“It’s customary, apparently, in my mother’s culture. Small feet are prized as signs of beauty and femininity. My father despised what he called her ‘deformity’…along with everything else about her.” He tossed back the rest of the Scotch. “What I can say for certain is that the pain my mother suffered in her homeland was far surpassed by what she experienced at my father’s hands.”
His cool, detached tone raised the hairs on her neck. Instinctively, she knew that he was approaching the worst of the demons his uncle wanted him to face.
Although she feared the answer, she forced herself to ask, “What did he do to her?”
“He beat her. Regularly. As a child, I didn’t understand what was going on between them, only saw my mother’s sadness. Her quiet despair. Well, that’s not entirely true.” His throat moved, the diamond stick pin in his cravat glittering like a tear. “I did sometimes glimpse the bruises on her. My father said she was clumsy, a disgrace who couldn’t even walk properly on her damaged feet. And I believed him until the day I saw…”
“What did you see, Rhys?”
“I was twelve and beginning to feel rebellious. I’d decided to defy my sire and seek out my mama. She wasn’t in her bedchamber when I arrived. But then I heard my father’s voice, and in a panic, I jumped into the armoire and hid. I was there when he dragged her in.”
Apprehension whipped through Maggie like a tempest. While she wanted to say something, do something, she knew that the best thing was to remain silent. To let him purge what was festering inside him.
“Through a crack, I saw her crying, and he shook her so hard that her head snapped back.Shut up, you bitch. You are my property, do you understand? You will do your duty and provide my spare.He tore at her clothes, and when she wouldn’t stop crying, he…struck her. Again and again.” Rhys’s voice was gritty. “I burst out of the armoire—I don’t know why I hadn’t moved until then. Why I’d been hiding like a coward that whole time. I finally came to my senses, and I ran to the duke, tried to pull him off my mother. I think I was shouting something, telling him to let her go, and he threw me across the room.”
“Dear God,” Maggie whispered.What kind of monster would abuse his wife in that despicable fashion—and his son?As drunk as her father got, he’d never raised a hand to her mother. Probably because her mother would have walloped him right back.
She put a hand on Rhys’s arm. His muscles quivered beneath her touch, like that of a stallion ready to bolt. But his voice remained steady, unnaturally calm.
“My head hit something hard. For an instant, I lay on the ground, dazed. Then the duke came at me. I’d never seen him like this before. He was enraged—angrier than when he shot Bailey. He told me to get out, and he raised his fist as if to strike me again. I readied myself for the blow—but my mother got between us.”
“What…what happened next?”
“She said,Go, Rhys, go.” He slammed the empty glass onto the coffee table in front of him. His elbows planting on his thighs, he dragged his hands through his hair. “And like a bloody coward, I did. I left her there. And she died…because of me.”
“Rhys, how did your mother die?”
Maggie’s voice seemed to come from a distance. It was muffled, filtered as if through a wall of ice. He dug his fingers into his scalp, tugging on his hair, the small pain keeping him anchored as the undertow of the past threatened to suck him under.
“I’ve never spoken about it.” Didn’t like to think about it. “It was a long time ago.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Her gentle coaxing reached through his numbness. As much as he wanted to resist, he couldn’t. Because this was Maggie, and he could never resist her.
“After that incident, the duke sent me to stay the summer with Horatio. That was my first visit to Dorset.”
“Did you tell your uncle…about what happened?”
“No. I didn’t.”Why didn’t I?He’d asked himself the question a thousand times, and there was never a good answer. Stomach churning, he said, “I should have. I know I should have. As incredible as it sounds, it was like I…I forgot what happened.” Frustration roiled along with the shame. “I can’t explain it.”
“Our mind can shut out the things we’re not ready to cope with. It was that way for me when my mama died.” Maggie’s soft words encouraged him to go on.
“The summer with Horatio was a grand adventure. He told stories of his trips abroad, and we played games, hunted for fossils on the beach and in the caverns. Then my mama died, and I was sent home.” His throat felt hot and itchy. “She’d had a miscarriage, the duke said. Died when the bleeding wouldn’t stop. But I knew.”
“What did you know?”
“That she died because I didn’t protect her.”Because I failed her.
The darkness in him spread. Suffocating. Relentless.
He felt a touch on his jaw. Maggie turned his head to face hers.
“That’s not true,” she said firmly. “What happened to your mama is not your fault.”
“I should have stopped him.” His hands curled, fingernails biting into skin. “I should havestayed. Fought. Or, at the very bloody least, told someone.”
The options were so obvious. Only a fool would not see them. Only a dastardly weakling would not act upon them.
