Gigi absorbed the information. “You are the son of a gentleman?”
“I was born into your world,” he confirmed. “However, I did not see much of it. My papa had a frail constitution, so Mama and I spent our days cloistered on his country estate. I wouldn’t have minded it, except my half-brothers also resided with us. They resented Papa’s new marriage and took out their hatred on Mama and me. The eldest, Robert, was in his twenties at the time, and he led the charge. He and my other half-brothers bullied me at every opportunity. They said my mama was a whore and that I was another man’s bastard. They beat me where no one could see the marks, destroyed things that were valuable to me. I was a child and could not fight back against any of it.”
Despite her bewilderment, empathy pulsed through Gigi.
“How could they be so cruel?” she murmured. “Did you tell your parents?”
“Papa was too weak to do anything about it. Even if he could, he was an indulgent father and would not believe his own flesh and blood capable of such meanness. Mama was afraid that stress would worsen his ailing health and kept most of it from him. She told me she would handle it. She couldn’t, of course. When Papa died—I was seven at the time—things went from bad to worse.”
“What happened?” Gigi asked.
“Robert inherited everything. Now that Mama and I were dependent on him, he showed his true colors. What he’d done before had been but a taste of the cruelty of which he was capable. By his orders, my mama and I subsided on meager meals and wore castoffs that the servants would not touch. Everything we had, we had to beg for. Sometimes he made us kneel and kiss his ring as a sign of fealty and respect.”
Shock filled Gigi at the despicable treatment Conrad had received at the hands of his own brother. With a tremor, she remembered his nightmare in the cavern—had that been of Robert abusing him? She squeezed his hand, wanting him to know that she was there with him as he revisited the shadows of his past.
“I was prideful, and I didn’t want to do it.” He curled his free hand into a fist. “But Mama told me to keep my head down and do as Robert wanted. She would find a way out for us, she said. I just had to be patient. We had each other, and that was what mattered.”
As Conrad wrestled with his demons, Gigi waited, patient and anxious.
“About a year after Papa’s death, Robert called us into the study. He informed my mother that I was to be sent away to boarding school. A remote place called Creavey Hall, where the upper classes sent their troublesome sons to be reformed. Mama begged him not to separate us, but that only made him gloat. I still remember his words.”
Conrad’s throat rippled, his voice emerging with foreign malice.
“‘I have the power to do whatever I please,’ my brother said. ‘And it pleases me to see you suffer. To take away everything that means anything to you.’”
“What an evil man,” she exclaimed. “To hurt his own kin?—”
“He enjoyed our pain. My two other brothers were afraid of him and followed his lead. My mama wept, vowing that we would run away and live in a village where Robert couldn’t find us. Even then, I knew she had no power to follow through on her promises. I was eight when they took me away to Creavey Hall. My mama sent letters full of plans for our future together, but I never saw her again. She died a few months after I arrived at Creavey. Her spirit and heart had simply been…broken.”
“I’m so sorry.” Overwhelmed by the tragedies that he had suffered, Gigi cuddled closer, wrapping an arm around his torso. “I cannot imagine what it must have been like to lose your mama and your home.”
He put an arm over her shoulders, holding her close.
“It wasn’t easy, but I learned to survive.”
Peering up, she saw the ice in his eyes and shivered.
“Were the boys at Creavey Hall…were they bullies like your brothers?”
“Some were. Others had been housed there because they were not like other boys, and their families wanted them kept out of sight. A few were like me: sent there to be ‘reformed’ by Creavey Hall’s system.”
Gigi’s nape prickled. “What did the system involve?”
“Punishment,” he said succinctly. “Administered by the headmaster, Obadiah Grimshaw. He was a sadistic bastard who hid his proclivities behind a guise of piety. He enjoyed pain—enjoyed inflicting it on young boys. In his mission to ‘reform’ those in his charge, he had all manner of tools at his disposal: birches, paddles, a cat-o-nine-tails. His system involved beating you until you admitted guilt, even if you hadn’t done a bloody thing. Most boys learned to confess to sins they hadn’t committed. I was one of the hard-headed ones. That was how I earned these scars.”
He sat up, twisting to show her his back. It stunned her that she hadn’t noticed them before…that he’d somehow kept them hidden from her. That he’d felt the need to. Pale lines of knitted skin crisscrossed his strong, sculpted back, and her heart cracked with the knowledge that he would forever bear the marks of his abuse.
“You asked me once how I learned to be a prizefighter. This is how. Thanks to Grimshaw’s lessons, by the time I escaped that hellhole at age seventeen, I’d learned to tolerate pain better than most. I could take a beating and still give a good fight.”
At his shrug, anger welled inside her.
“Don’t you dare make light of this.” Her voice trembled. “No boy should ever suffer the abuses you did. Grimshaw ought to be put behind bars?—”
“He got his comeuppance. Don’t you worry about that.”
The mildness of Conrad’s tone made the statement somehow more menacing.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
