Gabriel nodded. “Edmund. Letitia met him when he was pretending to be deployed in the countryside, but I did not tell you everything about their history. The way… The way we found Edmund was exactly how I found my sister, all becauseof him.”
Sibyl didn’t know why she did, or if he would even want or need the comfort, but she slid her hand towards his. He took it, only to place a chocolate square in her palm with a wry smile.
“My sister loved anything different,” he continued. “Her debut experiences were brief, especially once she met Edmund, but she was the lady who drank more than was polite at balls, danced her shoes half off her feet, and never came back before curfews. Anything that went against the grain, Letitia sought to do.
“I think Edmund discovered that very quickly. He was an addict, back then. You may not have known it, but I only know because he got her addicted to laudanum. That, and alcohol, I imagine. I warned her against him time and time again, but she ignored me.”
Finally, he took her hand, squeezing it tightly.
“By the time I learned just how deep Edmund’s addiction and debts ran, he had already taken her away from London, likely enticing her with stories of beautiful exotic countrysides and beaches. Instead, he gave her an opium den to die in before abandoning her. I still do not know how long he had abandoned her for.”
He swallowed thickly, his throat bobbing.
“I found her half dead in Italy,” he said stoically. Still, grief pooled in his brown eyes. “She cried out for me, begged me to stay with her, begged me to make it all stop. She burned fiercely, as I said, but this fire consumed her, and it put her in so much pain. So, I stayed. For a long time, I tried to provide her with the best care I could. Treatments, doctors—anything. Yet she snuck out sometimes. She sought the drug Edmund had lured her awaywith, desperate for more fixes. I was helpless, unable to stop her.”
Something else seemed to cross his mind, but Sibyl did not push. He was already revealing far more than he had in weeks.
She squeezed his hand back, leaning closer to him. “It must have been difficult,” she empathized.
“Difficult is one word for it,” he sighed, pushing a hand through his hair.
Without even thinking about it, Sibyl reached out to tangle her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. Gabriel smiled down at her, holding up a slice of strawberry. Daringly, she bit into it and chewed slowly, watching as he gazed at her mouth.
“I wanted revenge,” he confessed quietly. “Sibyl, I wanted it so much that I thought the moment I laid eyes on him, I would shoot him dead for what he did to my sister. No, a gun is too impersonal for how I felt.” His voice lowered to a growl. “I would have dragged him to the nearest empty plot of land, beat him to a bloody pulp, and left him to die in the street like he left my sister to die—rotting in her own filth and hazy mind.”
Sibyl’s heart broke all over again, but all she could do was be there for him. “You are not alone in this need for revenge. I am only sorry you did not get it. I am sorry that he did what he did. Your sister deserved a much brighter, longer life.”
“She did,” Gabriel whispered. “But I could not save her. Still, I can try to save others. I just—you cannot imagine the fury I felt upon returning to London, hellbent on revenge, only to find out that Edmund had continued living his life as though my sister was nothing. She gave up her life to chase him, to chase what she thought was love, only to be forgotten like a—like a… Heavens, I do not know, but he discarded her so easily. Even in her last breaths, she claimed that he had been good to her, that she had made her own choices, and that I should not be angry with him.”
“She was in love with him,” Sibyl murmured, and he nodded. “I really am sorry, Gabriel.”
“It is all right. I wanted you to know the truth. In all honesty, I was tired of keeping it locked away, debating what to say and what not to say. Letitia deserves to be spoken about, to be honored, to be thought about for more than just how she died.”
“Then wewillhonor her,” Sibyl said. “I have thought about her often since I saw the portrait of the two of you. I had no idea of the devastation Edmund had caused so many people.”
“There was a reason I wanted you free of his debts,” Gabriel muttered. “I wanted to do it to free Letitia’s memory, of course, but I also wanted him to know thatIpulled him back from the brink, that he would oweme, would be indebted tome.”
“Only to find out—” Sibyl didn’t want to finish.
She didn’t want to keep thinking about Edmund, not when Gabriel sat next to her, beautiful and vulnerable.
He turned her face towards him, smiling at her fondly.
“You rarely smile,” she noted. “Yet you smile at me… quite often.”
“Perhaps you give me something to smile about.”
His hand brushed her cheek, and she closed her eyes, emotion rising within her.
Heavens, she had read about scenes like this, and here her husband was—a man she had thought was so stoic and cold and evasive, closed off to everything—touching her skin, touchingher, as though she meant something.
“You have always looked at me as though you see me,” she breathed. “And that struck me, the first time we met. I have never been seen, not truly. Not until you.”
“Sibyl, whoever does not see you is a fool. You shine so brightly. So?—”
“Say it,” she dared.
“So beautifully.”
