He reached into his trouser pocket and extracted a scrap of fabric. Threadbare and worn. Her gaze fell to it as he rubbed his thumb over the embroidery, the tin pin attached. She wanted to take it, he knew. To investigate it. But she didn’t, and he was torn between giving it to her and hiding it away—at once wanting to share it and terrified of it, of the proof that he would never be enough. He settled for holding it in his palm, revealing the once-fine red M, now faded to brown and barely able to hold together. His talisman.
His past.
He wanted her to understand. “I was ten when he came—at night, ironically. They came to fetch me from the boys’ quarters and I can still see the light of the dean’s candle.” He squeezed her hand without knowing. “I thought I was saved. My father brought me to the country, to an estate that rivaled anything I’d ever dreamed. He introduced me to my brothers.” He paused, then repeated, “And I thought I’d been saved.”
Her grasp tightened, her fingers threading through his own, as though she could already see the past.
“I hadn’t been,” he said. “I’d exchanged one kind of darkness for another.”
Devil could feel Felicity’s keen focus, razor-sharp and without cease. He did not look at her. He couldn’t. Instead, he continued to speak to her hand, turning it over, running his thumb over her knuckles, savoring the feel of the peaks and valleys of them. “The day of our birth should have been an embarrassment of riches for a father. Four children. Three boys and a girl.” He shook his head. “I should not take glee from it, knowing as I do how the story ends, but I am proud to say that all my father wanted that day was an heir, and he did not receive one. The only one he might have been able to pass off as heir was born a girl. And the others—” He looked to the starlit sky. “We were all bastards.”
He tried to release her, but she wouldn’t have it. Her hand clasped his ever more tightly as he continued. “But my father was nothing if not shrewd. And for him, name was more important than fortune. Or future. Or truth. And he claimed an heir had been born. A son.”
Felicity’s eyes went wide. “That’s illegal.”
Not just illegal. Punishable by death when the heir would inherit a dukedom.
“No one discovered it? No one said anything?” It was impossible to believe, Devil knew. Late at night, he often struggled with the memory of it, certain he had it wrong. The house had been filled with servants. So many should have noticed. Should have spoken up.
But he’d been there. And the memories did not lie.
He shook his head. “It never occurred to anyone to go looking. Grace was kept in the country—never brought to town, something her mother was more than happy to allow, as Grace, too, was a bastard. A handful of old, loyal servants were allowed to stay with them. And my father had a plan. After all, he had three sons. By-blows, certainly, but sons nonetheless. When we were ten, he collected us. Brought us to the country house, and told us his plan.
“One of us, you see, would be heir. Rich beyond measure. Educated in the best schools. He would never want for anything. Food, drink, power, women, whatever he wanted.”
Her grasp threatened to stop the circulation of his blood through his fingers. “Devil,” she whispered.
He looked to her then. “Devon.”
It was important she remember that now, the name that he’d inherited not from a family, but from nothing. Important, too, that he remember it, here with her as pure temptation—making him wish he could take her for his own. He hadn’t won the competition. He was not the duke. He was still nothing.
Memories swirled. Whit, reed-thin and small, with too many teeth in his little face, his impish smile big and bright. Grace, tall and sturdy, with sunken sad eyes. And Ewan, all long legs and sharp bones, like a foal. And with a monstrous determination.
“One of us would inherit everything. And the others, they would receive a different fate. A lesser one.”
“How?” she whispered to him. “How did he choose?”
Devil shook his head. “He would tell you he didn’t choose. He would tell you we chose.”
“How?”
“We fought for it.”
She exhaled at the revelation, harsh and low. “Fought how?”
He looked to her then, finally able to meet her gaze. Eager to see the horror in it. Ready for her to understand from where he had come. And how. Ready for her to see what he had known from the start—that he was so far beneath her that he might as well be in hell.
When she was gone from his life, he would be in hell.
“However he asked.”
She clutched his hand, her grip stronger than he would have imagined it could be. “No. That’s madness.”
He nodded. “The physical challenges were easy. First sticks and stones. Fists and fire. But the mental ones—those were the ones that destroyed us. He’d lock us up, alone in the dark.” He hated telling her, but somehow, couldn’t stop the words from coming. “Tell us that we could be set free, into the light, if we’d choose another to fight.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“He gave us gifts, took them away. Sweets. Toys . . .” He paused, a memory teasing at the edge of his mind. “He gave me a dog. Let it keep me warm in the dark for days. And then told me I could keep it forever if I traded it for one of the others.”
She pressed closer to him. Wrapped her arms around him, as though she could ward off the memory. “No.”
He shook his head and looked to the sky, sucking in air. “I refused. Whit was my brother. Grace my sister. And Ewan . . .”
Ewan had been the only one allowed to keep his dog.
What had Ewan done?
Felicity shook her head. Pressed her face into his arm. “No.”
His arm came around her, stroking over her hair, pulling her tight against him. Ewan would never have Felicity.
“He wanted the strongest of us for his heir. The hungriest.” He wanted the son who would give him a legacy. “At some point, I stopped competing. I simply tried to keep the others safe.”
“You were children,” she whispered, and he heard the wound in her voice, as though she’d never imagined such torture. “Surely someone tried to stop his crimes.”
“They are only crimes if they are discovered,” he said quietly. “We found ways to stay together. Ways to keep sane. We made promises to each other, never to let him win. Never to let him take us from each other.”
Felicity was looking down at her lap now, and he knew this was the ending. That she wouldn’t return to Covent Garden after this story. She wouldn’t return to him. He forced himself to finish. “But when it came down to it . . . we weren’t strong enough.” The scar on his cheek burned with the memory of Ewan’s blade, sharp and unpleasant. With the order that had caused it. His father’s voice ringing out in the darkness.
If you want it, boy, you must take it from the others.
Ewan coming for him.
He exhaled, extinguishing the memory. “We had no choice but to run.”
She did not look up. “Here.”
He nodded.
“How long were you there?”
“Two years. We were twelve when we left.”
Her breath came on a harsh exhale. “Two years.”
He pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her temple. “We survived it.”
She looked to him, long enough for her beautiful gaze to set his heart to racing. “I wish I could give those years back.”