As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(43)

His chest tightened in grief for her. He’d lost his father, but for a little girl to lose her mother…“I’m so sorry.”

Her only acknowledgment of his sympathy was a tight nod. “The doctors said it was a fever, that there was nothing anyone could do.” She didn’t raise her eyes, sitting perfectly still as she whispered, “By dawn, she was gone.”

Her shoulders shook as she inhaled a deep breath to collect herself. Then, without meeting his gaze, she returned to her task and dabbed the whiskey-soaked linen against the scratches.

He sucked in a mouthful of air through clenched teeth at the bite of the liquor. Knowing the Hellion, he would have said she was torturing him on purpose, except for the grief that hung heavy on her brow. Not even Mariah could fake that.

“You must have been inconsolable,” he commented gently, remembering the cries of grief from his mother and Josie when his father died. Hearing them had made him feel like a piece of glass, shattered from the inside out.

“I was, because I blamed myself,” she whispered. “If I hadn’t insisted that she take us to the park, she would have still been alive.”

“You don’t know that,” he reassured her quietly. “Fevers come from all places.”

She nodded slowly. “And in time I came to accept that.”

She paused, mid-dab, her eyes not lifting from his arm. In that moment’s hesitation, he had the feeling that she wanted to say something that she wasn’t certain he wanted to hear.

Instead, she commented, “It’s been even worse for Evelyn. She was only eight and couldn’t really comprehend what death meant, except that Mama fell asleep and never woke up. For weeks afterward, she was terrified of going to sleep. After all these years, she still has trouble sleeping, and even now, she’ll sometimes stay in my room with me, especially when she has nightmares.”

The sting of the whiskey weakened as she continued to gently cleanse the scratches, but his sympathy for the Winslow sisters grew. Especially for Mariah, knowing how close she was to Evelyn, how much it must upset her not to be able to help her sister more.

“That’s why I spend so much time at the school, I suppose,” she reflected softly. “I want to help others through their grief, to let them know they’re not alone.”

Not alone. But she was wrong. In the end, everyone grieved alone. Even surrounded by a crowd of friends and family. He’d certainly learned that lesson well.

“I wish Evie could take solace in the school the way I do. But seeing the children reminds her too much of Mama, and she can’t bear it.” She paused and stilled the handkerchief against his skin. “I wonder…does the duchess ever experience that side of grief? When she looks at her sons, she must see your father in you and miss him terribly.”

“I’m certain of it,” he murmured. Mother often commented on how much her sons reminded her of their father. Especially him. She always said that with pride, not realizing how that simple comment shredded his insides. Because he’d proven himself to be nothing like the good and respectable man Richard Carlisle had been.

She set the handkerchief aside. “What was he like?”

His gut tightened as he hesitated to answer. The last person he wanted to talk with about his father was Mariah Winslow. Yet she knew the pain of losing a parent, and he ached with the harsh guilt that he kept bottled inside him. Finally, he offered succinctly, “He was a hero.”

“Oh?” She looked up at him, her eyes bright.

The sight of her unshed tears for him and his family made his own eyes sting, and he had to look away. “In the first war with the Americans. He fought at Saratoga and gave an order that ended up saving the lives of nearly every man in his regiment.” A melancholy smile tugged at his lips. “He’d been just a young officer then, but when the war ended, King George rewarded him with a barony.”

“That’s how your family ended up at Chestnut Hill.” Her fingertip traced delicately over the scratches now, ostensibly checking to make certain that she’d tended to each one, yet completely unaware of how much those soothing caresses gave him the strength to share so much about his father with her. How much they inexplicably consoled him.

“Where my father earned a reputation for being a good landowner,” he added.

Goose bumps sprang up in the wake of her fingers, but if she noticed his reaction to so slight a caress, she didn’t comment. “And a wonderful husband and father, I understand.”

“The very best,” he murmured. Could she feel his racing pulse beneath her fingertips as they grazed his wrist? It was mystifying, that this same woman who infuriated the daylights out of him also left him aching beneath her touch.

“How did he die?”

He froze. His body flashed numb at her unexpected question. Not that…Dear God, not that. He would tell her anything else she wanted to know about his father, but never that.

But her whisper came so softly, so innocently that he couldn’t bear not to answer her. She’d opened her own grieving heart to him, and she deserved better than any kind of dodging or dissembling.

He slowly pulled his arm away from her. “He was mounting his horse when someone fired off a pistol,” he said quietly. The truth—although Robert had no intention of telling her that the reason he had been mounting his horse was because Father had ridden out to find him at a gambling hell where he’d wasted away three days in drink, cards, and whores. “The horse startled. He lost his balance and fell.” He took a gasping swallow of the whiskey. “He hit his head.”