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Chapter Twenty-Three

“ W hat is this?” she asked, not daring to reach for it, even though Spencer had just gestured for her to do so.

There was a music box on the table right in the center of a grand candelabra, several plates of food, and the almond and raspberry buns Eleanor had baked.

“It is a gift,” he said simply, before he realized he was trying to brush it off. He cleared his throat and spoke again. “I do not know if you are aware, but when Theodore mentioned the opera last week, your eyes lit up. So, I did some asking around. Well, by that, I mean I went to my sister.”

“Oh?”

“She told me that when you first became friends, you spoke often about music. She noted a sadness in the way you spoke about it, and I asked her why.”

Spencer felt her defenses rise, and he continued before she could begin to deny any sadness. It was as though she thought herself not entitled to feel it.

“Charlotte mentioned that at every ball, you would hum along to the music, only to stop when she looked at you. You liked music, but you were not allowed to.”

“She could not have told you that.”

“She did not, but I know what that pattern is like. The worry of being caught liking something, the denial. You do not use the music room or play like other ladies. You have not spoken of the opera or of visiting it, and whenever we venture into Everdawn Village, you bypass the pipers. You flinch whenever an orchestra dies down only to strike up again at balls.”

Eleanor touched the lid of the music box cautiously, and he could see her considering her words—so like him.

“You are right. I do like it, but I am not— was not —allowed to enjoy it.

My mother taught me to be the perfect lady.

The perfect bride, mother—anything required of me.

Whatever I liked was irrelevant. I had to read the books she picked, play the instruments she chose, and everything else was not to be tolerated.

If she would not tolerate it, then a husband certainly would not.

“Music is not quiet, so it was hard to love it in secret. It was a demand for a quality to have, a certain amount of knowledge of composers or scores, or an instrument. Proficiency to woo a suitor rather than enjoy myself. So I felt guilty in the moments I did enjoy it. Then, at St. Euphemia’s, music was only performed in worship.

Organs and choirs—it all became rather stifling.

I think it killed so much of my love, but it also reminded me of how much pressure my mother had always put me under.

“She would always host musicales and have me perform in the hopes that I would attract a suitor. As their only child, I had to carry that mantle. Music stopped being a love of mine and became too much.”

She paused, meeting Spencer’s eyes as she laughed sadly. “I do not know if I am making sense,” she admitted.

“You are,” he assured her. “I understand you perfectly.” He nodded toward the music box.

“Open it when you are ready, Eleanor. It is a gift. It is enjoyment. When you are ready, I would also like to take you to the opera. You are not required to perform for me, or anybody else, and you will never be under pressure to do anything outside of what you choose. If you will let me, I would like to guide you back to that love.”

He hadn’t expected her to open it right there with him, but she did.

She trusts me .

He watched her carefully.

The gentle melody rose from the box. Spencer had imported it from Austria specially for her. It was a private way to find her way back to music without it being a public spectacle.

“You did not mention your problem with music,” he noted, watching her listen to the melody.

“No,” she agreed. “I did not think it mattered. Lord Belgrave told me I would perform for all his acquaintances as often as he wanted. In hindsight, that should have been a warning, but back then, I thought it was good because my mother would be happy. My father would be proud. That was all I knew: to make them proud. In the end, it does not matter. They never would, and never will.”

“They ought to,” Spencer said, unable to keep the anger from his tone. “They ought to be proud of you. What you have gone through…” His hand clenched around the stem of his wine glass. “The things you have faced alone, Eleanor—not a lot of people would have survived.”

There was a vacant look in her eyes, as if she didn’t quite acknowledge what he said.

Spencer reached over to take her hand. “When you were in that cauldron—no, even before that—I saw a fight in you. It burned in your eyes. Flames devour, Eleanor, but not as fiercely as what you burned with. There was vengeance, hatred , and a spirit they had not broken. I could see that they tried, but you fought against it all.”

“And if you had seen a more broken girl that day,” she whispered, her breath hitching with more emotion, “would you have still rescued her?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I would have. Broken or not, I would have taken you out of there no matter what.”

