Page 53 of The Duke and the Darkness

“Truly?” She arched a brow at his indifference and returned to him, empty-handed. No cloth to clean the wound except for his cravat, no water to wet it… “Because to me, it looks like you’ve been beaten.” She dunked the neckcloth unceremoniously into his glass of brandy. “Repeatedly.”

“If you’re going to answer your own questions, there’s no point in asking me.” Frowning at the cravat in his glass, he slowly pulled it out of the brandy and dangled the long piece of cloth in the air. His mouth twisted as he watched it drip onto the floor. “That was a waste of perfectly good cognac.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Taking back the soaked cloth, she brought his arm toward her. She dabbed as gently as possible at the long, bloodied wound sliced into his forearm.

He sucked in a harsh breath through clenched teeth at the sting of the liquor, and his arm flexed, the muscle tightening. But to his credit, he didn’t pull away. He might be keeping secrets of his own, but at least he wasn’t running away from them. Or from her. She admired that.

The dried blood slowly washed away to reveal a long but clean cut. It would be painful until it healed, certainly, but he was in no danger of bleeding to death or losing his arm. She would have said he would have an ugly scar, but… Well, one surreptitious glance at what she could see of his back told her he cared little about that.

“It might need stitches.” She wound the neckcloth around his forearm as a makeshift bandage and tied it off as gently as she could. It would do for now. “We should send for a surgeon.”

“No need.” He glanced down at his arm. “I’ve had worse.”

“So I see.” She dared to step behind him and run her fingers over the hard ridges of the old scars. His muscles quivered beneath her touch, yet he didn’t walk away. Something dark and unspoken told her he needed to reveal them as much as she needed to see them. Whatever had put them there, it wasn’t an accident. “Who did this to you?”

“You’ve been studying my family for years.” He turned his head to ask her quietly over his shoulder, “Don’t you recognize my father’s handiwork when you see it?”

Her hand froze. “Dartmoor did this…to his own son?” Her fingertips curled into his back muscle as shock and revulsion surged through her. She whispered in little more than a breathless rasp, “I knew he was despicable, but this… Oh, dear God.” She swallowed down the bile rising in her throat. “When?”

“For years, starting when I was just a boy, still in the schoolroom.”

He took a slow step forward and moved just out of her reach. Her empty hand fell to her side.

“He had flares of anger he would take out on whoever—or whatever—he could.” Devlin set down his empty glass and reached for the bottle itself to raise to his lips for a long drink. Although he now carefully kept his front turned toward her, he didn’t meet her gaze as he quietly continued, “Horses, dogs…me, Mother, Margaret…or whatever servant was nearby.”

“Not Theodora?”Please God, not Teddy!

He shook his head. “She was too young and still out of his reach in the nursery.”

Relief eased down her shoulders, yet she nodded in the direction of his back. “It wasn’t hands that did that.”

“No. This was the work of switches, straps, an occasional riding crop.” He shrugged in macabre acceptance. “At least the fireplace poker never broke the skin.”

She placed her hand on her belly. Good heavens, she was going to be sick! “And your mother—she knew?”

Despite his attempt to keep his face inscrutable, Peyton could see his pain. “There was nothing she could do to stop it. She tried, only for him to turn his anger onto her. So she protected me the only way she could by sending me away to Eton, where I learned to fight.” He set down the bottle on the bedside stand and faced her, his arms crossed over his bare chest and unknowingly calling attention to the size and definition of his biceps and shoulders. “When I was eighteen and returned home from school, I was finally able to stop him.”

“You did more than that, though, didn’t you?” She closed the distance between them. With her eyes never leaving his, she reached a trembling hand to his cheek. Even now, so many years after the event, she felt the fury still lingering inside him.

“I told him that if he ever touched any of us again, I’d kill him. I meant it.”

He turned his head to place a kiss to her palm, but there was nothing desirous about the gesture. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a promise…to protect her from her father’s ghost just as he’d protected his family from his father.

But he couldn’t protect her from the past. That was a battle she had to win on her own.

She cupped his face between her hands and rose up on tiptoes to bring her lips to his. She blinked hard to keep the stinging tears at bay as she tenderly moved her mouth against his.

Slowly, the tension faded from him, and she felt him relax, even when she slid her arms around his waist and stepped into his embrace. She buried her face against his shoulder and closed her eyes to absorb this moment within the solid circle of his arms. She needed his strength and resolve, now more than ever.

“You had your family and friends to help you,” she whispered against the bare skin of his neck. “Even now you have them.” Her arms tightened their hold on him as she dared to whisper the thought that now tortured her. “How will I go on without Wilkins and Proctor to help me?” Her voice was little more than a rasping breath. “If they were killed tonight…”

“You don’t know yet that you’ve lost them. The explosion came from the rear of the cellar near the service yard. Your butler got out, so did the maids and footmen. If they all got out, Wilkins and Proctor might have, too. You have to hold on to that hope until we know more.”

She nodded, her chin rubbing against his shoulder with each bob of her head. Yet she remained wholly unconvinced.

He stepped back with a tender caress of his knuckles across her cheek. “Now, you need to rest.” He pulled back the covers of the bed, then held out his hand. “I can’t offer you a hot bath towash away the night, but I can provide a soft mattress and clean sheets.”

She looked at the bed and shook her head. She wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink, no matter how physically and emotionally drained she was.