“I thought it might be something like that.”
“My mother was a good woman. Absolutely faithful to my father in marriage. The sin my father could never forgive her for happened beforethey were married. She conceived a child with the village blacksmith. That child was me. Her parents forced her to marry my father to cover the scandal, and because she was an heiress, and he was a duke. The match was socially acceptable.”
“And the village blacksmith...?”
“Owen Blake. Her parents paid him a fortune to stay silent. He’s dead now. I visited his grave once. He never married, true to my mother’s memory to the last. I’m the only child he sired.”
“How did your father learn of the deception?”
“She gave birth to me too soon after the wedding. I had blue eyes, and my mother’s blond hair, but the timing was too suspicious. He became convinced that I wasn’t his son. It ate away at him, like a cancerous tumor. He beat my mother. And he beat me. He finally forced her to confess that she’d been with child when they married, but she never told him who my father was, no matter how hard he beat her. She was afraid that he’d kill her former lover. She only told me my true father’s name the night she died.”
Viola stroked his jaw, her heart breaking. “West, I’m so very sorry.”
“I was born into a loveless marriage. He vented his hatred and his anger on me and my mother. She was so sad all the time. I was always trying to make her more cheerful. And when Bertram was born, my father smiled upon her for the first time. But not upon me. He hated me, but he couldn’t disinherit me because I’d been born within wedlock. The only revenge he could take was to will away the settlement my mother had come to themarriage with—her lands, her fortune—and give it all to Bertram, instead of me.”
“But Bertram died. Didn’t it revert to you?”
“My father was too vindictive for that. His will stated that in the event of Bertram’s death, my uncle would inherit his fortune. The estate, Westbury Abbey, renamed after it came to my father through marriage, became a symbol to me of his hatred. It’s owned by my uncle, who’s not a bad fellow, but extremely negligent. While I was busy gambling and being a right bastard, my uncle was traveling abroad for years and has allowed the estate to go to hell. And I’ve done nothing to save it. I was too busy being wicked.”
“What did your father say to you that day after Bertram was born, when he called you into his study?”
“He told me the shameful story of my birth. Informed me that he was going to will everything of my mother’s to Bertram. And reiterated the refrain I’d heard my whole life: I was bad and stained. A symbol of sin. And the punishment he administered so liberally was for my own good. To stamp out the wickedness of my origins.”
“And so you began to hate yourself, punish yourself for a crime you never committed. Your birth wasn’t your fault. You can’t take the blame for the break it caused between your father and mother.”
“Everything that happened after that day is my fault. The depraved path I chose to tread.”
“It’s never too late to choose a new path.”
“Jax Smith told me that. But I’ve been downhere in the darkness too long, Viola. I don’t know any other way to live.”
He brushed her hair away from her cheek. “I’ve been broken ever since that day in the study with my father. I have no idea how to become whole again. My soul is heavy with the weight of my misdeeds. I have anger wrapped like a lead weight around my neck, bowing my head toward the earth until I can’t see the sky.”
“You’re not broken.” She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “You only think you are. You champion your sisters, you love them dearly. And they love you in return. They want your affection, your pride, and your encouragement. All of which I’ve seen you give them over the last weeks.”
“I want to believe that I can be a better man, a better brother. But I’ve been bad so long.”
“Your father beat that message into you, over and over again. Hearing that you were sinful made you believe it was so. But it’s just a story you’ve told yourself so many times that it became your reality. You walk down the same shadowy path in your mind every single day and you end up in a big deep hole. Maybe if you read those letters your father wrote to you, you’d be able to find your way back into the light.”
“I don’t think so. I’m still down here, sunk in a deep, dark hole, and you’re up there, in the light, living life with a smile and a song. Worlds away from me.”
“You know that I’ve faced difficulties. That my life hasn’t been moonbeams and fairy tales. Youknow that my smile is hard-won. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. We don’t have to be our thoughts. That voice in your head telling you that you’re bad and tainted. You can hear it, acknowledge it, but you don’t have to live it, or live up to it. Forgive your father and then forgive yourself. We all fail, we all fall.”
“I fell harder than most. I chose to fall.”
“And you can choose to forgive yourself. You’ll never be able to love yourself, or anyone else, until you forgive your father. I can’t make you believe in love but I do know this... I love you, West. I’ve fought very hard against it but I can’t help myself.”
“You can’t love me. I’ve been honest with you about my feelings on the subject.”
“You don’t have a choice in the matter. I love you, West. And I loved what you did to me, what we did together in this bed. And against the wall.”
“Did you now?” His voice dropped to a low growl. “I loved it, too.”
“There, you see? You do love something... fornication!”
He snorted.
“And you’re rather skilled at it, I must say.” Keep things playful. Keep him smiling. Don’t allow him to dwell too much in the darkness. Keep him here with her.