Page 42

“I did not want to marry Lord Follet, and I have never liked him. I do not care if my engagement is canceled. I would be grateful for it, in fact. Spencer thought he was a good match—an advantageous match—but I never once connected with him. He was handsy and forward.

“But you… you are married to a man who makes you smile like a schoolgirl whenever you see him. A man who brings a blush to your cheeks, who looks at you when you are looking elsewhere, and who watches the space you occupied when you leave. Why would you let that go?”

“Because I thought I was strong enough to love him through anything. I did not even realize it was turning into love until he pulled away.”

Charlotte paused for another moment, but then she was there, kneeling before Eleanor. Things were not fixed, not truly. Yet they would get through it, just as they had gotten through everything else.

Quietly, Eleanor admitted, “I do not think I can love someone who will not fight for me.”

Spencer left Everdawn House before anybody else could rise for breakfast, chasing the morning sun. He had scarcely slept, so he figured he may as well use his time to ride.

Anger swirled inside him, demanding and insistent, a roaring call he had never mastered ignoring. Not truly.

He had scattered pieces of himself all over during his travels, as if by doing so he could lose who he was, lose his rank and title and ghosts, and now he was missing those pieces more than ever.

Eleanor made me feel whole .

He immediately shoved the thought away.

Eleanor had to become neutral in his mind, a woman stripped of the power she had over him. He had gotten careless, had endangered her, and the price to pay had to be worth her safety.

Yet he had gotten used to the warmth of her body, the soft sounds of her slumber, the curve of her shoulder as the sun warmed it of a morning. She always claimed to have fallen asleep accidentally, even if he suspected otherwise.

His horse pounded through London’s streets, to the countryside beyond, until he arrived in Everdawn Village.

He was too distressed to look at the villagers who called to him. Whenever he looked for too long, he saw Eleanor with her pastries, the villagers complimenting their love, the florist who had spoken of jasmine flowers with her.

His chest ached with something terrible, and he blamed it on the hard ride.

He continued onward through the fields to the path that broke the line of maple trees behind the estate. He rode through it with singular intent, stopping only when he reached a glade in the middle of the woods.

Dismounting with a force that rattled his bones, Spencer walked over to the two gravestones that sat beneath two maple trees.

The branches were wound together, a strange phenomenon he had always loved seeing as a boy—back when love existed for him, back when love was foolish to want but unavoidable to yearn for.

He walked over there, eyeing the names on the slabs.

Patrick Vanserton, Duke of Everdawn.

Georgina Vanserton, Duchess of Everdawn.

Spencer eyed the years beneath their names and sighed. He ignored his mother’s grave. She had ignored him in life; he would treat her the same in death. He did not have anything to say to her memory.

His father’s grave though…

Spencer sank to his knees, his shoulders bowing beneath the weight of everything he had kept trapped inside him. His hands shook when he rested them on the gravestone.

He closed his eyes, picturing his father’s face. The dark eyes, so like his own; the auburn hair that he’d kept tied back. His father used to keep his face clean-shaven, which was why Spencer grew his beard, not wanting to further resemble the foul monster.

“When Anna and I were young, Father, we used to run through all the streets of Everdawn Village,” he mumbled.

“We wanted to see what secret paths we could discover.

Then, when we grew up, exploring became outrunning you.

Outrunning whatever pain you inflicted that day.

When we were old enough, we realized that there was no outrunning you.

There was only avoiding you until we no longer could.

“Your fists would always be waiting no matter what methods we attempted. Did it eat you alive, knowing that you killed your daughter? That you took my sister from me? I spent the first half of my life outrunning your anger, and the second half outrunning my guilt. Your rage was a beast I could never conquer, and I am glad you are cold in the ground. I am glad for it, for you will not get to meet my wife. She will hear of what a monster you are, but she will never experience it herself. That is the gift you have given me in death, at least.”

Spencer fell silent then. There was little use in talking to a grave. His father had never listened to his pleas when he was a boy, and he certainly would not now.

His fingers dragged across his scar. That day had been particularly awful. His father had already beaten him bloody, only to come swinging at him later that night. He had snatched a glass of water from his bedside, raging about his weak, futile son.

The feel of the water soaking his bedsheets, the sound of the glass shattering, and then burning agony searing through his face. That was what Spencer recalled.

Blood had dripped into his eye as his skin tried to stitch itself together, but the wound had been too big, too deep.

He had screamed for his mother, for his father, for a physician, and for Anna, but he had fallen unconscious.

The last thing he recalled was his father telling him it was a mere scratch.

A mere scratch.

Spencer sat back on his heels as anger raged within him, building like a gathering storm on the horizon. A sick, twisted part of him craved the certainty of his father’s blows. A part of him craved the knowledge that, if nothing else, at least he could handle that. He always had.

He had never fought back, except for the day Anna had died, and he had dared his father to end his life, too.

Spencer had always been beaten within an inch of his life—the heir to survive. The heir to carry the dukedom, the heir to carry the anger.

The rotted thing that lived inside the Vanserton men.

His body felt too light yet too grounded at the same time. His thoughts unraveled, and before he knew it, he was back on his horse.

He had fought his way through his travels, drank until blood and brandy mixed when he spat, had bloodied his knuckles, trying to find whatever high his father got from beating his own children.

He hunted for that high now, returning to London on a chase that made him feel half out of his mind.

Spencer jumped down from his horse, aware of the dark evening, too dazed to care that he had been gone for so long.

The image of Eleanor flashed across his mind. Her face, the fullness of her body, the way her thighs slotted against his, the scent of jasmine, the careful way she tended to her flowers.

