She burrowed closer to Mason, more than glad he was as hot as a cookstove. Memories of the night before, of what he’d done, what she’d experienced, replayed in her mind. She kept her eyes closed lest he see the guilt and the raw need. Isabelle could be honest with herself—she wanted it again, and more.
“Are you playing possum?”
Her eyes popped open and she frowned at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Opossums are sneaky little critters. When something threatens them, they pretend to be dead or asleep.” He smiled at her, the whiskers shading his jaw lending him a rogue look.
“I, uh, was playing possum.” She offered him an embarrassed smile.
He kissed her forehead. “I could get used to waking up with you beside me.” His voice was soft and completely without guile. Sincerity shone from the depths of his brown eyes.
It was still early; the sun hadn’t fully risen yet. This was their opportunity to find some privacy, or at least a stolen moment or two. Isabelle opened her mouth to ask him to kiss her.
“Get your asses moving!” Camille’s voice echoed from the wagon above them. “There ain’t no room for laziness.” Stomping and cursing echoed through the still morning air.
Isabelle stared at the faded wood of the wagon bed. “Do you believe she means to leave here?”
Mason scowled. “Maybe. She did make quite a bit of money yesterday. She may want to stay here and bleed the well dry.”
He was right. Isabelle had seen much of humanity’s highs and lows over the last six months. Some of the depths people sank had shocked and saddened her. Nothing could possibly surprise her any longer. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she had adopted a measure of cynicism about people.
“I don’t know if the man who played that banjo instrument is still here.” She hoped he was gone. It would annoy Camille, which was good for Isabelle.
“I saw her slip him some money. If he’s smart, he stuck around to make some more. We are nowhere near civilization, darlin’—there are few chances to earn funds without resorting to the basest tasks.” He pointed upwards. “Unless we turn into whores, we have to play by Camille’s rules. This game is more than about getting your wagon back. It’s about fighting for our lives.”
Her lingering comfort at waking in his arms was diminished by the starkness of his words. She looked at him with new eyes. “What happened to you?”
His mouth thinned. “Many things happened in my life.”
“Don’t play with words or try to be vague. You know what I’m asking you.” She wasn’t going to let him dismiss her question. Their relationship had gone much further than simple flirtation or surviving his wounds. No, they were connected now, deep enough she wondered how she would live if he wasn’t there by her side. Love had been an unreal emotion, something she read about in books.
Until now she hadn’t understood Frankie’s need to leave their family to start with anew with John in the middle of nowhere. Isabelle was ready to give up everything to escape the Beckers with Mason and Charlie. Even if she didn’t know how they would survive, she was willing. That revealed to her more than anything where her heart was—firmly in Mason’s pocket.
“My family was unconventional, Belle. I’ve told you that. They were rich and ruthless, and everything was about appearances and money.” He shook his head. “I was born from a nest of vipers, unlike you and your sister.”
“You did not turn out like them.”
He snorted. “Oh yes I did. Don’t think you know all of my past. I’d rather not confess all my dirty secrets while we’re still courting.”
“Are we courting?” The idea delighted her, as did Mason opening up about what was eating at his soul.
“I’d like to think so. You aren’t who my mother would have approved of. I could only associate with girls from acceptable families, meaning those with money or plantations.” His mouth twisted. “Most of those girls were vapid, shallow creatures with nothing on their minds but finding a rich husband who would beat his slaves to make her more money. My brother was to be the heir, but he died from a fever when he was just a boy. That left me. The unwanted spare.”
“Did your family have slaves?” She already knew the answer.
“Yes. I never understood the entire practice and I told my father so when I was twelve.”
“What did he do?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
“Beat me within an inch of my life and locked me in my room for nearly a year. I escaped with the help of a friend, and for his part in it, my father hanged him, forced me to watch.”
She waited silently, not willing to risk him stopping his tale. Her heart wept for the boy he had been.
“After that, I became the wild, rich boy everyone expected me to be. It was easy and my parents couldn’t have been prouder.” He was very far away, so far, she took his hand to ground him back to the present. She was worried he would get lost in his past. He started at her touch but his fingers intertwined with hers. “That lasted another four years, until I grew into a man at sixteen.”
“What do you mean, grew into a man?”
“My father took me to a whorehouse. I lost my virginity to a trembling girl with a lisp. He’d paid extra for a virgin. I won’t let that happen to Charlie or you. People think they can simply use others as a means to an end. Very Machiavellian. Camille reminds me of my father.” He blinked at her, his gaze hard. “I stopped him. I will stop her somehow.”
“How did you stop him?” She held her breath, afraid to hear what he had to say.
“I killed him.”
Mason swung the axe with the pent-up rage boiling inside him. It hit the wood with a solid thwack! He stacked the cut wood and picked up another log. They were lucky to find trees that weren’t too green to cut since most of those in the settlement had taken down some for firewood.
