“At the expense of happiness, though?” She stepped backward, propping herself against his desk.
“Yes.If the choice is to indulge in personal pleasure or protect your family, you protect your family. It shouldn’t even be a question. He risks all of us for his diversions.”
He leaned against the wall next to the curtains, hands shoved in his pockets. He didn’t look at her. Instead, he stared at a point beyond her.
“What happened?” she asked softly. “This is nae about gossip and rumors. The hurt is too deep.”
Edward pressed his lips together and nodded. His eyes stung and watered. It was a long moment before he could continue. “Did John ever tell you how we met?”
“Nae.” She pulled out the chair and sat. “Just that you and he were as close as brothers when you were younger.”
They had been. That relationship had fractured when John found out about his affair with Fiona.
Edward rubbed at the back of his neck, still unable to meet her gaze. “I was thirteen and at boarding school. I had been cornered by some of the other students, stripped naked, and stuffed into a trunk.”
“Oh.” Her mouth dropped open.
Ohwas an understatement. He’d been a duke for a whole of two months when it happened. Once he’d returned to school following his father’s funeral, it was clear that word of the duke’s death—not only the fact of it, but the manner of it—had reached the prestigious college.
Up until then, Edward had been admired; other students deferred to him, sought his approval, because he was the future Duke of Wildeforde and position was everything.
Until it wasn’t.
He’d been grabbed after the candles had been snuffed. The shock of it had given his attackers the split second they needed to overpower him. As they held him down and stripped him of his clothes, they mocked him. They called him depraved. They insinuated that his father’s penchants must be his own.
Then they shoved him in a trunk and dragged him out into the cold night.
To this day, the memory made him shrivel up inside. He looked to the ceiling, refusing to let the tears come. He had thought that his father’s death was the worst thing that could happen to him.
He was wrong.
The worst of it was that it was his father’s fault. His father had taken his pleasures where he wanted with no thought for the scandal it would cause if he were caught. No thought for the damage it would do to his family if he died in the wrong bed.
He had thought his father loved him. But didn’t you protect the ones you love? And weren’t you honest with them?
He clenched his jaw and blinked. As it always did, anger overruled the tears. Fiona was still looking at him, waiting for him to continue.
“I don’t know how long I was in there for. It felt like hours. Barnesworth and Asterly were returning from the prefect’s room when they saw my attackers gathered around the trunk and decided to investigate. They heard me whimper.”
It was the last time he would ever make that sound. It wasn’t the last time the bullies came for him but it was the last time he gave them satisfaction.
“John and Ben freed ye?”
“Asterly was a giant, even then. He was mocked relentlessly for his parentage, but very few were willing to confront him physically.”
“And ye became friends.”
“We became brothers.”
Three outcasts—Barnesworth for his stutter, Asterly for his lineage, him for his father’s scandal—united through suffering and scorn.
It had taken over a decade for Edward to repair the family name and rebuild the esteem in which his family had been held. Every move from that wretched night onward had been carefully crafted—from the bills he supported in parliament to the dresses Char wore—all to protect his family. To ensure they never went through the trauma that he had.
Edward became aware of his foot tapping on the wall behind him, and he shifted, standing upright. She noticed. She always noticed the little things about him. She was the only one who ever saw.
“It was just as awful for my mother. She left London and went into hiding in the country. I’m not trying to defend the person she is. The woman is poison. But I understand why she became so bitter.”
“Is the pursuit of perfection, the avoidance of all things scandalous, really worth the sacrifice, though?”
