“You and I both know that parents do not always show the parental love and care that is expected, don’t we?” Theodore asked with a sigh.
Maggie nodded, as clearly, they both thought of her own father and what James hadn’t done for his daughters.
“I swear, if I ever have a child of my own, I would not be that sort of father, Maggie. I couldn’t do it.” He shook his head, vehemently. “I couldn’t let madness infect the child the way thatit infected my mother. Or the way addiction has warped your father.”
“Calm yourself.” Her hand reached out and rested on the center of his chest. He laid his fingers over it. She touched him so easily. She was not afraid of him, and he loved that. It made him want to forget running and just stay here with her. “I know you are not that sort of man, Theo. I know who you are at heart.”
“How can you when even I don’t know who I really am?” Theodore shook his head. “I’ve hidden from what I feel for so long.”
“Because the real you has come through anyway.” Maggie leaned forward. “I’ve seen you smile and laugh at breakfast with me. I remember your arms catching me the day I fell. The concern in your eyes when I hadn’t eaten. I remember how caring you were when I was being asked to dance by a man I wanted nowhere near me. You have protected me, time and time again.” She smiled, fully. “That shows my exactly what sort of man you are.”
I do not seem like a demon to her eyes.
He took her hand from his chest and turned it over, kissing her palm.
“What happened? The night of the fire?” she whispered after a minute of silence.
He took a shaky sip of tea, preparing himself for this conversation.
“I remember it. All too well, do I remember it.” He hung his head forward. “Looking back, it’s a wonder I didn’t see from the onset that it was all to kill me as well as my father, but I couldn’t see it.” He frowned, angry at himself for his blindness.
“Maybe you just didn’t want to see it, Theo. You were a boy. How were you supposed to cope with such a horror? Your mind dealt with it the only way it could, by shutting down such a thought.”
“Yes, perhaps so.” He nodded, forcing himself to look up at her as he realized how right she could be. “I had been with Mrs. Lancaster. I knew my father would be furious, but I had spent the evening with the staff. They had left me play a card game with them when I came back to my chamber and opened the door…”
He broke off, remembering the sight before him. “The fire started in my chamber.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“In your chamber?” Margaret repeated the words as she stared at Theo’s face.
His brows had contracted, his eyes scarcely able to settle on either her or the cup of tea he was struggling to hold onto. She hastily put down her own cup and moved to lay her hands over his, steadying the cup between them.
“Do you know how it started?”
“I just remember staring at the flames. It didn’t seem to be in the hearth at all, but on the rug. As if… someone had lit the fire there.” He cursed violently and hung his head. “As an adult, that seems so plain, doesn’t it? Of course, someone started the fire then.”
“You couldn’t have known. You were a boy, Theo. Would you blame a child for not seeing it?”
“No, but –”
“Exactly,” she cut him off before he could set an unrealistic expectation of himself. “It was natural for you not to see it. How did you get out of there?”
“I started yelling. I didn’t move at first. I was stuck to the spot, the terror gripping to me. I didn’t know that Mrs. Lancaster was in the corridor behind me. She ran up, grabbed my hand and dragged me away. We escaped down the servants’ stairwell and out into the stable yard.”
He sat forward, his face contorted in pain. “The fire took hold so fast, someone concluded later that it was as if more than one fire had become out of control in the hearths. What if that was not the case? What if my mother set the fire going on my hearth rug? And my father’s?”
Margaret had no doubts he was right, but she was reluctant to confirm this was any more horrific than it already was.
“I know the truth now.” He sank down, onto his haunches again. He looked down and must have seen her other wrist was still bloodied. Taking a quick sip of his tea, he put the cup down by his feet, not on the saucer, and cleaned her wound.
She noted how messy he was at this moment, but how he didn’t seem to care. Could it be that he had lost his need for neatness at last?
Perhaps his need for everything to be neat was in effort to get some control of his life.
She couldn’t blame him if such a desire were true.
“I became duke at just thirteen,” he explained in a rush, apparently wanting to be done with this conversation now. “My mother was here, already here,” he said with resentment. “The attempts at exorcisms continued, then at fifteen, I saw the truth of my father’s activities. I sought to extricate our finances from them.”
