“Thank God,” she whispered.
“Thank God indeed. Because he was trying to get me to sign away several significant, unentailed pieces of property. To deed them to him outright.”
She gasped. “Could he have gotten away with that?”
“If I hadn’t caught it? Probably. He was my guardian. If I’d been a less clever boy, by the time I’d reached my majority, I would have forgotten all about signing some pieces of paper. He would already have been handling the properties for some years, perhaps even selling them, and I would have assumed they’d always been his.”
“So you didn’t sign those papers.”
“I did not.” He stared off ahead of them, his voice dropping to a monotone. “And thus began our battle of wills. He tried cajoling me. I was unmoved. He tried caning me. That only made me more willful. He tried starving me. I refused to yield, even though it sometimes went for days.”
Anger laced his words now. “Damned bastard knew that a boy that age is always hungry, so withholding food was his favorite method. He wassureI would give in.” He gritted his teeth. “And I was determined I wouldn’t.”
“Oh, Grey,” she said, her heart breaking for the child he’d been, forced into a battle not of his making. “How long did it last?”
“Off and on for three years, until I went to school. Thankfully, my real father did have the good sense to stipulate which school I was to attend at thirteen.” When she muttered a curse on his behalf, he added, “But until then . . . my uncle would be nice to me for a while, to lull me into letting my guard down, I suppose. Then he would start some new method of trying to force my compliance.”
“That’s appalling!” she cried. She could hardly bear to think of young Grey going from a blissful childhood to one of such cruelty. “Why didn’t you tell someone? Ask for help from someone?”
“How? Ask whom?” He gave her a sad smile. “He controlled that household entirely. He examined every letter I wrote before it could be posted. I knew no one in England, and I had no other guardian. My reckless fool of a real father never thought to designate a team of trustees as he should have done because he assumed that my mother would always be in England to look out for me. But then, I suppose my real father didn’t expect to die of an ague in his forties, either, while I was still a babe.”
He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Do you know what’s ironic? I found out a few hours ago that the properties he was fighting to gain were probably the same ones I would have lost if Mother had broken the will and kept me with her. In standing against him, I made Mother’s sacrifice worth it.”
“But not worth it to you, I take it.”
She felt his arm tense. This was obviously difficult for him, baring his feelings to her. Probably to anyone. He seemed to be a very private man.
“I honestly don’t know anymore. Fighting my uncle made me strong, but missing my family was almost unbearable. So I . . . cut myself off from them because it hurt too much to think of all I’d lost.”
She wanted to cry; she wanted to rage at his awful uncle. It wasn’t fair. “I can’t imagine going through such a thing and holding firm. You must have had a will of iron.”
“You, too, to endure your own uncle’s mistreatment without letting on to anyone else it was happening. We both had our secrets to keep and our reasons to keep them.”
“Perhaps, but at leastmytorment didn’t start until I was sixteen. You were so very young. How did you stand it?”
“Believe it or not, Vanessa helped me. She was just a baby, but I knew what babies were like. After all, my mother had borne four in rapid succession after she bore me. So at my uncle’s, I used to sneak into the nursery and talk to Vanessa and listen to her babble. It felt . . . familiar. I could almost pretend I was home. I suppose the nursemaid felt sorry for me, because she told no one and tolerated my visits.”
Beatrice ignored the quick stab of jealousy in her heart. “That’s why you wanted to keep Vanessa from being hurt by that announcement.”
He nodded. “And that’s why she and I could never marry. In many respects, she’s as much a sister to me as Gwyn. More, in fact, since I only really knew Gwyn until she was six, and I’ve known Vanessa her whole life.”
“But your aunt didn’t care that neither of you wanted to marry each other.”
“No. Since my uncle never succeeded in gaining all the property they wanted from me, the next best thing for her was to have me wed Vanessa and thus have her become a duchess with access to all the wealth of the dukedom anyway.”
Beatrice stared up at him. “So how did you resolve the matter without making it look publicly as if you’d changed your mind about marrying Vanessa?”
“Before I tell you that, I need to ask you something.” He halted in the middle of the path to glance around. “And here seems an excellent place to do it.”
She followed his gaze to the huge log where they’d first kissed, and her pulse jumped.
He took her hands. “My previous proposals of marriage left much to be desired, so I’m going to try again.” His tone turned solemn. “Dearest Beatrice, I cannot live without you. I’m in love with you. Please do me the honor of making you my bride.”
She would swear her heart stopped. “You . . . you love me?”
His eyes sparkled. “More than life, sweetheart. I’ve been afraid to love for so long that I didn’t recognize the feeling until I was in the middle of it. Then I panicked a bit. Loving someone means risking heartbreak. And I’ve always feared heartbreak more than anything.”
“With good reason, I suppose, given how your wretched aunt and uncle treated you.” She covered his hands with hers. “But without risk, there’s no reward. Surely a man famous for shrewd dealings like yourself can see that.”
