The guilt was like a knife, carving him open, a wound that was reopened every time he allowed himself to remember, but Dash tried to push it down. He needed to remain clear-headed to get through this explanation.
“His father passed a few months before I met you.” Dash could feel his expression darkening, even just thinking of it. “A man who is known for cruelty, Sebastian’s older bastard brother, had submitted a petition to the crown saying he was the rightful heir.”
Ambrosia was frowning. “But a bastard cannot inherit.”
Dash grimaced. “This Mister Dudley Groby claims not to be a bastard.”
“But is he?”
“I don’t know. The petition has been… held up in the House of Lords.”
“I take it Lady Hannah had an enticing dowry.”
“She did. And for that alone, Lord Groby wanted to uphold the betrothal.”
Ambrosia nodded, showing that she understood.
“Not long before I met you at the Fainting Goat, Lady Hannah was told that she was to marry this man. Her companion, Miss Montague, was a longtime friend of my sister, and she wrote to Beatrice about her lady’s quandary. My sister then came to me in desperation. In the end, the only thing I could do—the only thing—I married her myself.”
“For the dowry?”
“I didn’t take a penny.”
Ambrosia tilted her head, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet, cautious. “I think I understand, mostly, anyway. But… why you?”
His jaw tightened. His gaze focused on the floor.
Dash took a deep breath. “It had to be me because of the title I hold. The Earl of Beresford refused to settle for any less than he was initially promised, but when given the choice between an established duke and one whose title was not yet guaranteed… Well, the decision was obvious.”
“But still,” Ambrosia said, looking no less confused. “It was terribly noble of you, don’t misunderstand, but you did not know this woman, this Lady Hannah. And—marriage? That’s an awful lot to commit to for the sake of a stranger, even one who knew your sister. Regardless of the fact that you were once friends with the boy she was previously betrothed to. You didn’t have to do any of it.”
But he did have to. His jaw tightened, his gaze focused on the floor. His conscience would not have allowed for him to do anything else, and even now, he was aware that it was not enough to make up for what he’d done.
“It was my responsibility though, because… it was my fault that Lady Hannah was in that position in the first place.” Ambrosia’s brow furrowed, and for a moment it looked as though she was going to interrupt, but Dash pressed on. “If not for me, she could have married Sebastian as was originally planned. But I took that away from her when—” He swallowed, half choking on the words. “When I killed him.”
Dash forced himself to look up, to meet Ambrosia’s eyes. “I killed the rightful heir to the Duke of Lovington.”
Her eyes widened, but she did not recoil. “You…? Dash, what are you saying?”
“The world believes it was an accident, but…”
“Was it?”
Dash tore his gaze from hers. He didn’t understand; she was focusing on the details when she ought to be condemning him, if not outright fleeing from his presence. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m the one… There were six of us. Foolish boys pretending we were men, drinking that night—celebrating our freedom, that we’d nearly finished our time at Harrowgate.” Dash didn’t add that Grimm had been one of them, or Longstaffe. “We were foolish, and beyond drunk on stolen brandy. Sebastian and I… we sparred. We were always sparring. We’d bicker too, though I don’t even remember what we argued about now.”
He pressed his fingers to his temples, as though he could force clarity into his memories. “That school, it was an institute that promised to reshape England’s most troublesome heirs, but it was a brutal place, Ambrosia. You cannot know.” They had been punished for speaking, for breathing. Ordered to kneel for hours on stone, starved for days at a time, and warned that their parents would surrender them for another term if they did not endure. “We learned to play their games of power, to fight even amongst ourselves.” His voice caught, and he shook his head.
Her lips parted, but still she said nothing.
“The next day, Sebastian was gone. Vanished. The ocean, it seemed, had swallowed him whole.” His voice cracked. “Those who were there, we made a pact. A pact I’m breaking now. Mon dieu. But we led the headmaster at the school to believe it was an accident. That he went off alone and must have stumbled. I couldn’t tell you before. But I—” He turned, staring blindly out the window, shoulders hunched beneath the weight of memory. “I must have been the one who did it. We were fencing so close to the edge of the cliffs. It had to be me.”
“You pushed him?” Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.
“I don’t know.” Dash’s breath shuddered out of him. “I remember the steel flashing between us, his laughter—Mon Dieu, he was laughing—But he wasn’t in the dorms the next morning. So, yes, I must have.”
“Why the pact?”
Silence stretched between them, taut with his despicable truth.
