Page 82 of A Relentless Rake

“What you did was understandable,” she whispered. She, of all people, would never judge him for that. “You had to protect your family.”

“I was also protecting my own pride.” With a sober expression, he quietly confessed, “My father beat me for years, and I told no one.”

“Alec…” Anguish for him radiated through her.

“Most fathers chastise their sons, some berate and yell,” he muttered half to himself as he turned back toward the mirror to fuss again with the cravat. “Mine beat me until I was covered with welts and bruises, until I couldn’t sit or stand from the pain.” His voice grew impossibly quieter. “Always, I blamed myself. I thought that if I’d been a better son, the beatings would have been unnecessary. But I was never good enough for that self-righteous bastard, no matter how hard I tried. So one day, I simply stopped trying.” He smoothed down the front of his waistcoat. “What I learned was that the beatings were just as unpredictable and severe no matter what I did. But at least then I was actually doing the things the earl accused me of.” The corner of his mouth twisted into a pained smile. “I had my pride even then.”

Pride.He owned it in spades, more than any other man she’d ever met, and even while half-dressed and confessing the greatest humiliation of his life.

“Now the bastard is rotting in his grave where he belongs.” He straightened his shoulders and turned away from the mirror, yanking his lapels into place. “And if there’s a hell, then I pray he’s burning.”

The darkness that gripped his face made her gasp. He must have heard the soft sound, because he forced a self-deprecating grin and reached for the whiskey.

“Don’t pity me, Olivia. The prostitutes had it worse.” He brought the bottle to his lips. “At least I never had to listen to him recite the Bible.”

He hid the pain behind that facetious comment by gulping down what little remained in the bottle.

Olivia couldn’t bear it a moment longer. She scrambled out of bed and into her dressing robe. She barely had time to cinch the belt into place around her waist before she reached him, before her arms wrapped around him.

He softened in her embrace, and her heart wept for him as he buried his face in her hair.

“When I left England, I didn’t yet know what else he’d been doing, who else he’d been hurting,” he confessed. “I thought it was only me, that it was all my fault every time he took a strap to me.”

She nuzzled her face against his neck to provide whatever physical solace she could. “That isnevera child’s fault.”

“How is a boy to know any differently when he knows nothing else?”

“But surely, your mother—”

He placed a pained kiss to her lips to silence her and squeezed his eyes shut. “Mother never knew. She still doesn’t.”

Olivia pulled back just far enough to search his face. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

“Pride,” he admitted quietly with a small shrug, “shame, fear… My mother loved me, and I feared that if I told her about the beatings, I would have to tell her why I’d deserved them. I was terrified she’d agree with the earl that I was wicked and a disappointment as a son, and I didn’t want to lose her love, too.”

“How could your mother not have known?” Her heart broke for the little boy he’d been, for all the terror and pain he’d suffered during what should have been the happiest years of his life. And at the hands of the man who should have loved and protected him. “If you were being beaten that severely—”

“Because Bivvens helped me hide it and never told a soul. Because she had her own troubles to deal with. Because the earl never beat me where the marks would show.” He wrapped both arms around her and whispered into her ear, “You didn’t see the scars on the backs of my legs tonight, and I was inside you. Ifyouwere that close and didn’t see them… As I said, I was very good at hiding it.”

When a sob escaped her, he placed a kiss to her hair to comfort her.

“That was why I left England. I wasn’t willing to endure it any longer.” He paused. “I knew that if he raised a hand to me again, I would have killed him.”

She gazed at him through tear-blurred eyes, yet she could clearly see the raw pain and barely controlled anger that seethed inside him even now after all these years.

“I was eighteen, finished at Eton, and expected to return home to Pelham Park. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I called in every favor I could to purchase an army commission. I didn’t tell anyone where I’d gone until I set foot in Portugal, not even the Sinclair ladies. I made certain they couldn’t stop me.” He lowered his voice and muttered, “I was in northern Spain when word reached me that the earl had died. By the time I arrived in England, I’d missed his funeral.” Harshness edged his voice. “I thank God every day that I didn’t have to sit in the church and pretend to mourn when I was happy he was dead and couldn’t hurt anyone again.”

“But he is,” she whispered. “He’s still hurting you.”

He stepped out of her arms. Lowering his face so she couldn’t make eye contact, he tugged again at all his clothing to bring it fully into place. Despite that, he still looked like a man who had just scandalously made love. And one who was relentlessly haunted.

“He’s dead and buried where he belongs. But you—” Finally, he lifted his gaze and looked at her, and the grief that darkened his face took her breath away. “I couldn’t bear to know that you might also be hurting people by hiding behind a façade. Or if you were hurting yourself.”

His earlier words returned to her… “You said you wanted to save me. That’s what you meant.”

He gave a hard nod. “Yes.”

“Then we have a problem.” She cupped his face between her hands. “Because you can’t save me until you save yourself.”