He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “I’m not going to tell them. They cannot know.”
She was not shocked, not in the least. She had come to an eye-opening conclusion in the past days, being confined to a carriage with three lively girls: Ash had kept the truth from them not because he was ashamed that they were related, but rather because he was trying, in some inane, roundabout way, to protect them. She didn’t know why. But after what Seraphina had told her, she had no doubt it was true.
She had seen enough of his interactions with the girls to know he cared for them, deeply. They were the most important people in his life, and he would go to any lengths to see they were safe and cared for. Why else would he marry a complete stranger to provide a steady home life for them?
Therefore, it was not a stretch at all to assume he would deny himself the comfort of their love in order to make certain they were protected. The maddening, amazing, wonderful man.
Kneeling down before him, she looked him straight in the eye. “Those girls are stronger than you think they are,” she said clearly and distinctly. “And the one thing they want, the one thing they have wanted in the five years since they have been in your care, is to have your love. I guarantee, if they can have that, the comfort of it will be enough to soften the blow of whatever truth you have to share with them.”
The look he gave her was miserable. “You cannot know that.” He dragged in a shuddering breath. “If you knew the whole history, you would understand.”
She took his hand in hers. “So tell me.”
For a moment she thought she had gone too far. Whatever wound he was nursing, it was an old one, something he had picked at time and time again, never allowing it to heal. And here she was, someone who had come into his life a mere month and a half ago, expecting him to reveal all to her.
Just when she was about to move away and give him his space, however, he spoke, his voice low and strained.
“To tell you, I have to start at the beginning. Which is not a pleasant story to hear.”
In answer she settled on the floor at his feet, leaning her body against his legs, letting him know she wasn’t going anywhere.
He sighed, though whether it was from weariness or relief she couldn’t tell. “I’ve told you my father was a bastard,” he started. “But you cannot begin to guess how horrible life was with him. The Dukes of Buckley were known for their cruelties, and my father was no different from the generations of men before him. He was angry and discontent, using his words and his fists to assert his dominance over everyone in his sphere that he deemed beneath him. I, of course, was a common magnet for his rages. My father, while far from perfect himself, demanded perfection from everyone he lorded over. That was especially true for his son.” His mouth quirked humorlessly. “It was not a pleasant household to grow up in.”
Bronwyn bit her lip to keep from crying. While her father had been ridiculous and demanding, he had never once been physical with her. She could not imagine the damage such a thing could do to a child.
But he was not through. Not by far.
“In my concern for my own well-being, I was blind to the suffering he inflicted on others in our household. And while I reveled in being sent away to school, for all it allowed me to escape his wrath, I never once thought where else my father’s rages might be directed.”
He stopped, closing his eyes against a memory he could not free himself from, swallowing hard. Bronwyn, her heart in tatters, blinked back her tears and squeezed his hand, a silent show of support for whatever he had to say next.
When he finally continued, his voice was hoarse. “I was not supposed to be sent home early from term. But the other boys never failed to remind me whose son I was, you see, and I felt the need to defend myself. Although I suppose it is a blessing they bullied me so unmercifully, for if they had not, I would never have seen my mother again. As it was, I was too late to save her—”
His voice broke, but he quickly shook himself and continued.
“She had been hiding the truth of his beatings for years. This time, however, was so much more brutal. I will not soil your ears with the full extent of what my father did that caused my mother’s death. Suffice to say, she stepped in to protect someone from my father’s wrath, and received that wrath on her own fragile head instead. The moment I returned home and saw what my father had done, I spirited her away. If only I had done so sooner, before there had been a need to, she might still be alive.”
“Oh, Ash,” Bronwyn whispered brokenly.
He dragged in a deep breath and looked in her eyes. “I brought her to Caulnedy, where she had grown up, the place she had loved and told me tales of and where she had been happy. And I think she was happy again, or at least content, for what little time we had there. But the damage my father had done was too great. Mere days after we arrived, she died in my arms.”
Unable to speak, Bronwyn brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. So much pain and heartbreak at such a young age. It was no wonder he had wanted to spend as much time out of Caulnedy as possible, for all the painful memories it must have dredged up in him.
“I returned to my father, determined to kill the man who had killed my mother,” he continued. “And I nearly did. I beat him, Bronwyn, nearly to death. But as much as I wanted to, I could not end his life. For if I did, I would be no better than he was. Even so, it damaged him, leaving him a mere shell of the man he had been. A more fitting punishment, perhaps, than ending his misery. I broke ties with him, went to London, and met Beecher. We built Brimstone, and I made my fortune, and though my guilt never left me over what my mother had suffered, I believed I had finally succeeded in putting it all behind me. Until my mother’s old nurse showed up on my door, and I learned that my father had been even more cruel, even more evil, than I had ever conceived.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to erase the memories trapped in his head. “It was not just my mother who suffered. Young women who worked in his household were victimized. My mother, who had no power and was more often than not a victim herself, nevertheless did everything she could to prevent such attacks on others. When she failed, she found a safe place for them to birth their children, gave those women new lives. Her old nurse became grandmother to those children. And here that woman was on my doorstep, sick and dying, and begging me to take care of those girls.”
He opened his eyes, and the amber depths were bottomless pools of misery. “And so you see why I cannot tell them of the truth of their births. I cannot place that burden on them, of not only knowing what kind of man sired them, but how he brutalized and raped their mothers. I have shouldered the shame and guilt of being the son of such a man, and will not allow them to suffer as I have.”
Ah, God, so much heartache he had been saddled with. “But perhaps it will lessen the burden for all of you, if you know you have each other to lean on,” she tried gently.
But he was already shaking his head. “I will not be selfish again, Bronwyn,” he rasped. “It is my fault, after all, that my father went on unchecked for so many years. If I had been any less selfish I might have saved their mothers from his cruelties.”
“Ash,” she cried, lurching up on her knees, taking his face in her hands. “You are not to blame for what your father did. He was an evil man and was responsible for his own actions. And you were a mere boy, just trying to survive.”
But he was shaking his head. “I should have known, should have been there. Instead, I blinded myself to it to save my own skin. All I cared about was howIwas affected. I never once considered that others must have been suffering as well.”
“And what could you have done?” she demanded.