Since Tulip appeared comfortable enough while snuggled against him, he dismissed his worries and remained awake reading his grandfather’s journal well into the night.
He was glad Tulip hadn’t been awake to pry and ask to read the lurid entries.
She would have been shocked by the goings on his grandfather had described.
What a lecherous, old goat.
Surprisingly, there was nothing cruel or seriously depraved mentioned in the pages.
It became clear the old man was a proponent of living freely and following one’s spirit animal.
What utter tripe.
His grandfather’s spirit animal was a wolf, apparently.
Which really meant the lecherous, old goat, who merely thought himself a wolf, invited beautiful young ladies to stay at Thornwycke Hall and encouraged them to remove their clothes whenever the impulse struck, even if it came over them while walking around the grounds.
And if they had an impulse to do more, he was ready to oblige.
Gad, the dirty, old man.
What had the staff thought of this behavior?
They could not have approved, although some of the men might have thought it amusing at first and gawked at whatever was being shown.He had been too young at the time to understand or even see much of this behavior going on.Also, his mother had done all she could to keep him away from it.
They had left Thornwycke when he was eight years old.
Before then and since, there had not been any shortage of young ladies willing to engage in these romps.By his grandfather’s description, one would think these buxom sprites were happy creatures who were never coerced into doing anything against their will.
Well, this was his grandfather’s version.
He would question the staff and find out what really went on.
The journal only covered the yearsafterhis grandmother’s death, so he did not know if this nonsense went on during the poor woman’s lifetime.He thought it might have done because his father and uncles had obviously been indoctrinated into this style of living and had no qualms about carrying on the depraved Davenport traditions.
This must have been why his mother took him away before he was old enough to have embedded memories of any of these goings on.
But the impact on him had been deep and severe.
There were a few references to his father within the journal that Alex read with extreme interest.
He despised the man for treating his mother as shabbily as he had, but Alex got the impression his father was a sad figure who had loved his wife but been too weak to pull himself away from the old man’s influence.
Still, Alex had no pity for him.
Was it not the responsibility of a husband and father to fight for and protect his wife and child?
But something else became clear while reading the passages his grandfather had written closer to the end of his life.The old man was harboring a terrible secret, something that had happened years earlier in that tower room, and weighed heavily on his heart.
His guilt and need for absolution became evident as he reached his end of life.
Whether the secret sin was his or another’s, Alex could not tell yet.
He continued reading late into the night, hoping to find more answers, but the journal contained no further hint of what the secret was, only that a young woman by the name of Elspeth was involved, and it was something that needed to be buried deep and forgotten.
Except, his grandfather had not been able to forget it.
He’d been haunted by the Elspeth incident.
