Prologue
Spring 1797
James Rylon stiffened as he watched his father stride across the lawn at Braxton Academy toward him and his two best friends. His heart began to race, he felt the blood drain from his face. The once monthly visits from the Duke of Abernathe were something he dreaded immensely.
“He always looks so cross,” James’s best friend Graham muttered.
James swallowed, trying hard not to allow his fear to enter his face. At fourteen, he didn’t like showing that kind of weakness, even to his best friends. “Heisalways cross,” he whispered.
His other best friend, Simon, shook his head. “Makes me appreciate my own father a bit more. He mostly just ignores me.”
James bit his tongue, unwilling to say what was on his mind. Unwilling to let a crack enter his voice when he admitted that his own father despised him.
The Duke of Abernathe reached them at last and scowled at his son. “Pulham.”
James flinched. Since he was ten, his father had insisted on calling him by his courtesy title. But he wasn’t the Earl of Pulham. He was James. His sister called him James. When his mother was sober enough to be awake, she called him James. All his friends and teachers called him James.
The title felt like a yoke his father put around his neck. A weight he could hardly bear with his skinny body.
“Father,” he responded.
His father reared back and slapped James across the face hard enough that for a moment James saw stars before his eyes. He couldn’t hold back a humiliating gasp of pain as he jerked his hand up to cover his stinging cheek.
“You shall call me Your Grace or Abernathe, or at minimum, sir.” His father shook his head. “You arefartoo old for this Father nonsense.”
James jerked out a nod. “Y-yes, Your Grace.”
The duke quickly glanced at his friends, and James did the same. Simon had turned his face and was staring intently at a spot far off in the distance. Graham, on the other hand, was standing ramrod straight, hands fisted at his sides, glaring at James’s father. And being the only one who had begun to grow into a man’s body, it was a rather intimidating sight.
But Abernathe only chuckled at the challenge in the other boy’s stare. “Mind yourself, boy. You’re not a duke yet.” He turned his attention back to his son. “Come, Pulham. Walk with me.”
James swallowed past the lump in his throat and did so, stepping into line beside his father as they took their monthly turn around the garden behind Braxton Academy. As always, his father did not ask after him or his studies. He simply barked out questions, ones about the House of Lords, ones about managing estates, ones about title. And, as usual, James stammered answers, most of them wrong, while his father screamed and threatened.
When the customary quarter of an hour visit was over, Abernathe stopped in his tracks and turned to look down at James.
“You are hopeless,” his father said with a shake of his head. “Not all my sons were failures. A shame the one who will take my title is. Good day, Pulham.”
He turned on his heel then and walked away without so much as a backward glance. James stared after him, his chest brewing with a combination of rage and heartache and guilt. Tears stung his eyes and he bent at the waist, breathing shallowly as he tried to fight them. Fight the weakness. Make it go away.
The bell at the door was being rung, signaling the time had come to cease in sport and exercise and return to classes. James let out a pained grunt. He had to go back. He’d have to face all the others in his classes, his teachers. They would see this weakness. The one he usually hid with good humor and playfulness.
The weakness that rotted him out from the inside where no one could see.
“James?”
He tensed, straightening at the mention of his name. He turned to find Simon and Graham standing a few feet away. He wiped at his eyes, heat filling his cheeks that they’d seen him in such a state.
“What?” he barked, much louder and more urgently than he should have.
Simon stared at him a long moment, then came up and slung an arm around James’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s sneak off to the creek.”
Graham’s face lit up. “Oh yes, let’s do! I don’t want to go listen to Old Comey drone on and on about figures for the next hour and a half. I’d much rather fish.”
James nodded. “All right.”
They began to walk away from the school, through the garden, over a low spot in the wall that enclosed it and out into the countryside that surrounded Braxton Academy. They had been walking for over five minutes before anyone spoke.
“Why is he so cruel to you?” Graham asked.
