“Can you give my mother peace?” she whispered.
His heart wrenched. “No. And neither can you.”
Her face creased with pain. “I can try.”
“I won’t let you destroy yourself.”
“Let? Edward, you don’t own me.”
He felt as if he did. He did want to own her. To claim her entirely as his. “You are mine. Mine to protect.”
She peered up at him. “Please, don’t do this,” she begged.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t make me choose between my revenge and you.”
He stilled, the world swinging harshly. “I would lose, wouldn’t I?”
Her so-proud face lowered, her chin dipping, unable to face him. “You don’t love me, Edward. I am not even worthy of your love. I am not worthy—” The slender muscles in her throat worked as she struggled to speak. “To be your wife.”
Wife?
It had never even occurred to him. Edward didn’t know what to say. He had never contemplated marriage. He’d been content to keep things as they were between them. He’d never thought to marry
anyone
. Not with the blood that ran through his veins.
“You are more than worthy, Mary.”
A spark of hope flared in her eyes and he hated himself for it.
“But it won’t be me that you marry. I can’t. I will never wed.”
“I see.” She breathed. “What are we to do, then?”
“Stay with me. Heal.”
She lifted her gaze to his, her blue eyes heavy with the pain of years of struggle. “No, Edward, not if I can’t have my revenge.”
There it was and he had created it. The agony of it surprised him. He had always wondered if she would choose another man when she needed help that he couldn’t give. Now it wasn’t a man she was choosing; it was vengeance—a much colder companion. And he’d bloody well shoved her into its arms.
God, how he longed to pull her to him and settle this without words, but that was the worst thing he could do with her. “You sound as if you are saying good-bye.”
The anger sifted out of her as she stood, tired yet determined. “I am not saying good-bye, but I will not have you treat me as if I have no choice but to be yours. I
chose
to come here. Did you not choose me, too?”
He dug his fingertips into his palms before admitting tightly, “I saw you. I had to have you. And that is what I can say.”
“Tell me,” she urged, “at long last tell me what it is that haunts you. Why you chose me.”
He jerked his gaze away, already feeling racked with scouring pain as the memories threatened to cloud in on him. “It—it is not pleasant.”
“You know about the asylum and my father. Perhaps it might help you to share some of your troubles.”
Just speaking of it sent tremors of panic through his blood. All he wished to do was run. Run anywhere. Away from that which had ruined his life. “I don’t speak of it, Mary. Not to anyone.”
“Speak to me.” There was an urgency in her voice as if his reply would determine the fate of her world.
Edward stared down at the face that had captivated him from the first moment he’d seen it and he considered the possible paths he might take. He could bare himself to her, bare himself as he had never done for anyone. The weight that had pressed upon his blackened heart could finally be lifted. But that wasn’t why he had found her. It wasn’t why he had taken her into his life. He was here to save her, and if he confessed what he wished, she would hate him. She would hate everything about him and his blood. But she had to know so she could understand why it was so important for her to give up her quest for revenge. So that she could heal, as he never had.
“Edward?” she said softly, taking a step toward him. A step back to how they had been.
Poison rose up in him as he opened the door to the past. Not too wide. Just enough that he could share a semblance of it. As the memories slipped out, he grimaced. It was always the same on the other side of that door. Images of his father, hanging. Neck breaking. Of the girl his father had raped and beaten to death sprawled on the drawing room floor. The sick horror of it strangled his throat. He shook his head and slammed that damned door shut. He couldn’t tell her. Not Mary, not when she had been so brutalized.
Her hands came up to his face, the soft palms caressing his cheeks. “Edward. Say it. Whatever is causing you such pain, say it and you shall be free of it.”
He rested his face against her palms for a moment, desperately wishing to give in, but if he did, he would lose her. He might even lose himself. Jerking away, Edward faced the fire.
“Why are you so afraid?” she whispered.
“I am afraid of nothing,” he snapped, bracing his palms on the mantel.
“Fear and I are intimate acquaintances, Edward. You are in its bed.”
