Page 38 of The Duke's Cursed Bride
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said again.
“You don’t have to pretend you didn’t notice my scar. Of course, you would have noticed it. Anybody would.”
“Is it from the fire when your family was killed?”
Madeleine nodded.
“What happened?”
“I was trying to escape the house, and I stumbled into something,” Madeleine said. “The room was so full of smoke that I couldn’t see where I was going, so I don’t know what it was that I hit. It was probably something metal because it was scorching. It burned my cheek and my neck.”
“That must have been so frightening.”
“It was,” Madeleine agreed.
“How did you make it out of the house when none of the rest of your family did?”
“It was determined that the fire started at the opposite end of the hall from my bedroom,” Madeleine explained. “That was why the rest of the family was killed, but I wasn’t. I would have died if I had stayed in my room, but the fire hadn’t quite reached me yet, so I was able to escape through the window.”
“You jumped out the window?”
“Everyone said I was lucky not to be badly hurt,” Madeleine said. Of course, that had been before people started calling herunlucky. It was months before the wordcursedwas used for the first time. In the beginning, everyone had felt sorry for her and told her she was fortunate to have survived. In the beginning, Madeleine believed it was that simple.
“Was your window on the first floor?” Rachel asked her.
“It was on the second.”
“You really were lucky not to be hurt then.”
Madeleine nodded. “I landed in the bushes. I had a lot of scratches on my arms and my face, but those healed up well. You can’t see them anymore.”
“You must have been so sad,” Rachel said. “I would have been devastated if something like that had happened to me.”
No one—apart from Uncle Joseph and Horatia, of course—had ever talked about it in those terms. No one had ever suggested to Madeleine that something terrible had happenedto herand that it made sense for her to feel sad about it.
“I miss them all the time,” she said quietly.
“I can’t completely understand what it’s like,” Rachel said. “But maybe I can understand a little bit because I lost my father, and I know how hard that is.”
“Were you close with your father?”
“Not very close. He wasn’t very involved with the family. Thomas hated him.”
“Really? I didn’t know.”
“Maybe hate is too strong a word,” Rachel admitted. “But he blamed him for the time he was attacked. You know about that, of course. Thomas told me it was you who saved him that night.”
“Did he?”
Rachel nodded.
“I think he might resent me for it,” Madeleine said.
“Oh, no, he doesn’t,” Rachel said. “Thomas may not know how to express his gratitude, but believe me, he’s very thankful you were there that night. He knows that if it weren’t for your help, he would have died.”
“He says he wants things to be even between the two of us. That he doesn’t want to owe me anything. I think that’s why he’s marrying me.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Rachel said. “He doesn’t want to abandon you in your moment of need because you didn’t abandon him. I don’t think he’d be able to live with himself if he didn’t stand by you.”
