David reached out his hand. “I know very well how many times. I can count them.”
She shook her head violently. “No, you can’t. There are a multitude on your back that you cannot see. But I can. I see them whenever I close my eyes. I can see them happening, over and over. I feel them, and I ...”
David pulled her into his arms. “No, Julia, no. I don’t want this.”
Julia collapsed into him. “None of us wanted this. But it was what we were given, and I needed to know—” Her voice caught, andpart of her hard exterior collapsed. “I needed to know what it was like, not just the burning but also the scar.”
She carefully extricated herself from David’s arms and lifted her short sleeve to show the mark I’d noticed in the oak tree. “It’s barely there. I couldn’t—” She broke again. “I lit the cigar, made myself smell its stench, and then pressed it on my arm, but I couldn’t hold it there. It was too painful, and I was too weak.”
“You arenotweak.” David shook his head. “I cannot understand why you would do it.” His voice held a sob.
Instead of answering, Julia glanced up at Garrett. Their eyes met, and an understanding passed between them. “Tell him.”
Garrett held his sister’s eyes for a long second, then undid several buttons on his shirt, pulling it open to expose a perfectly formed circle, deep and rough at the edges, just above his heart.
“You both did it? Together?” David’s voice gained strength with his anger. “How could you let Julia do such a thing?”
Garrett shook his head. “I didn’t know she had.”
“But you told her you did?”
“No.” His answer was quiet.
“Then how did she know?”
Garrett ran a hand angrily through his hair. “Because we both lived through it. Watched or, at a minimum, had to listen to your screams. And most of the time”—Garrett’s spine stiffened, and his hands fisted—“it was for stupid thingsIhad done.”
David shook his head, falling from his knees into a sitting position on the floor. “They were excuses, Garrett. Those stupid things were excuses. Do you think he cared about mud on your boots or not eating your dinner quietly enough? Hewantedto hurt me, and he was always going to find a way to place blame on someone—me or you or Julia for not getting her piano pieces perfectly right. He wanted to pit us against each other.”
What kind of sick man ... ? I held my stomach and concentrated on keeping my breath steady, but it was a lost cause. Lord Murphy had tortured David and made his other children watch. That was the boy I’d met all those years ago. The days he’d seemed sickly or tired but had tried to smile anyway, he’d been burned by his father recently.
And if muddied boots or not eating food according to their father’s demands had warranted those scars, then being caught spending time with me would have definitely come at a cost.
And still, he had come. Almost every day I had been there that summer, he had come. I sank to the floor and put my head between my knees.
David was there in a heartbeat, his arms around me, his hand smoothing my hair. I sobbed against him, my world breaking apart. I’d thought I’d known what hardships were. I’d thought losing my father had been excruciating, but having a father like mine—even if I’d had to lose him—had made my life a paradise compared to David’s.
David was whispering something, consoling me, his mouth on my cheek, his hand stroking my back. His words were soft, with a rhythm-like chant. “It was a long time ago. I was young. Garrett found a way to control him. He lost interest in hurting me once I was large enough to hurt him in return. Not long after you left, he gave up on the sport.”
At the wordsport, my stomach rebelled. I covered my mouth with my hand, but to no avail. Julia had the washbasin in front of me before I had the chance to move. She’d known. She’d known I was going to be sick.
Because she’d lived through this, only much, much worse.
And I’d tried to fix that with an orchard.
“She didn’t know?” Garrett asked.
“I was about to tell her when ...”
“She told you about my arm.” Julia finished.
David nodded.
I lifted my head from the bowl and found David’s eyes. I was wretched, my hair a tangled mess, my mouth foul. I didn’t care. I was like an animal in that moment. “How could he do this to you? To his own children?” My voice shook. “He is the kind of man who shouldn’t be allowed to live.”
“He’s a viscount,” Julia said in a hollow voice. “Anyone who lays a hand on him will go to prison, and if someone were to kill him, they would hang.”
Lord Murphy’s words after David had floored him echoed in my ears. He’d taunted him about that fact. That he was untouchable. And judging from the flat way Julia had said the words, it wasn’t the first time he’d made that point.
