Page 45 of His Abandoned Duchess

“Amelia….you do not understand the situation. Hugh’s mother became a part of my life when my own had just passed. She was a quiet woman with me, but she was there when I was still sickly. My father had not cared for me at all when my health was poor, nor any time following, and it was to the Dowager Duchess that my care fell. I…I began to see her as a maternal figure. When she suddenly left after my father’s attention returned to me—my health improved, but his ire was ever more gruesome—I could not understand why she would choose to leave me behind with the man. Unless…”

His voice cracked, Richard’s throat seizing up. It took him squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head to finish the sentence.

“Unless she had never cared for me.”

“Richard…”

Amelia’s lips remained gently parted when he looked down at her. Richard could see that dreadful pity creeping up through her expression, and he ground his molars. He was not a child any longer. He was not sick, nor was he fragile nor enfeebled. He did not need Amelia’s sympathy, or anyone else’s for that matter.

“Leave it be, Amelia. It is better to remain in the dark. I will not discuss it further.”

Her body pulled taut like the string of a pianoforte as he eyes widened. The silence stretched between them, and Richard was sure that he would be exiting from the dining room with plans to return to Blackford.

But then Amelia blinked, exhaling out the tension in a visible move to relax her posture. She met his eyes, holding out her hand toward him.

“I do not wish to leave it, Richard. Please. I would like to understand. Would you at last tell me of your father’s treatment?”

The Duke’s mouth fell open, and he stumbled backward onto his other foot. Amelia stood straight and unflinching before him, seeing the edges of darkness that clouded his mind and not running from it. Richard regarded her, cocking his head as she held his stare with an open expression.

After a moment, he took her hand, and they walked back to the table, sitting down in two chairs next to each other along the side.

“He…He was cruel, Amelia. I was his heir and not born for it, it had seemed. When I was struggling as a child, he did nothing to aid my recovery, going so far as to shove me aside as he pleased. My father had seemed so urgent in his need to remarry as well. I did not put together his motivations when I was a child, but I can look back and see now that he hoped to secure a moreviableheir.”

Amelia said nothing, allowing Richard the space to collect the words he wished to use to convey this grim tale of his past. He had never spoken of these things to anyone before, and it was a trial to dig up the bones that he’d kept buried for so long.

“Hugh had been that heir, and his attention left me for a time. I was privy to what went on between my father and his new wife, though as she took care of young Hugh, less of her attention was placed on me. I had to believe at that time that she was simply doting on the child who required more consideration.

“I dwelt happily in a land of neglect for a time…until my health improved. I grew stronger, at last surpassing the stature and capability of my young brother. My father’s machinations returned their focus to me in kind. He demanded perfection, using whatever means he deemed necessary to ensure that outcome. I bear the scars of it still. But self-protection, it seems, is innate. I steeled myself to it all, becoming a fortress that his physical attacks would only mar the exterior of.”

Richard’s next word caught in his throat, the realization that he’d said so much finally reaching him after the minutes of unfettered confession.

“I should not have said this. There is nothing to be done of the past, and the present remains as it ever did.”

“Richard,” Amelia slid herself to the edge of her seat, taking his hands, “there is nothing to feel ashamed of. I am eternally grateful that you have told me the truth. Your father…”

“Amelia, don’t.” Richard shook his head.

A hand came to his cheek, forcing the Duke to gaze into the eyes of the astounding woman seated across from him.

“He was wrong, Richard. He should never have harmed you.” The glittering of her black-tea irises reflected the emotion that made her voice small, but she did not look away. “You have survived him. A feat you should be proud of.”

He was at a loss for words. Try as he might, nothing was coming down the train from his mind to his mouth. Richard was locked to his seat, unable to move, only exist under the intense stare of his wife.

His wife.

“He had chosen you, Amelia.” Richard’s voice barely broke through the still air. “My father had put you forth as a bride, and I hated you for it. I could not bring myself to care for anything that he might have touched.”

A single tear slid from her cheek, and Richard lifted his fingers to her skin to swipe it away. Cracking and tearing, the appearance of a massive fissure in the bastion he’d constructed around himself through years of abuse and sorrow forced Richard to, at last, say what had been haunting his mind.

“I cannot hate you, Amelia. I have tried.” Richard shook his head, holding her face cupped against his palm. “I have fought atevery turn to look upon you and feel nothing, and I have failed each and every time. I cannot do anything but see your eyes and succumb to all that you are.”

Amelia trembled, her body heaving as she sucked in breaths in an effort to keep the tears restrained.

“In seeking to protect myself from others that might use me for their own gains as my father had done, I have become the very thing that I most detested. I have been cruel to you, just as the late Duke had been cruel to me. And for that, I will forever be remorseful.”

“Richard,” Amelia’s voice broke, another tear slipping free, “I do not hate you, either. I find, though I, too, have tried to think of you only as a nuisance, I cannot. You have been the first man that I’ve allowed so close to my heart, to all of me. In the five years of your absence, I have been with no other. I know what people have said of me, and in truth, I cannot blame them. I only wish that you would see me as I am, forwhoI am.”

The Duke dropped down onto his knee in front of Amelia, looking up at her from his position on the floor. He gathered her face in both his hands, caring nothing for the way others might view him lowered before her like this. In fact, caring nothing for any appraisal performed by the members of the ton for the first time in his existence.

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