Page 96 of The Formation of Us

Fear drizzled down her body like a freezing rain, coating her with ice. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.

“Who are those women you call your aunts?” he asked, his voice flat, controlled, cold.

This was the moment she would crash to the hard unforgiving ground, and everything would shatter: her body, her heart, her life.

“They’re my aunts, like Rebecca is Evelyn’s daughter,” she said, wanting him to understand her love for them.

His nod acknowledged her right to claim the women as family, but she could see the truth dawning in his eyes.

“Your mother didn’t just sell roses, did she?”

She shook her head.

“Did all your aunts work upstairs at your mother’s house?”

She nodded because she couldn’t speak past the shame clogging her throat.

He inhaled sharply, as if the truth had speared him in the chest, and his appalled expression broke her heart.

“I knew you would look at me with disgust.”

“How would you expect me to look?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“For God’s sake, your mother ran a brothel!” He stared at her as if seeing an unwelcome stranger on his porch. “Did you . . . were you . . .” His breath rushed out as if he couldn’t bear to ask the question.

“No.” She shook her head. “I only gave massages.”

o0o

“Stop!” Duke raised his hand, unable to listen to his wife any longer. He couldn’t stomach the thought of her hands on another man. To know she’d massaged their bare bodies twisted his heart into a painful knot. This was why his gut had kept insisting there was something she was hiding. And he suspected she was hiding more.

“I had to think of Adam and Cora,” she said, tears brimming her eyes.

Two hours ago her quavering voice would have wrenched his heart with sympathy. Now it left him cold.

“Duke, I needed to get them away from the brothel. How could I do that by announcing where we came from?”

She couldn’t have. He understood that. If anyone had known Faith’s mother ran a brothel and her aunts were prostitutes, Faith and her family would have been run out of town. Hell, if anyone discovered the truth now, their lives would be ruined. Her life. His life. His mother’s and brothers’ lives.

And she’d married him knowing this.

Her betrayal sliced through him. One slip of the tongue, and Faith’s reputation, and his own, would be ruined. His family’s reputation would be shattered, and the sawmill business would suffer as well as Radford and Evelyn’s livery. All because he’d been a blind, lust-deceived fool.

“Who else knows about this?” he asked.

“My aunts and Adam. We lived behind the brothel.”

“How could any mother—” He pinched the bridge of his nose, furious that any child was exposed to such a life. No wonder Adam had a worldly look in his eyes. God only knew what the boy had seen, and what he’d shared with Rebecca.

“I don’t know how she stayed,” Faith said, her soft voice wringing his emotions. “I couldn’t bear raising Adam and Cora there. That’s why I changed my name and came here, to give us all a decent life.”

“You what?”

“My last name is Dearborn.”

“Jesus.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the headache throbbing behind his eyes. He understood her need to protect the children, but to lie and change her name and let him walk into their marriage blind.