Page 42 of Atone, Adonis

He said nothing but his face was twisting away from the soft, honest features that had been there a moment ago. And she couldn’t—she couldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t let that other man go. Not for the snide Earl of Chester.

“Fred,” she finally said, her voice breaking a little because she knew if she did not ask now, she never would. “Please don’t do this to me. Please tell me the truth. I just can’t…I just don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, Jules?”

“How you are this man and that one? How you could have…” Her shoulders hunched again. The last thing she wanted was more tears or for him to run as he had last time she’d brought up the subject of the carriage accident, but she wasn’t sure she could stop either of those things from happening. And she felt like now was the moment—if she didn’t ask, outright, she might never have another chance. “What happened that night? You’ve never spoken of it.”

“I—” he began but his voice cracked.

She took a step toward him and this time, she took his hand in hers. “Tell me. I know there’s more to it than the story. I know it. There’s too much to you for that stupid story to be all of it.”

“Don’t ask me to tell you this, Jules. You aren’t going to like what you hear.”

She could feel his pulse throbbing in the skin of his wrists. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest, his heart beating too hard. “I have already asked you. And I won’t take the words back now that I’ve gotten them out.”

He inhaled. And then he looked at her, his expression pained before it settled into decision. “I was at Hawthorne Hall that night,” he said finally and took in another sharp inhalation. “I was with the Baroness Van Austerleigh.”

Julianna felt those words like a jab to her stomach. She’d hoped that rumor might have been a fabrication. Understanding it wasn’t was more unsettling than she’d like it to be. “I see.”

“But I came home alone. I left when the storm began in earnest and…I…I came across the accident. I didn’t cause it. Your carriage was overturned. And so was another. Eva’s carriage. She was driving, not me.”

“Your stepmother? Fred! Why would you say it was you?”

She was thinking of Fred hemming her gowns because Eva couldn’t stand strangers. Of making her meals. Of the secret she knew he’d been keeping from her.

So it wasn’t as much of a surprise as it might have been when he said, “She was so sick, Jules. Her memory was gone. But I didn’t realize it. I was a stupid, stupid boy and I wasn’t paying attention when I should have been the man of the house. I should have known.”

“Fred—” She thought carefully about what she wanted to say then. He hadn’t been a child, true, but he’d only been ten and eight. Not quite an adult either. And she thought of Thomas when he’d come home from Crimea, how he’d tried to hide the cough at first. And then the shaking of his hands. “She may have been hiding it from you.”

The look on his face broke her heart. The way his features caved in on themselves and he looked stark and raw—stricken even—and his hand was clutching at his chest again as if he couldn’t breathe.

“She may have been. Jules, she couldn’t remember anything by that time. How could I not have known? How could I have not seen it for what it was?”

It wasn’t your fault, she nearly said but didn’t. She remembered how his clarity around Thomas’s death had been more comforting than any platitudes could be. And so she asked instead, “What is it exactly, that you’re blaming yourself for?”

“I wasn’t paying attention when I should have been and I left her alone.” He wiped his palm down his face and closed his eyes. “Even though I knew something wasn’t right. She misplaced things and she couldn’t remember words but I thought she was just getting older. I didn’t know, truly, the extent of it, but I should have. If I hadn’t let the Baroness—” He shook his head. “If I hadn’t had my own head stuck firmly up my arse, I would have understood more. I would have stayed home. She took the carriage because I was out and there was no one to stop her.”

“So you lied?”

There was that sharp inhalation of breath again. “Yes.”

“And you took her to the Continent to protect her?”

“She could never have withstood a trial. Or questioning by the magistrate. So, yes.”

Julianna knew what she wanted to say now. “Fred, you made the best decision you could with the information you had.”

“I made bad choices.”

“You may have only had bad choices to make.”

He looked as if he were about to say more, then shook his head. “You have to understand—I was awful to her after my father died and I felt so guilty about it. It wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t done anything but try to love me but I blamed her. You wouldn’t remember, you were too young, but I was such an angry child. Lonely and scared.”

She had known that though, hadn’t she? She’d thought it herself just a few days ago. He must have been so lonely to have spent every day with the Farrow siblings.

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. He’d been a child when his father died. Of course he’d blamed the only parent he had. Of course he’d tried to protect Eva.

Of course.