“You didn’t do it, and I didn’t tell you for sympathy, I told you because you asked.”
“I left because I couldn’t do it anymore, Rory.” The words were almost a whisper, but he heard them.
Rory stayed silent, watching his brother. He wanted no part of Max’s life, but he did want to know the reason he’d left, no matter how much he told himself otherwise. The reason he’d turned his back on him and Maddie.
“Did you know that I was indentured on that ship? That she paid for your and Maddie’s passage to France that way, by sending me to work for an animal?”
“She told us that you chose to work on it. Chose to leave us to do so.”
Max’s laugh was harsh. “Is that the story she spun? Believe me, the truth is very different. She bedded the captain on the journey to keep him happy, and he played the pretty until we docked in France, and then everything changed after you all left the ship.”
Max shrugged out of his jacket and unknotted his necktie.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you that we have matching scars.” Max removed his shirt.
“Who did that to you?” Rory’s rage was instant as he took in the scars crisscrossing his brother’s back.
“The captain.”
He didn’t know what to say. The thought of the child Max had been suffering in that way was horrific.
“He’s dead now.”
“You killed him… the captain?”
“I played a hand in it, but a friend fired the bullet,” Max said, shrugging back into his shirt. “She knew that our father was a duke but never told us. She told the captain of the ship, however, and I got special treatment because of that… and not in a good way. To say the experience was unpleasant is an understatement. But when I finally came back to France and found you all, I was not the same person I’d been. The brother you needed. You were running wild, and Maddie was not much better, and I could do nothing to help either of you.”
Rory remembered the brother he’d idolized had returned cold and distant, but for all that he’d been pleased to have him back.
“She told us you’d chosen to go to England, to leave us.”
“I left because the hatred inside me wanted to kill her. It consumed me from sunrise to sunset. I could see nothing but her smug face and the pain she inflicted on me. To my sorrow, I did not see that you and Maddie were suffering also.”
“I-I don’t know what to say to you.”
Max’s laugh held no humor. “Your anger is justified. But even though I left you, I never forgot you. When sanity returned and with it, Essie, I knew I had to find you and Maddie.”
Max still had his back to Rory. He watched as he tied the knot at his throat then reached for his jacket.
“I try not to hate people, Rory, but I want her in hell for the pain she’s caused us all.”
“Amen.” At least they agreed on one thing.
His brother had been running from far more than family, Rory realized. Like him, he had demons.
“Come, you must dress, or Essie will be back demanding we leave.”
With thoughts churning inside his head, Rory rose and stepped out of the bath. Max handed him a drying cloth, and he then dressed in silence.
“We are the same size, it seems.” Max helped him pull on the deep green jacket.
“So it would seem.”
Max tied his necktie.
“Thank you.”
