The Duke's Wife (The Three Mrs #3) - Jess Michaels Page 0,87

took her hand. “Abigail, I have been privy to some of the worst moments of your life. Not because you wished me to be there, not because I was invited, but because of circumstance. I don’t think it’s so much to ask that you hear a little of my own history, painful as that exercise might be or not.”

He motioned her toward his chamber, and she followed him. They took a place together in the chairs before the fire. He settled in, and she could see he was trying to exhibit all the signs that this didn’t trouble him or move him. And yet she sensed the truth of it. She sensed a multiplication of the pain she’d felt in the antechamber.

Her hand trembled as she moved it to cover his. “Tell me,” she said softly as she stroked her fingers along the top. “I’m here. I will be here.”

And as she said those words, she realized how deeply she meant them. How much she wished to be this man’s support, his steady north star. For the first time, that desire didn’t frighten her, but it continued to mean the world to her. She would deal with the consequences of that realization later; for now she pushed it aside and put all her focus on him.

Nathan had spent the whole night telling himself how imperative this exercise was to winning Abigail. He’d focused on the outcome, that she would know him better, that she would see his vulnerability and perhaps learn to trust him more because of it.

All that remained true as he clung to her hand. And yet the reality of it hit him now. He had always been a private person. He didn’t show the emotions that burned inside of him, for good or for bad, and yet he would strip down before this woman and show her every part of himself. Every pain.

He cleared this throat. “Not many people truly know me,” he began. “Rhys is my friend, my brother, and I never troubled him with the most painful parts of my past. I think you and I are similar in that way. We self-protect.”

She nodded slowly. “I learned the hard way. I suppose you must have, as well.”

“Yes.” His voice broke a fraction. “I watched my mother lay herself bare for my father every day she lived. She cut herself open for him, gave him everything…and it was not enough. And yes, I did learn that the kind of openness she showed was folly.”

“He didn’t love her in return?” she asked.

He held back a bark of humorless laughter. “No. They had an arranged marriage, almost from the moment my mother was born. But she fell in love with him, worshipped him. He? Not so much. When she chased him, he ran. When she bore his heir, then his daughter, he hardly came home long enough to look at either of us.”

She flinched. “I am sorry. That must have broken her heart.”

“It did, I know. I saw it. She would weep and gnash her teeth and tell me all the details of what he was doing wrong, what he was doing behind her back.”

Abigail lifted her hand to her mouth. “To a child?” she gasped.

“At the time, I only wanted to comfort her. As I got older, as I became guardian to my sister and had to learn how to parent her, I could see what a burden my mother had laid on my shoulders. That she expected me to ride to her rescue when he wouldn’t.”

“What about your father?” she asked. “Was he kinder to you as he grew older?”

“No,” he said, his tone flat as memories mobbed him. “My father was more interested in whoring and drinking and gambling his way around London. He was a rake and celebrated that with every action and word. His only attachment to me was that I was to inherit his title. He only ever ignored me or harshly corrected me.”

“For what wrongs?” she asked.

“Whatever I did, it was never enough,” he said. “What was worse was that my mother was so desperate to earn his affection that she would agree with whatever he did or said. As I got older, she began to blame me when he left for days on end. If only I was better, if only I was perfect, if only—”

He cut himself off because he realized his hands were shaking as he spoke these words he had never let be said out loud. His