Page 75

CHAPTER 22

It had not been the sort of confession that Diana had expected, but she gave Colin a moment to collect his thoughts before he continued.

“You told me he was a good man,” she said softly. “Everything that a duke needed to be.”

“That is how everyone saw him. Everyone but myself. That is how he wanted it to be.”

“That is why you will not tolerate a bully, isn’t it?”

He simply nodded. “When I learned of your father’s treatment of yourself and your sister, I felt personally attached to it. I shall never know what truly happened to you, but it was similar for me. You see, my father saw his children in the same way as yours. If they were not the heir, they were worthless, and I was not the heir. I was the spare, the extra son that could do his part should the time come.”

“But he was not loving to you?”

“Not at all. I suppose he might have been if he had thought for a moment that my brother would not become the Duke, but my brother was in perfect health all of his life, and so the issue never arose.”

“So what did you do? I do not know what the younger brothers of dukes are expected to do.”

“Go to war,” he sighed.

“But you are in the nobility. You are not some common soldier.”

“I was the son of a man in the nobility. Those are two vastly different things, and it meant that I had none of the responsibilities that another gentleman would. And so, from the age of four and ten, I was told that I would become a soldier, as it was the only way to bring any form of honor to my family.”

“But that could not be further from the truth.”

“My father did not think so. He decided that as I would not be head of the household, I needed to fulfill another role, and that would be on the frontline.”

“But you did not wish to, is that it?” she asked. “Because I certainly cannot see you as a soldier. It is not in your nature.”

He reached out to her, as if to take her hand, but he seemed to think better of it before he touched her.

“I never wanted to do anything of the sort,” he confessed. “It infuriated my father, but it simply is not something I care about. My interests, my passions, lay in academia. Ever since I was a boy, all I wished to do was read. I wished to learn everything about the world, everything that there was to know, and become a scholar. I could have devoted my entire life to it, and never become a duke at all, and been so endlessly happy.”

“But you were sent to war.”

“As is the expectation of a second-born son.”

“And your father was happy for you to go?” she gasped. “I understand that I am not a mother and that we may never have children, but I cannot imagine looking at a child that I raised and forcing them to risk their life.”

“Well, it is as I told you. My father was not a kind man to me. He disliked that I was passionate about learning, hated it even. He told me that a man’s worth was based on what he had done for king and country, not what he had read in a book.”

“He could not have been more wrong about that.”

“It is no matter regardless because he told me that I was to do military service as was expected of me, and when I said no, he…well, when he saw me in the library one night, he gave me this, and so I had no other choice.”

He lifted his shirt to show a scar that reached across his back.

“He—he beat you?” she whispered.

“He hit me with a whip,” he explained, his voice quiet. “It was the last time I ever set foot in this room.”

Suddenly, it all made sense. It had not simply been a room that he had not wanted to enter, it was a room that had caused him to be beaten so much that he had been left scarred.

“So it is as I said,” he sighed. “I had to go. There was no other choice.”

“No choice but to risk your life?”

“I was not the heir. I did not matter. It was better for everyone that I left, and so I did. I left everything and everyone I had ever known behind and went to war. It gave me something to do, and I was able to travel at least.”