Page 34 of The Scarred Duchess Deal
Leo pointed to the master bed in which he very rarely slept because of how uncomfortable it made him.
“She had been ill for a few years prior to that, but after my sixteenth birthday, she seemed to deteriorate at a faster rate than normal. She had always hated my father – they did not have a thing in common. I am fairly convinced that the only time they willingly touched one another was the single instance that it took for her to be with child. They screamed at one another daily, and fought constantly; it was a wonder to me that the old bastard never sent us away to live somewhere out of sight. It would have been simpler that way. He could have pretended that we simply did not exist, and we would have done the very same thing. Instead, he tormented us until he died – and that was not a fitting enough punishment for him in my mother’s eyes.”
Tessa reached forward and placed her hand on top of his. “I am sorry to hear that.”
Leo nodded. “It was her dying wish that his bloodline ends with me. She told me that she was sorry I had ever been born, even if the blood that runs in my veins was not my fault. She was convinced that even a small drop of his blood would be enough to taint any living thing. She warned me that it was only a matter of time before it affected me. As such, I should never take a wife. I should never sire any heirs – no children of any kind. It was her dying wish that I swear such a thing to her.”
Tessa was shocked. She could not imagine a mother saying such a thing to her child. It was unfathomable to her that a woman could be pushed to such terrible extremes.
Leo continued. “At the time that I made the promise, it did not seem as if it would be something that I ever wanted for myself. I was a young lad and in complete agreement with everything that she said. I assumed my stance would always be the same… and then I met you. The more that I grew to know you, the more my desires changed. It could not be helped.”
He meant it as a compliment. Yet it felt as if he were telling her he only cared for her in spite of his better judgment.
“Then I suppose that I should find myself flattered by your words? This change of heart that you never wanted, living in a home that you hate, with a wife that you will come to resent–”
“That is not what I mean.”
Tessa hastily wiped away the soft tears that rolled down her cheek. She would not allow herself to cry. “Thank you for sharing this with me, Your Grace.” She rose from the settee. “If you will excuse me, as I have said, I am quite tired.”
“Will you not stay with me?”
“Whatever for? As we are not to have any children, there is no reason to consummate our marriage, much less share a bed.” The words pained her to say. She struggled to keep from crying as she said them.
“Tessa, please… I know that I have wounded you but I cannot live without you,” Leo confessed. “ Tell me how to make this better, how to explain myself more clearly. I want nothing more than to go back to the way that things were before between us. Keeping myself away from you is torture.”
She wanted that too, but could not see how to make it happen.
Torture or not, there was no alternative. “Try harder.”
“I do not wish it!” Leo crossed the room and opened his arms in a gesture of surrender. “I do not wish to be parted from you. I only meant to share this with you so that you might understand my point of view. I had hoped that you might share your own thoughts with me as well.”
“There is nothing more to say!” Tessa shouted without meaning to. “It is done! Let me resign myself to my new future in peace, in whatever way that I choose!”
Leo flinched and took a step back so that he was no longer blocking her path to the door. “I do not injure you on purpose.”
Tears swelled in Tessa’s eyes. “Yes, I know that too, but it makes it harder that way. I will come to you when I am ready.”
Leo nodded curtly. “Of course. I will be here when you are.”
ChapterSeventeen
To keep her mind occupied, Tessa threw herself into her investigation. She found it difficult to engage with the staff of her new home; her heart was not ready yet to run a household of her very own. Instead, she spent her afternoons searching for any leads of her brother that she could get. It was beyond difficult to chase a trail that had long since gone cold.
The letters that she had recovered from Mortimer’s office seemed to all lead to bookkeepers, meaning she had no choice but to involve Leo. She was not brave enough to go poking about in that particular part of town looking for shady people. Least of all by herself. Leo – to his credit – seemed to be intent on following her wishes and desires to the letter. She had said that she would come to him when she was ready, and he respected that.
Perhaps a part of her hoped that once she found out her brother’s fate one way or the other, she would be able to close that chapter of her life. With it closed, she could move on to the next chapter. Instead, she was stuck in this infernal limbo where her future was unclear, her past nearly as painful as her present, and she had nowhere to go, no one to confide in or anyone to offer her advice.
Silly as it was, she wished to ask Leo for advice. He was her dearest friend who just so happened to be her husband as well.
Tessa tried to imagine what his life might have looked like growing up. She tried to imagine the things he must have endured in order to have made such a promise to his mother. Certainly, she was not of sound mind near the end if she asked such a thing of him. Tessa could not imagine her own mother being pushed to such a place. She prayed for understanding; she prayed to see how he came to be and to forgive him. He was her husband now, a fact on which her cousin would not stop commenting.
Nearly every day another letter from Sophie arrived. Some days it was to gloat over how happy she was to be the only woman in the house or to fill Tessa in on how pleased the embroidery group was that they no longer had to see her face. Other times it was to condemn her to hell and lament her cousin’s luck in falling into a marriage. More often than not, the letters implied that she was nothing more than a common whore.
Today was not a day that Tessa felt up to one of her cousin’s letters. She was not in the mood to listen to anything that Sophie had to say. When Leo came into the room with the post of the day, she held up her hand in protest.
“No, thank you.”
“There are a great many letters in here for you. Are you certain that you should not like to read at least a couple of them?” Leo queried as he thumbed through them.