What he didn’t admit was that he had needed to save her back then.

“Eleanor,” he murmured, trying to gather his wits.

He was about to dredge up something he had shut away in a box, locked it, and then buried it in several other locked boxes in his mind.

“Eleanor, I needed to save you that day. I needed to give the fire in your eyes a chance to burn. I needed to give you the chance nobody was giving you to fight. I needed to—” He cut himself off, lifted his wine glass to his lips, and drank deeply.

Spencer took a moment to steady his breathing, to close his eyes and begin again.

“I could not see another girl die beneath a cruel hand. I could not see another girl go down fighting when she deserved a chance.”

Before Eleanor could ask, he pried the words from his throat. They were stubborn, so used to being locked inside of him, so used to not being acknowledged.

“I had a twin sister named Anna, and she was murdered when we were seven-and-ten.”

That statement left him in a hard rush. There was no softening it, no making it pretty or tolerable. He had not been able to stomach it for years .

Slowly, he lifted his gaze to her.

“She was murdered, and I could not save her.” He felt himself tensing up, but he fought against that silent pull that tried to take him back to a place where he was silent.

“I have—I have buried Anna’s memory in a box for so many years, never thinking of her for too long, hiding her portrait.

Every thought I have of her hurts, and sometimes I fear there is nothing good left to think about because all I see when I think of her is-is the blood, the violence, the screams . ”

He shook his head.

“I saw her portrait,” Eleanor confessed quietly. “I went into the music room at Everdawn Hall once. The housekeeper didn’t tell me a lot out of respect, but she told me enough that I knew something had happened.”

Spencer nodded, his grip on his glass tightening. His eyes fixed on a point just past her. He had planned to bring all of this up with her tonight, and that was why he had wanted to dine on the terrace. The sky above, endless and calming, settled him. It made him feel less suffocated.

“My father happened.”

“Your father?”

Spencer nodded, trying to find the right words, trying to bat his way through the memories.

Fists pounding on my skull. A hand clenched around my throat. Screams, screams, screams…

“His temper was… merciless,” he forced out, trying to keep himself grounded, squeezing Eleanor’s hand.

He had not realized he had reached for her.

He let go of his wine glass and took both of her hands in his own.

“I do not know what went foul in him. He drank.

Sometimes that made him jovial in a way that set us all on edge, distrustful of the mood.

Sometimes it made his anger worse. But his temper was out of control even before the drink hit.

“I became the target for his blows. At first, it was accidental. I was merely in the way. My mother had learned to hide well, to bury her head in the sand when the screams of her children filled the air.” Spencer swallowed down his revulsion.

“She never wanted children, yet my father needed an heir, but she was cursed with two. Having twins sent her into a depression so terrible she could not climb out of it.”

“That is no excuse for turning her back on you,” Eleanor said, sharper and angrier than he had thought she would be.

He had expected pity—that would have irritated him. But his wife met him with a fire like his own.

She does not pity me, and I think I love her more for it.

The thought struck him so hard that he could not breathe for a moment.

Love.

He could not subject Eleanor to something like that. He did not even know if he was capable of love at all.

“It is not,” he finally agreed, sighing.

“But it is what happened. I tried to protect Anna from the worst of it, and I succeeded mostly. My father went to me. I was a boy. I could take it, according to him, and I grew up with that mindset—that I had to take it. If I did not, then Anna would, and she… she…”

“It is all right,” Eleanor whispered. “Spencer, we do not have to discuss any of this.”

“No, I want to,” he insisted, even though he sounded so choked up. “I want to. Because Anna was beautiful, and she was the light of my life, and she deserves better than to be put in a box, locked away, because of how painful it is.

“I tried to protect her, Eleanor, and I could not. No matter how much I tried to block my father’s path to her, no matter how many blows I took to prevent her from receiving them, he still targeted us both.

I was afraid to leave Everdawn for anything, scared of what I would come home to, scared of what my father would have done in my absence. And then it happened.”

Spencer was no longer on the terrace. He was far away, watching the crackle of the fire in Anna’s bedroom.