Camille had sent him and Karl to perform that particular task. Not that Mason wanted to be with the obnoxious jackass, but he had little choice. Charlie was still held prisoner inside the wagon. He heard her cursing and complaining, which meant she was alive. It was up to him and Isabelle to keep it that way.
Isabelle was in charge of meals, along with Mary and Catherine. The three women didn’t speak as they worked, but he had seen a common bond between them. They all regarded Camille with dislike, which surprised Mason. He’d assumed the two Becker women liked the eldest female, but it appeared they didn’t.
Mary acted like a scared rabbit and Isabelle had already started working on convincing her to revolt. If she kept at it, she would succeed. Maybe even pull Catherine into their revolution. He could only hope.
Thwack!
The axe embedded into the ground from the force of his swing. He cursed under his breath and yanked at the handle. Isabelle’s trust and soft voice had allowed his secrets to slip out. Not all of them, but the darkest. It had reared its ugly head and bellowed to be let loose. Mason didn’t control his mouth sometimes, usually when he’d been drinking. In this case, when he’d been cuddling.
Mason was angry. At himself. At Isabelle. At Camille. At the fucking world. He bubbled over with anger, gurgling in his gut until he thought he’d puke. He had suppressed that fury for a very long time, but Isabelle had popped it like a cork from a bottle.
Damn her.
He wanted to scream at her and tell her she had ruined his life. It was all a complete falsehood, of course. She’d done nothing wrong. His upbringing had seemed perfect, with money and privilege, but it was far from what people saw. The scandal after his father’s death had sent his mother into a spin from which she never recovered. Nor had she ever spoken to Mason again.
Without brothers or sisters, or anyone who would stand by his side if he didn’t have pocketfuls of money, Mason had created his own world. He’d gone to college and charmed his way into a teaching position. To be honest, h
e enjoyed the act of shaping young minds and history truly had been his first love. When he’d been a sickly boy, learning had been his escape.
He felt scraped raw, worse than when Isabelle had found him. Those wounds had healed and were just beginning to become scars. However it was the scars on the inside that would never heal. He was damaged and he knew it. There was no fixing what was wrong with him.
Thwack!
He was his father’s son. Beauregard Bennett had been a man who controlled the world around him, including his wife and son. When Mason had dared stand up to him, his father had pushed, shoved, beaten and screamed him into compliance. Nothing was more important than what others thought of the family.
Mason’s arms trembled, but he continued to hack at the wood. He wanted to hurt something and the damn tree had been a perfect target. Isabelle was right to steer clear of him. No matter if he loved her, she would be poisoned by his barely contained nature. He would destroy her if she stayed.
“You’re hiding.”
His head swung around at the sound of her voice. She stood there as if he had conjured her from his thoughts, her beautiful face pale and distressed.
“I’m helping, not hiding. We need wood. It’s getting colder and colder at night. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to freeze to death.” He turned away, unable to look her in the eye. What did she think of him now? His soul was so fractured, she could never put the pieces back together even if she wanted to.
“It’s good that you’re helping us keep warm, but you are hiding.” She crossed her arms. “Mason, I want to talk about what you said to me. About your father.” Her tone wasn’t accusatory, which surprised him.
“I don’t wish to speak of it.”
Thwack!
He swung the axe, finding the rhythm that shut out the rest of the sounds around him. As much as he wanted to, he could not block out Isabelle. It was if his heart was connected to hers, thumping together as he tried to forget his pain.
As the axe embedded in the log, his body jarred from the force of it. She put her hand on the back of his neck.
“Stop. Just stop.” Her hand was cool against his heated skin.
“I can’t.” He tightened his body to keep himself strong. She couldn’t know what it took to manage that considering he wanted to gather her in his arms and never let her go.
“You can. Mason, everyone has to do things they wouldn’t normally do, and most of us regret half of those acts. I certainly have more than a few regrets in my life.”
He shook off her hand. “Killed anyone?”
She was silent for a moment. “My parents died and I didn’t save them. Because of me, they’re dead.”
“It’s not the same thing, my dear. Not at all.” He stared at the muddy ground beneath his feet. “I caused his death, but it’s not because I was trying to prevent it.”
“Either way, I failed them.” Her voice caught. “Maman had taught us all basic nursing skills, but I didn’t save them. Instead I took care of the wagon and kept moving west while they quietly died three feet behind me. That is my burden to carry.”
He made the mistake of looking at her. Pain permeated her expression. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes shone with unshed tears. Even her chin quivered.
Mason’s head dropped. He didn’t want to have this conversation with her but he didn’t have a choice. This was important to her and therefore, it became an imperative. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for Isabelle, no matter if it would tear his heart from his chest and relive memories he had chosen to bury beneath years of alcohol, women and distractions.
He straightened up and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Did you make your parents sick?”
“No, of course not. They contracted dysentery. My mother knew what it was right away. They had eaten dinner at another family’s fire one night. We always boiled our water before we drank it or cooked with it.” She stared off in the distance, misery etched into her frown. “She tried to keep herself hydrated, but my father fell ill within half a day.”
