“Ye canna pick up the mess yourself, Your Grace,” Agnes protested, giving the bellpull by the door a sharp tug before she hurried over and, with a grunt of effort, dropped to her knees beside her mistress. “It’s not seemly.”
Leaning against the leg of a table, Mara smiled wanly at her loyal servant. “That’s what my sister said when she found me pruning the rosebushes.”
“In this case, Lady Katherine would be right.”
“And in other cases?” Mara asked, well aware of the dismal view Agnes held of her sister.
The Scottish woman sniffed. “I couldn’t say.”
“I spoiled her. When we were young,” Mara explained when Agnes appeared nonplussed. “Our father wasn’t... he wasn’t kind. So I endeavored to make up for his lack of kindness by showering Kitty in attention, and compliments, and treats whenever I happened to come across them. I wanted her to feel special, but now that we’re grown, I fear that I may have made her feel entitled to such treatment instead. But she isn’t a bad person.”
Agnes’s expression remained carefully stoic, her true thoughts hidden behind the laugh lines and wrinkles that time and a long, twisting journey through life had wrought. “I’d never imply that Lady Katherine is a bad person, Your Grace.”
“But...?”
Agnes pursed her lips. “But she’d do well to adopt some of your finer qualities.”
Mara gave a clipped, incredulous laugh. “And what have my so-called finer qualities got me? Sitting here, on this floor, collecting shards of crystal. Maybe I’d rather be Kitty, flitting about without a care in the world.”
“If yer sister doesn’t have any cares, it’s because ye took them from her.” Agnes patted Mara’s knee. “It was sweet tae look after yer sister. Not many would have done as ye did. As ye continue tae do. But there comes a time when too much help becomes a hindrance.”
“Yes.” Mara huffed out a long breath of air. “I suppose you’re right.”
“If I had tae guess, though, I’d say that ye aren’t sitting here due tae Lady Katherine.”
“Your guess would be correct,” she said, unable to prevent the bitterness from creeping into her tone. “You know my husband as well as anyone, Agnes. Why did he marry me?”
The servant blinked. “For sure that’s a question that can only be answered by His Grace.”
“But I’m asking you. Please,” Mara said pleadingly, placing her hand on top of Agnes’s and giving a desperate squeeze. “I know it’s beyond your purview, but I also know that you’ve worked in this household since Ambrose was a boy.”
“Ye are his wife—”
“I’m a stranger. He’s a stranger. We’re strangers.Please, Agnes. Anything you can tell me about him. Anything at all. I want...” She choked back a rush of tears. “I don’t know what I want. But it isn’t this.” She looked at the small pile she’d made out of broken pieces of glass. “Itcan’tbe this.”
Agnes softened. “I canna betray his confidence, Your Grace. Some things canna be shared but by those who went through them. But I will say... I will say that ye were fortunate tae have your sister. As ye are no doubt aware, the duke is an only child. And being the only one of something is an invitation tae loneliness.”
A flicker of emotion passed through the servant’s gaze. Later, when Mara had the time and distance to reflect upon what she’d been told, she would recognize it for what it was: pure, unadulterated hate.
“When he was a boy, His Grace found a dog. Or the dog found him. Regardless, he was wise enough tae keep it a secret, as neither of his parents had a care for pets of any kind. And the staff kept it a secret, those who knew, because we had a deep caring for the duke, well, the heir to the dukedom, as he was still in those days.” Agnes’s bosom heaved as she drew a ragged breath. “On the day that the late duke uncovered what his son had been hiding, he had the dog killed.”
Agnes spoke so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that it took Mara a moment to digest the barbarity of her words. She stiffened, her eyes widening in horror, when they sank in. “Ambrose’s father had... had the poor dogkilled?”
She pictured her husband as a boy. Somber and serious, with a tousle of messy black hair and big blue eyes. A boy that laughed as a dog nipped at his heels and then licked his face. A boy devastated by the loss of his beloved pet.
“Aye, and what’s worse, he made sure that His Grace understood it was his fault.”
“But it wasn’t!” Mara protested, anger curdling in her belly. “It wasn’t his fault at all.”
“Ye aren’t wrong,” Agnes agreed. “But a child believes what their parent tells them, and if His Grace ever began tae believe anything else, his father used a rod tae sort him out.”
Unconsciously, Mara’s hand drifted to her arm where her own bruises had blossomed most often, to the place where her father had always grabbed her first. A secret, ugly garden of black and blue. “Ambrose has never really spoken about his parents,” she said softly. “I... I had no idea he was subject to such abuse.”
That we both were.
The horrible irony wasn’t lost on her.
The one thing they had in common—she, the simple daughter of a viscount and he, the powerful son of a duke—was the one thing they’d spent their entire marriage hiding from each other. Had she been aware of their shared past, would she have acted differently? She would have had more empathy, perhaps. Granted him more grace. Not that it would have made much of a difference, with her trapped here and him in London. Maybe no matter what, this was the end they were always destined for. That their mutual upbringings had designed them for.