“He knew I was occupied downstairs with Charlotte. She was four years old back then, already forgotten by our mother—another unwanted child. He sought Anna out, an-and when the screams began, I ran. I ran, and yet I was still too slow, too late. By the time I got there, she was on the floor, her face almost unrecognizable for how badly he had beaten her. Blood—Heavens, the blood was everywhere. It is uncanny to see one’s face in death, for we truly were mirrors of one another.

“Her eyes were staring up, and I swear they still held the pain even when her heart stopped. When that final beat pulsed, I stopped. My entire world stopped. And then I heard his footsteps behind me. I do not remember moving, do not remember how I got from cradling my sister to having my father strung up by the throat.”

“Spencer,” Eleanor whispered, and he realized he had gripped her hand too tight. He tried to let go, but she held on tighter.

“I dared him to kill me too,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

“At one point, I recall begging him to, for my soul had already been split apart.

There was no use dragging it around for the rest of my miserable life.

But my coward of a father ran. Out of the room that day, and then out of Society altogether.

He sent Charlotte to live with my aunt. She was too young to remember Anna, I believe, although she knows we had another sibling.

“Once my mother died a year or so after, my father retreated to the countryside. Once I had the chance to leave, knowing Charlotte was safe and my father would rot from the inside out with guilt, I did. I went all over the world, abandoning London, Society, my role, an-and Charlotte.”

“She has harbored bitterness toward you ever since,” Eleanor filled in.

Spencer nodded. “I wrote to her often and at length, always updating her, but a letter is hardly enough when a young girl wonders why her brother is not in her life. I spent those years never finding a home. How could I? Home was make-believe. Home should have been Everdawn, and it proved to be a hell of a place. I traveled and I drank until I could not see straight. Until I blacked out most of the time.”

He swallowed back his shame, shaking his head.

“Every time the voices got too loud and I reminded myself how I had not saved my sister, I drank. I forgot myself in other women’s bed and let go of Spencer Vanserton, the heir to the Duke of Everdawn.”

Eleanor’s face paled at his mention of other women, but she never once let go.

“The other night, over dinner, you mentioned not recalling some of Charlotte’s reentry into Society,” she noted. “Why?”

“I was still hiding,” he said. “Everybody wanted answers. I admit that I only wanted more brandy at the time. More drink to take the pain away. I came back when I was thirty-one to oversee her reentry, but I was not always the best, most present man. Even now, our relationship is not whole, but we pretend it is because we wish it was.” He sighed.

“I was likely too drunk to recall a lot of it, too. That is another reason why I blame myself for Charlotte’s involvement with Lord Follet. Had I… been more thorough?—”

“ No .” Eleanor’s tone was sharp enough to make him pause.

“No, do not blame yourself for that. You told me—and very firmly—that you looked into him. If Lord Follet appeared clean, it is because he is excellent at misdirecting even the smartest, most thorough of searches. Spencer, I am sorry for what you went through, but you cannot carry the blame for that. Nor for Anna’s death.

” Her face softened. “You were only a child. You were not supposed to carry the weight of your father’s anger. ”

Those last words struck him hard enough that he had to blink away the tears in his eyes. He quickly looked away from her, but trust had him looking back.

“You have anchored me far tighter than I ever thought was possible,” he whispered. “For once, Eleanor, you make me feel as though I do not want to run from something painful. You make me feel?—”

At home for the first time in my life.

You are my home.

“I know,” she answered just as softly. “I know, Spencer.”

Between them, the music box continued playing, and their dinner had long gone cold, yet Spencer stood up, taking his wife’s hand.

“Dance with me,” he murmured, a small smile tugging at his lips. He didn’t try to fight it off. His mind felt so clear, so unburdened, at least for the moment. “Let me give you your first new happy memory of music. Dance with me, Eleanor.”

She rose, a surprised look on her face.

Right there, on the terrace, beneath the stars, Spencer danced with his wife, and he thought of Anna.

For the first time since her death, her memory did not threaten to drag him under. He did not reach for his nearest vice.

He simply danced, his world seeming slightly brighter than it had been before he opened up.