His chest squeezed. She was too good for him; she always had been.

He would never be good enough for her.

He was poison seeping into her garden of rebirth, and soon she would be infected and resent him. He could still save her.

Spencer entered the gaming hell he had not frequented since he was seven-and-ten, having snuck in not long after Anna’s death, needing somewhere to take out his anger.

Nobody had batted an eye when he lied about his age, claiming to be nine-and-ten.

The bruises had helped him avoid detection—until he did not know what to do with his hands.

He had soon learned.

He walked in now, years older, and eyes swiveled to him.

There was not an ounce of care left in him if anybody gossiped about the Duke of Everdawn’s presence at the gaming hell as he walked down a set of stairs in the far corner, venturing into the underbelly of the establishment, where a boxing ring called the wagers and the fighters of London’s underground.

“Oh!” a voice shouted over the gathered onlookers. Spencer shoved his way through them. “Look who we have with us. A new face, or perhaps a familiar one. Your Grace, you have come to fight?”

The man in the center was already roughed up, his teeth stained with blood.

Spencer flashed a cold smile that felt wrong on his face and stepped into the ring. The blood of the last opponent had not even been cleaned away.

He thought of bloodied knuckles and Anna’s hollow, unseeing eyes, and lifted his fists.

“I do not recall so much speaking in this place,” he answered, circling his opponent.

The man was already bouncing on his feet, laughing, and then he swung.

In Spencer’s mind, it was not his opponent. It was his father. The final fight he never got to have.

Spencer laughed, the sound hollow and bitter, as he let the man punch him. His father’s laughter echoed in his ears.

A mere scratch.

My weak, worthless son.

If you are not man enough to take a silly punch, you are not worthy of my dukedom.

Get that wretch of a sister of yours, Spencer, or face her punishment.

No woman will want you, Spencer, if she knows how weak you will grow up to be.

Do you really think you can save Anna? You can save nobody. You will never save anybody. You cannot even save yourself.

The cruel words, paired with the blows, had him staggering backward until he hit the boxing ring’s post. He was promptly shoved back toward his opponent by an onlooker with a shout of Hit back! Hit back!

He stumbled into the other man with a mumbled apology, forgetting himself for a moment. He was laughing, delirious, as blood trickled into his eye. Somehow, he felt grounded. Something was finally right… in the most wrong of ways.

I hate this . I hate chasing this feeling.

Another punch had him falling to his knees.

Get up, Spencer.

A kick to his ribs.

Get up, you worthless son.

Worthless.

Weak.

His eyes closed. He saw his father swing a cane at him—that awful cane that had hurt worse than fists and had cut his back and shoulders far too many times.

He thought about how he and Eleanor had matching scars from canes and whips—wounds from people who should have guided them yet failed them. He thought about how they had both shouldered hurt, and how he should be at her side.

How he ought to be holding her.

Spencer groaned as another blow landed on his side.

Eleanor.

He wanted to be beaten until her name was wiped from his mind.

Eleanor.

He grunted through the pain.

Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor ?—

Spencer surged to his feet.

“ Kill me, too ,” he had once begged. “Kill me, for I refuse to live in a world without Anna.”

He saw his father run, and he moved, picturing his father’s face. His fist rose, his arm weakened from one too many blows. His vision blurred, but he still landed a hard blow, knowing where to hit to fell his opponent instantly.

He didn’t stop punching until he was gasping for breath, kneeling over the injured man, his knuckles as bloodied as his father’s.

Hands moved him, voices announced his victory, but there was nothing victorious about any of it. What had his father found at the end of his violent tether? For it was not something Spencer could understand.

He didn’t remember climbing out of the boxing ring, but suddenly a glass was slammed down before him, and Theodore’s face appeared in his field of vision.

“I am taking you to my townhouse,” he barked. “Down that in one go, and if you collapse onthe walk over, I will not drag your sorry backside home. I will simply throw rainwater at you.”

Mercifully, Spencer didn’t collapse, but he did stagger, and he stayed silent, words and pained noises kept behind clenched teeth as Theodore cleaned him up.

His friend said nothing, not for a long time, but his eyes said enough.

Finally, when Spencer was in a fresh shirt and wrangled into the study, Theodore spoke.

“Would you care to explain yourself?”

“No,” Spencer muttered, staring out the window.

“Tough. What I saw in there was not you. Where are you right now, Spencer? Where is your mind?”

“I do not know. It is broken apart and scattered. And what if that was me? The me that has been lurking beneath the surface all along?”

Theodore scoffed, not holding back his words. “I have known you for many years, and I know you, Spencer. I think I know what this is about.”

Spencer winced because, of course, his friend knew.

Theodore eyed him long enough to draw his attention. “You are afraid of becoming your father.”

Spencer flinched and took a second before nodding. “I tried to find what he felt when he used to beat us. I cannot find it.”

“That is how you know you are not him,” Theodore said. “And Spencer, your father never bled for anybody. You have bled too much for others. Now, it is time to stop bleeding and find the very thing that makes you heal. I think you have already found it, but for some reason, you are not with her.”

Spencer thought of Eleanor, with dirt up to her elbows, kneeling in her garden.

Of her baking and the mess she had made in the kitchen.

Of her insistence on doing what she wished to do.

Of her moans, of her touches, of her kisses and the way she had first danced with him, like she had forgotten how to.

He thought of her finding her way back to music, and he wondered if he could find his way back to forgiveness after endangering her, so he may find his ultimate way back to her.

“You are not him, Spencer,” Theodore insisted.

Spencer held his stare but said nothing else.