen his wife burst into tears,
he couldn’t help but feel that this was not something she did often.

Years of watching her mother be horribly abused had taken their toll on her. The guilt and helplessness were becoming too much for her to carry. Again, he understood how she felt, except he hadn’t allowed himself the pleasure of weeping. Instead, he’d allowed Phelps to poke him, bleed him, douse him with ice water until he was too tired to do anything but sleep.

Crossing the short expanse of space between them, Brave knelt on the wine-and-green carpet. Carefully, he pried her fingers from her face.

“Rachel, how old were you when your father died? Thirteen?”

“Fourteen,” she said with a sniff, as he wiped her tears away with the pads of his thumbs.

“And was there anything you could have done to help support yourself and your mother?”

She stared at him, her tears giving way to bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

“Could you have gone to work at a seamstress shop or become a lady’s maid?”

Frowning, Rachel shook her head. “I didn’t know how to do anything.”

Brave heard the guilt creeping back into her voice, but he continued anyway. “You were a gently raised young girl. The only labor that was expected of you was learning how to run a household. If you had been older or raised differently, you might have been able to do something to prevent your mother having to marry Westhaver, but you couldn’t. And your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to even if you could. She
chose
to marry so you would have a chance to maintain the kind of life to which you were accustomed. She did it
for
you, not because of you.”

“It’s the same thing,” she insisted, her eyes filling again.
“If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have had to make that choice!”

She tried to push his hands away from her face but he held fast. “It was her choice!” he cried, tilting her head so she was forced to meet his gaze. “And she chose what she thought was the best course of action.”

“But—”

Lord, but she was infuriating! “Listen to me!” He stared into her eyes, trying to make her see the reason in his. “It is not your fault. You had no control over your mother or Sir Henry.”

No more control than you had over Miranda.

It was almost enough to make him fall backwards, but he didn’t. Instead, he kept his fingers firmly locked around her head. A hairpin bit into one of his palms. “You were a child, and you cannot be blamed for anything your mother—or anyone else—did. Have you not tried for years to get her to leave? Haven’t you planned and plotted for a divorce—a divorce that just a few days ago she told you she might not want?”