Her words struck like knives. He dug his fingers into the carved marble, starting the trickle of blood again from the scratch on his hand. “Stop.”
She came up behind him, her strong presence lingering only an arm’s length away. “We cannot live our lives in fear. You taught me that.”
“I am not afraid,” he growled.
“You are afraid of what I will think or say,” she countered.
“You are calling me a coward.”
“You are only a coward if you live in fear. And that is not who you are.”
Edward hung his head, the weight on his shoulders so heavy that at last he could not bear it. “What do you know of who I am?”
“I know you are strong, and powerful, and though you wish no one to know it, you are good.”
At this, a harsh groan tore from his throat, one that belied her supposition that he was good. Edward lifted his head and glared back at her, letting the full weight of his torment fill his eyes.
She blanched and took a small step back. And there it was: fear in her eyes. Fear of him. And she wanted to know the truth? For all her bravado, if he told her . . .
“Edward . . . Whatever has hurt you so badly—?”
Anger rippled through him so fast and hard he could not stop the eruption of words that burst from his throat. “What do you wish to hear? That my father was a monster? That my mother was a conniving and brutal whore? That I am the child of such a union? That I come from a long line of sadists? That I have fought all my life to ensure I didn’t become like them?”
She did not step back but rather reached out toward him. “Edward—”
“You wished to hear,” he mocked, throwing up a barrier between them, unwilling to let her touch him. “But let me tell you—it is not fear that stops me, but shame. Shame of who I am.”
“You told me once that you no longer experienced shame.”
He had. And he’d thought he meant it, but now, standing here, he knew it wasn’t the truth. He’d simply buried it.
When he didn’t reply, she let her fingers flutter to her side. The earnestness on her features was as powerful as any touch. “Who you are is beautiful.”
He longed to sink into her care and not expose her to his darkness. “You might not think so when I tell you what you desperately long to know.”
She remained silent, the only sound now the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind at the window.
He’d come too far in his own stupid raging to stop. Somehow, she’d caught him up in something. For all his resolve, she’d won. “My father raped a fourteen-year-old girl with such violence, she died. It was brutal and bloody.”
That strong, shadowy gaze that had captivated him the moment he saw it widened, but she still said nothing . . . Nor did she retreat.
God, he longed to. To hide from this moment. But he’d gone too far now to stop. He squeezed his lids shut, evoking the horrors of the past, but the image of blood and ripped flesh flicked them back open.
“My mother procured the girl for him. She wanted to keep my father so intensely, to keep him hers, she was willing to pander to his every desire.” That twisted need of his mother’s had ruined her, left her a shell of a woman, and he wondered whether his father had ever truly given her the love she had been so determined to keep.
Edward bit the inside of his cheek until the iron of blood flowed over his tongue. The pain was the only way he could force himself to remember. “I’d only started at Eton and come home early for holidays. As far as I understood, my mother had promised the girl a place in our household. This, of course, was not the case.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be at home.” He spoke the words, but it was as though someone else was uttering the phrases as he disappeared from the room and plunged into memory. “I heard the screaming. I ran toward the sound.”
Edward closed his eyes again. The blond girl was on the floor, naked, her chemise cut away from her pale young body. There had been slashes along her thighs. The wine stain of blood had blossomed from her temple through her silvery locks. “Th-there was so much blood. So much. My mother was babbling how my father had gone too far and what were they to do.”
Mary’s fingers came up and stroked his shoulder, but he couldn’t bear the attempt at comfort, not in this memory, not when he could still smell death and hopelessness. So he shrugged his shoulder away from her soft hand. He drew in a ragged breath and went on. “I ran to the girl. She was still breathing ever so slightly. But my father grabbed me and forced me from the room. I didn’t know what to do. Who to tell. So . . . I told no one what I saw. But it didn’t end there.”
Tears—god-awful, womanish tears—stung his eyes. If he wasn’t careful, a torrent of his grief would pour forth from the dam he had kept erected for so long. He swallowed back the acidic taste of sick before continuing. “The girl’s father came to find her, to defend her honor. My father disposed of him.”
