He wanted to believe her, but he’d been believing the opposite for so long. “I’m the stunted limb on my family tree, Sandrine. I loved my brother, and that made me weak and vulnerable. He took advantage of my vulnerability and taught me a harsh lesson about love. When you love people, when you let them close, they stab you in the back.”
“What did he do to you?”
“He blamed me for my mother’s death in childbirth. He was ten years old at the time. Life was perfect before I came along, according to him. A loving mother, a doting father, and then I ruined everything. The loving mother went cold and silent and was buried in the ground. The doting father became bitter and angry and difficult to please without the tempering sweetness of his wife.”
“But they must have known that it wasn’t your fault. How could it have been? You didn’t ask to be born.”
“I caused my mother’s death. Roman never forgave me. I used to trail after him, five years old tohis fifteen, wanting to be him, worshipping him, and he would do deliberately cruel things. Lock me in dark cupboards. Pour water on me and tell my nurse I’d wet myself. And when I went off to school, he spread false rumors about me, that I cheated on exams and stole valuables from the headmaster. He set me up. Created these elaborate schemes to make me the scapegoat of the school. Anything he could think of to make my life hellish. Then he’d report my fabricated crimes to my father to gain favor, to turn him against me. It worked.”
“That’s awful.”
“You know, the pitiful thing is that even after he did all of that, I still wanted his approval, I still worshipped him. But eventually his campaign to break me, to make me pay, worked. I believed that I was the bad seed. That I’d never be anything but bad. That my birth was a tragic mistake. And that I can only make mistakes. And yes, I’m not thickheaded, I know that my mother’s death wasn’t my fault. And my father drinking and becoming bitter wasn’t my fault. But I still feel that guilt and remorse. I can’t shake it. It’s always been there. The weight of it piled over my head, word by word. Falsehood by falsehood.”
She rested her hand over his heart. “You know they were falsehoods. Now you must believe it with your heart.”
“And now my brother, my tormentor, is dead, leaving me feeling even guiltier for resenting him. Blood isn’t thicker than water. Blood is coldwater closing over your head. Drowning your goodness. Loved ones know the best ways to hurt you.”
“And so you became a reckless, immoral rake to escape those thoughts, if only briefly, with your drink, your pleasures.”
“I’m stunted, I’m hollow. I can’t love. You were safe and content in your little village, and then I came along and ruined everything. It’s all my fault.”
“I might have been safe, but I wasn’t all that happy in Squalton.”
“When I met you, I remember thinking that you always had a sunshiny smile on your lips and blue skies in your eyes.”
“Because I was making the best of it. Because I knew no other way to live. I had to settle for what I’d been given.”
“All my life I’ve been told that my brother was the good, upstanding, dutiful one. And if he wasn’t good, if he was mixed up in something dangerous, or keeping funds meant for charities, then that would mean that he was bad and cruel to others, not only to me. And if he was bad, what does that make me?”
“You’re a good man, Dane. You just haven’t realized it yet. Stop blaming yourself for everything. All the ills of the world are not on your shoulders. Inside... in here,” she said and laid a hand over his heart, “this is what truly matters. You’re good. I know you are, even if you don’t know it. All you need to do is forgive Roman.” Her voice drifted into a whisper. “And forgive yourself...”
She fell asleep with her hand still covering his heart.
Her words echoed through his mind as he lay in the dark, listening to her soft, rhythmic breathing, and holding her close. Wanting, more than anything, for her to be right.
But knowing that it was too late for him to change.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mother knows best when it comes to choosing a spouse.
—Mrs. Oliver’s Rules for Young Ladies
Sandrine arrived back at Francesca’s house in the early hours of the morning before the household was stirring. She climbed up the trellis, as the Pink Ladies had taught her to do, and onto the balcony. She tapped on the glass doors in the prearranged signal, and a sleepy Francesca let her in.
“Sandrine? Gracious. What time is it? You said you might be late, but it’s practically morning. I was worried about you! Mercy me, you look a fright. Your hair is all mussed—and is that a spot of blood on your pelisse?”
“Nothing to worry over.”
“Here, let me help you.” She unbuttoned Sandrine’s pelisse and removed her bonnet and gown. “Now crawl into bed.”
Sandrine sank under the covers gratefully, and Francesca joined her, rolling onto her side and facing Sandrine. “If you weren’t here in the morning I was going to have to raise the alarm. But I didn’t even know where to start looking.”
“I’m very sorry for worrying you. First I wentback to Madam Avalon’s, then I spoke with the Duchess of Rydell, and then Lord Dane and I went for a carriage ride.”
“You promised you weren’t meeting him.”
“My plans changed.”