Alec understood the dog’s response. He, too, was happier when they were together. After they’d given the dogs proper attention, he took her hand again and led her to her chamber—the tiny room beneath the stairs that remained just as she’d left it, filled with books and papers and silk stockings draped over the bedpost.
He set the painting down, leaned it against her trunk as she watched, confusion in her eyes. “Here?”
He nodded. “It is the only place in the house—in all the houses—that is full of you.”
“Too full of me,” she said. “There is barely room for us both.”
Precisely the point. Because once he had told her all his truths, she would not wish him there any longer. And he would have no choice but to leave, because there would be no room to stay.
She seemed to understand the reasoning without his speaking it aloud, her brow furrowing as she reached for his other hand, as though she could keep him if she held on very tightly.
But she could not keep him. Not when he—
“Tell me,” she said softly. “Whatever it is—”
He took a deep breath, knowing what the truth would do. Hating what it would do. And then he released her hands and did as she asked.
He told her everything.
Chapter 21
ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WARD
“I left Scotland when I was twelve.”
Lily did not know what she expected him to say, but she did not expect that. And then, “I should say, I ran from Scotland when I was twelve.”
She desperately wished to touch him, to make sure he understood that whatever he said to her, whatever had happened in his past, she was with him. But she had learned enough about Alec Stuart in the past ten days to know that touching him would do nothing but remind him of the burden he carried. And so, instead, she clasped her hands together and sat, perched on the edge of her little bed, as though it were perfectly normal to be here.
“My mother left when I was eight.” He looked down at his hands, large and strong and perfect. “I remember very little of her, but I remember how my father responded to her leaving. He was angry and full of regret. And when she died mere months later—”
It took all Lily’s strength not to push him.
He regrouped. “The messenger came and my father read the news in front of me. He showed no emotion. And he would not countenance mine.”
Lily closed her eyes at the words. He’d been a child. And no matter who she was, or what kind of mother she had been, she’d been just that. His mother.
“Alec,” she said, wanting him close. He started at the words and met her eyes. “You shall hit your head if you are not careful. Sit? Please?”
She would have done anything for him to sit with her. But, instead, he chose the little chair at the desk, pulling it out and dwarfing it with his size. With his glory. She drank him in, aware of their knees, inches apart in the little space. “Go on.”
“All I remember of her was that she spoke of England. Of how it suited her. Of how she loved it. Of how much better it was than Scotland.”
She smiled. “I suppose she could have come up with three things superior to those of Scotland.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “Likely more than three.” He grew serious. “I missed her, oddly. It did not matter that she was not the best of mothers. And so, as she had, I, too, longed for England.” He laughed, small and quiet. “I know that must be difficult to believe.”
“Self-proclaimed reviler of all things English as you are.”
“Not all things English. I find I have warmed to one thing.” The words shot through her. He meant her. And still, he did not let them linger. “I wanted to go to England. To follow her. To see the country she loved. The place she longed for with such intensity that she left her child to find it.”
He stopped, lost in the story, his hands coming together, the fingers of one hand finding the scar on the other. The one his father had given him. She watched those hands for a long moment, wishing she could soothe them. Finally, she said, “And?”
“My father wouldn’t have it. He vowed to disown me. To cut me off if I left.” Lily’s heart began to pound. “And I did not care. I wrote to everyone I could find. Distant relatives—my father was vaguely English, as well, you’ll not be surprised to discover, considering I was seventeenth in line for a dukedom.”
She smiled. “I imagine he would have been equally thrilled to inherit.”
“Likely less thrilled,” Alec allowed.
“And so?” she asked.
“A distant relative sent a letter. Called in a chit. Whatever it was, it worked. And I had a spot at a school. My father did as he’d promised—told me I could never come home. But I did not care. My tuition was paid in full. A generous relative.” He smiled, rubbing his scarred hand over the back of his neck and suddenly looking very much like the boy he must have been. “Perhaps one of the sixteen. That would be ironic.”
Lily envisioned him, king of the schoolboys, handsome and tall and better at every sport there was. “I imagine you were terribly popular.”
His head snapped up, his brown eyes meeting hers. “They hated me.”
Impossible. “How is that—”
“I was tall like a reed, all bones and Scots braggadocio. And they were born of venerable titles and ancient lands and more money than I could ever imagine. I was an imposter, and they knew it. They judged it. And they beat the arrogance from me.”
She felt the words like the blows they described. And still, she shook her head. “They were children. They could not have—”
“Children are the worst of all,” he said. “At least adults judge quietly.”
“And so?”
“For the first three years, I had no choice. I was poor, forced to clean floors and wash windows in the time I did not study in order to pay for the bits that tuition did not cover, and they could smell it on me, the need for funds.” He smiled, lost in the memory, and she could see young Alec there, the little boy alone and desperate for companionship. It was something Lily understood keenly.
Something she would never wish upon another.
“King was the only boy who wasn’t cruel.”
The words made her wish the Marquess of Eversley were there, so she could thank him for his long-ago kindness. But she had a feeling the story did not end with the two boys as happy companions.