Unable to bear it any longer, Edward opened his eyes and stared into the flickering fire until his pupils burned to the point of blindness. It would have been so much easier to believe that none of it had been real, but the pain of it carving out his heart tore apart any such consoling fantasy.
“You see, when the constables came to investigate the disappearances . . . this time, I knew what had to be done. I—I told them everything.” He smiled a tremulous mockery of a smile. “I still recall my father’s face. Sheer disbelief marred his countenance. I was his son and heir, after all. What son betrays his father?” He choked on the pain of it but forced himself to finish. “In the end, it was my testimony that condemned him. They kept the worst of it out of the papers.”
Shaking, eyes wide, Edward could not exorcise the memory of his father’s blackened tongue lolling out of his purple face, eyes bloodred and bulging. That hellish vision would never leave him.
“And your mother?” Mary asked quietly.
“She tried to destroy herself. She failed,” he said factually. “She lives in the country.” His voice broke and he had to wait several moments before he could finally confess. “Servants watch over her.”
What else could he say? Nothing could soothe this moment into something bearable, but now he’d gone to the edge of memory and needed to put the last nail in his own coffin. “So that is who I am. Who I belong to.”
“Edward, you are not your father.” Her voice came like rain upon the parched earth. “Or your mother.”
Edward threw back his head, wishing he could drown himself in the comfort of her voice. But there was no comfort for him now. Staring up at the wood-beamed ceiling, he let out a harsh sound. “But I am of their making.”
She came up behind him and placed her curves against his, holding him, attempting to make them one. “How can you say so?”
“I didn’t save her. I did nothing,” he growled, his voice reverberating off the crystal chandelier. A tear slipped down his cheek and he dashed it away lest more follow. “I let my father push me out of that room. And—and if the constables hadn’t come, I would have told no one. I would have allowed him to get away with it. What if he’d done it again—?”
He shoved back from the mantel, breaking their embrace. He turned to Mary, hoping wildly that even she might be able to explain his behavior. “How could I have done that?”
“You were little more than a child,” she protested.
He shook his head at the feebleness of her argument. How many others had tried to convince him thusly? “I should have stopped it.” There was no excuse. And that was his hell. “I should have taken a pistol or fire iron or whatever it took to stop my father. I should never have kept his secret. Not even for a moment.” Edward grabbed her upper arms and shook her, willing her to understand what he was. “I did nothing.
Nothing.
”
Mary grabbed hold of his biceps and commanded sharply, “You listen to me, Edward Barrons. You are no more to blame for what happened to that girl than I am for what happened to my mother.”
His memories stuttered. What the hell could she possibly mean? The words were out of him now, but he felt no better. In fact, he felt coated in misery. Coated in a memory he had not fully allowed himself to visit except for in his dreams. “I failed that girl,” he whispered as his throat began to close. “And now, I begin to think I will fail you.”
Her fingers stroked up his arms until she clasped them around his neck. “You must let go of this guilt.”
The feel of her was the only balm he had ever known, yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to wrap his arms about her, not when he was finally seeing himself so clearly. “I can’t.”
“If you don’t, it will obliterate what is left of you.”
He was going to fail her. It was as certain as the setting sun. “Can you forgive and forget what your father has done?”
She narrowed her eyes slightly. “’Tis different. He never suffered for his crimes.”
“When he has suffered, will you forget then?” He should keep these thoughts to himself. The bitterness, the anger—now that he had opened that prison in his head, all the torment seemed to be pouring out.
“Yes,” she said vehemently.
He shook his head wildly. “No, you won’t. This is what I am trying to explain. I don’t regret testifying against my father. But what I do regret is never letting it go, of always trying to find more justice. If you can’t move on from this, you will dream of him until the day you die because it is half of who you are. Revenge leaves you dead inside.”
She cocked her head to the side as she reached up and attempted to smooth his brow. “I
will
move on with my life. Away from all that I have seen and done.”