“I wish I could have spared you that pain, Phillipa,” he said softly.
She reached across the table and touched his hand. It was the briefest and lightest of touches, but he felt the warmth of her glide up his arm, through his blood, sliding into every part of him.
“Once again, it wasn’t your fault.” She shook her head as she rested her hand back in her lap and clenched it. “I don’t know how to convince you otherwise when you are so eager to accept the blame.”
He let out a long breath. “I suppose it is old habit. Trying to…prove my worth by never failing.”
They were briefly interrupted by the serving woman, who explained the offerings from the kitchen. When they had made their selections and he had chosen a bottle of wine, the servant left. Phillipa met his gaze.
“Would you tell me a little about it?” she asked.
He grabbed for the bottle the girl had left on the table and opened it before he answered. “About my family? My life?”
She nodded. “You know a great deal about me. I’m sure you had many reports from Owen. Thorough ones.”
“Not as thorough as you might think,” he muttered, because he had pored over those very reports after he met her and always longed for more information about her, more personal connection he could cling to. “But I understand your meaning. The fact is that you are the victim of a very long story that culminated in my brother’s death. And you deserve to know why, I think. Deserve to see a layer peeled back after so many of your own have been exposed.”
She pursed her lips as if to disagree with that statement, but her curiosity must have gotten the better of her, because at last she nodded.
He drew a breath, poured the wine and took a long sip. “The last Earl of Leighton, my father, was a complicated man. He had married my mother by arrangement almost the moment she came out into Society and got her with child nearly as quickly.”
Phillipa shifted at the delicate topic. “They must have had a great passion for each other.”
“On the contrary,” he said with a shake of his head. “I think the earl simply wanted to dispatch his duty as swiftly and efficiently as possible so that he could set her aside and get on with his life.”
“That must have been difficult to watch.”
He took another drink of wine. “I’m sure it would have been. Only my mother died when I was just two years old. I don’t remember her. I only know what she looks like thanks to a portrait done of her as a wedding gift to the couple. My father hid it in an attic, but it now hangs in my hall at Gramtham Hills, my estate in Leighton.”
“I’m so sorry. I knew your mother died—Erasmus always mentioned you had different mothers—but I didn’t know it was when you were so young.”
Rhys shrugged as though it didn’t matter, even though that wasn’t true. “Within six months of her death, my father remarried. Erasmus’s future mother, a woman who despised me because I would take what she felt any children of hers were owed. She was never friendly, insisted I call her Lady Leighton or my lady.”
“But you were just a child,” Phillipa breathed. “How could she not look at you and feel warmth or connection?”
He was happy for the interruption of the server bringing their supper. It allowed him to gather his thoughts, control his emotions. It was something he’d always been good at, but the ability frayed when he was around this woman.
When they were alone again, he snagged her stare. “Like you do with my brother’s son?” he asked. “Do his connections, the fact that he is proof of a betrayal…does it not bother you?”
She was the one to drink now. “I won’t say I wasn’t devastated when I realized he was your brother’s illegitimate son. But that is not his fault. And now when I look at him, all I see are pudgy cheeks and a sweet smile. All I want is to protect him and to make certain he is happy.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, and then he choked out a breath that he hoped sounded more like a laugh than a sob. “Well, you are twice the woman than Lady Leighton was. She only got worse when she bore my father his second son, his spare. She doted on Erasmus and froze me out of their family circle all the more.”
“Your father had no drive to protect you?” she asked.
“If he had been indifferent to his first wife, he seemed quite the opposite with his second. He adored her and their child. They were the family of his heart and he allowed her free rein to treat me as she saw fit. All he cared about was that I was properly trained to become earl. When I dared complain about her coldness when I was ten or eleven, he stuck me so hard my ears rang and told me that I should thank her.”
“Thank her,” she repeated, her voice trembling. “For what?”
“That she wasn’t making me soft,” he said. “He told me competition was good for a man, including competition for affection. That I never won the day was a reflection on me, not on my stepmother or my half-brother or him. I had to try harder.”
“I am so very sorry,” she said, and touched his hand again. This time she let it linger, and he stared at her fingers draped across his flesh. She removed them again, this time with a blush.
“What is it you keep saying to me?” he asked. “That I should not apologize for actions that weren’t my own?”
“I can still be sorry it happened to you,” she said. “Because you didn’t deserve such terrible neglect. You were a child—your family should have been driven to protect and embrace you.”
“As yours did?” he asked.
She worried her lip, and he made a show of eating both to put her at ease but also to catch up since she had been eating as he spoke while he had hardly touched his own food.
“My father wished for a son to further his fortunes. I was a disappointment, but one he felt he could still benefit from, if only I were molded properly,” she said. “So if yours harmed through neglect, mine did the same through an excess of intrusion. They poked and prodded and told me I had to change, do better, be better…until I managed to marry the second son of an earl.”
He shook his head. “Great God. And what a mess that turned out to be.”
“Oh, yes. My father wrote me in a rage while I was in London. He blamed me for what Erasmus did. He…he cut me off. That is why I was loath to speak about them in the carriage.”
He flinched. Here he had hoped he was returning Phillipa to a loving family who could support her in this difficult time. But it seemed he was not the only one alone in the world.
And yet they were the two people who couldn’t reach for each other for comfort.
“I ought not have pried,” he said, pushing his half-eaten food aside.
“Why not? I certainly did,” she said.
“But you are owed answers. My brother lied.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Yes, he did. Often and with great talent. But you never do.”
There was something in her tone that made him focus all the harder on her. They locked stares, and for a moment it felt like everything in the world faded except for this woman. This remarkable woman.
“I’m sure I must,” he said, hating how rough his tone sounded to his ears. Rough with desire, would she mark it? Would she hate him for it?