Page 4 of The Language of Love

And then he heard the thud and dull clink of coins.

“This is all you will ever get from me.”

Henry finished pulling on his second boot before looking up.

The earl scowled across at him. “You are a disgrace. I knew that, but I never suspected you were a rapist in the making.”

Henry felt his lips curling into a mocking smirk but was helpless to stop them.

“You think that’s amusing, do you?”

Henry didn’t say a word.

“You’ll take this,” he nudged the small leather purse across his desk, “and you’ll take the ride to the village I’m offering. There is enough to buy passage to just about anywhere in the world and money to feed you for a month or two when you get there. What you do is up to you—starve if you like. But you will never, ever return to these shores. If you do, I will have you arrested and thrown into the deepest darkest cell in the worst prison I can find. I will see you charged with rape and you will hang. Don’t think I fear shaming the Singleton name too much to do it, boy. Now, get the hell out of my sight. You sicken me.”

Henry stood, turned, and strode toward the door.

“Boy! You’ve forgotten your money.”

Henry stopped and turned back to his uncle—a man who’d never once acknowledged him as blood or given him a kind look or friendly word in over a decade.

“You keep it, Uncle. From the way you’ve been hitting the tables this past year, I’m guessing you’ll need it more than I will.”

“Insolent bastard of a whore!” the earl thundered, surging to his feet.

Henry swallowed down the pain and fury at this familiar accusation—although in the past it had always come from his cousins, rather than his uncle—and then he turned and strode out of his uncle’s study.

He didn’t go to the kitchen as ordered and he didn’t wait for the gig to be ready. And he didn’t say goodbye to a single soul.

All he did before leaving was make a quick stop in the cell-like room he’d inhabited for over a decade. He shrugged on his heavy coat, lifted the mattress to collect the money he’d earned over the past few years doing odd jobs, and pocketed the battered locket with miniatures of his dead parents.

Rather than leave through the front or servant entrance, he used the door hidden in the armory, so he wouldn’t have to encounter anyone else on his way out of the house.

It was still pitch dark when he left Stoke ten minutes later fueled by a profound sense of misuse and a seething determination to never, ever, return to this place or these people who’d done nothing but reject and shame him.

Henry walked toward his unknown—and terrifying—future without so much as a backward glance.