She gasped as if he had caused her physical harm, pressing a hand to her heart. “Why? Why did they hurt you?”
So many reasons, all of which boiled down to greed.
But he had begun this, and he would finish it.
“My father was on his deathbed,” he said quietly. “He had two living male heirs to take the crown, myself and Reinald, but my uncle Gustavson wanted the throne for himself. My father was not in his right mind when he lay dying. He would have agreed to anything, and I was…” His words trailed off as his throat grew thick with old emotion long suppressed. “I was not present in his dying hours. I will forever regret that, not just because of what happened afterward, but because I should have been there, at his side. I was his son. I loved him. But I was so terrified of losing him that I couldn’t bear to go to his chamber.”
Emotion made him pause.
“Theo,” she said, her hand resting on his forearm. “You needn’t explain.”
“I want to,” Theo told her. “I want you to know.” Another pause, a fortifying breath, and then his history rose like a virulent wraith, and he was ten years in the past again, a twenty-year-old prince who had never bore a single responsibility suddenly faced with losing his father and becoming sovereign over a kingdom. “My uncle leapt at the opportunity. He closed himself in my father’s chamber and emerged with an account of my mother’s treason, claiming she had poisoned him. There was a royal decree signed by my father demanding that every child in his line must renounce my mother and demand her head.”
“No,” Pamela said, as if she couldn’t bear to hear the rest, but suspected what she would hear.
He forced himself to continue. “I was the oldest. Twenty. I refused to renounce my mother. Refused to demand her execution. I knew it was all lies and that Gustavson had used our father’s illness to seize the power he wanted. The others were younger. Reinald was thirteen. Stasia fifteen. Our sisters Annalise and Emmaline but ten. They didn’t understand what they were signing until it was too late. I was taken to the dungeons, for I wouldn’t sign our mother’s death warrant. And no matter how they tortured me, I refused to renounce her.”
“Theo.” Tears were streaming down Pamela’s cheeks. She didn’t even try to dash them away or pretend as if they weren’t there, as she ordinarily did. She simply sobbed.
For him.
For his mother.
For his siblings who had been too young and naïve to comprehend.
Deus, how he loved this woman. More than he had ever imagined possible.
“Don’t cry for me, my love,” he said, taking her in his arms, love for her burning more fiercely than he could have imagined, into the depths of his soul. “I survived.”
“But your mother?” Her voice broke on the question.
Theo pressed his cheek to Pamela’s, absorbing her warmth, her strength. “She was executed by my uncle while I was imprisoned.”
A sob wracked her body.
She was trembling violently. He gathered her closer, holding her tightly.
“Wh-what happened then?” she asked.
“My brother Reinald became king when I refused to renounce my mother. He released me upon pain of death if I returned to Boritania. I was loaded onto a ship, bleeding and nearly dead, and I landed in England.”
“Your own brother,” she said. “How could he do that to you?”
Theo shook his head, for he had forgiven Reinald for the part he had played in what had happened to him, to their mother. “He was but thirteen, and he was beneath my uncle’s influence. He hadn’t a true choice. I don’t blame him for what happened. The blame solely belongs upon Gustavson’s shoulders. His hunger for power led to him betraying his brother’s children and wife. In the end, Reinald’s actions protected our sisters.”
But with his disappearance, their sisters were no longer assured of their place in court. Theo had been poring over everything in his mind ever since Stasia had come to him with her plot. His sisters’ only value to Gustavson was in marrying them off to foreign courts that would increase his influence. If they defied him, they would likely face the same fate as Theo had in the dungeon. Or worse.
And he couldn’t bear that. Gustavson had to be stopped.
“You are far more forgiving than I would be, given your circumstances,” Pamela said.
“I haven’t forgiven my uncle. Iwon’tforgive him. And no one in my family will be safe until he is dead.” As the words left him, Theo acknowledged their rightness.
He had spent these last few days falling more deeply in love with Pamela, trying to find a means of avoiding the inevitable. But he understood with sudden and painful clarity that there was none. He would have to return to Boritania. And in so doing, he would leave her behind.
As always, Pamela sensed what he wasn’t saying.
Rain began falling around them in truth, but he didn’t feel the shock of the cold pelts permeating his coat. All he saw was her face.