“And what did you do?”
“Everything I could to keep us with the wagon train. Mr. Avery refused to slow down and there were others sick, so no one to provide any assistance to my parents except Charlie and me.” She unlocked her arms and stared at her hands, palms up. “I took care of the wagon and the oxen instead of them. I should have stopped and saved them.” Her voice trailed off.
“I can’t give you absolution, darlin’. I can hear what is in your heart, but the only person who can forgive you is yourself.” He took her hands in his own. “You did not kill your parents. You were in a situation that required you to make decisions. In the end, they died from a disease, not from what you did.”
She nodded with a jerk. “It doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He waited while she contemplated their clasped hands.
“Do you ever feel guilty?”
He started at the question. “For my father’s death?”
Her green eyes bore into his. “You told me you killed him, intentional or not. It’s natural to feel guilt.”
“I did kill him. He was a sadistic bastard who used everyone and everything. He didn’t care a thing about my mother, my brother or me. We were only there to show the world he was normal.”
“He wasn’t normal.” She didn’t ask, but he heard the question in her words.
“No, he wasn’t. The furthest you can get from normal.” Mason shook his head. “He was evil, that’s the only word that fits. I killed him when I found him doing something so heinous I—” He broke off, the acidic memories burning him.
“You don’t have to tell me any more.” She wrapped her arms around his waist, her sweet scent assailing his nose like a healing balm.
“No, I need to tell you.” He leaned back away from her and cupped her face. “You have to understand where I come from and what I could become.”
It was his darkest secret, one he had never spoken aloud. What if he had a seed of that same evil from his father within him that would bloom and grow, turning him into the monster he feared lurked in his soul?
“You are not your father.” She sounded very sure of herself.
“No, but his blood runs through my veins. There are many fathers and sons throughout history who were one nightmare after another. I cannot escape the family I was born into.” He had read every book he could find about families and tendencies for insanity. It was not a rosy outlook for him.
“We are what we make of ourselves. No matter what he did, you are not him.”
“You don’t know what he did or what I did.” Mason swallowed the ridiculously large lump in his throat. “I saw him raping a young girl. She was the daughter of our cook. He’d whipped her first and then took her against the table. Blood was puddled on the floor. I pushed him off her and his head slammed into the fireplace hearth.”
“It was an accident.”
“No!” He pushed away from her. “After he fell I wrapped her in a blanket and took her to a doctor. I left him there to die, Belle. I wanted him dead.”
“Did your mother blame you?” The woman was relentless and so damn smart.
“Yes, every day. I was sixteen years old and I had to take over the running of the plantation. My father’s death was ruled an accident. They didn’t charge me with murder and I’m sure it’s because most people were glad he was dead.” Bitterness coated his tongue. “People looked to me as though I was a character from a Shakespeare play, a murderous son who would take his father’s place. To continue the legacy.”
There, it had all been said. Now she knew his crime and would no longer want to be around him. He wouldn’t blame her and some part of him hoped she would push him away. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have to struggle through how to love someone and take the easy path. He’d spent too many years do
ing just that.
“Have you ever whipped, hanged or raped anyone?” she demanded.
“No. I have told lies, been selfish, inconsiderate, and drank more liquor than a human being should.” He shrugged. “I just didn’t care what happened to me or anyone else.”
“I care and I won’t let you throw yourself into a mud pile simply because your father was a hideous human being.” She took hold of his wrists, her delicate fingers stronger than they appeared. “What happened to the girl?”
He blinked, confused by the question. “She survived. As far as I know she still lives at the plantation.”
“Then you saved a life. You didn’t take one.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She hadn’t cried for her own loss, but she cried for his.
His heart flipped over in his chest and damned if the wall he had so carefully erected cracked wide open. The damn thing hadn’t made its presence known for nigh on fifteen years. Now, in just over a month, Isabelle had turned him into an emotional mess. A starry-eyed man who would lay down his life for a damsel.
If he hadn’t been the leading character in the tragedy of his life, he would feel pity for himself.
But he was that starry-eyed man and he couldn’t bear to see her suffer for his pain. He took her into his sweaty, stinky arms and held her close. Mason hoped she wasn’t too offended by his malodorous body. She leaned into him, burying her nose in the crook of his neck. It made him feel like a real man for the first time in his life.
“We’re orphans.” Her horrified tone told him she hadn’t allowed herself to accept that before now.
“Our parents aren’t alive, but you are not an orphan. You have three sisters, which means you have family. I have no one.”
She leaned back and raised one brow. “I believe the definition of an orphan is someone without parents.”
He shrugged. “I concede that point. However, you do have a family.”
“You do too. Or at least I have adopted you.” She lowered her gaze. “If you’ll let me.”
How had she turned his foul mood into one of pure joy? He had not truly belonged to anyone except himself. His parents had produced him and his brother because it was expected. They needed a male heir and a spare to carry on the family name, the proud tradition of Bennetts.
The Jewel: The Malloy Family, Book 11 Page 12