“You’re still awake.” His voice was slightly slurred, and even lower and sexier than usual.
She wrinkled her nose at him, smelling the alcohol before he even got to the bed. “I was waiting for you.”
He gazed at her intently, most likely wanting something but stopping himself either because of the booze.
“The boys behaved tonight?”
“They whined at the door for you a few times, but they were more interested in finding the Goldfish crackers the girls dropped everywhere.”
He snorted. “Well, I’m in now. Go to sleep.” He added wood to the fire in the fireplace then slouched into one of the chairs before it.
She slipped out of bed and padded over to him, her bare feet soundless on the bitingly cold flagstone. She knelt on the rug at his feet and pressed her cheek against his knee. His hand stroked her hair, then threaded through it, tightening until it hurt deliciously.
“I have a hard time sleeping when you’re not with me.”
He traced his fingers over her cheekbones and along her jaw, his expression rapt.
“I don’t even sleep in your bed.”
“So?”
He ran a thumb under one of her eyes. “Why were you crying?”
She shrugged. “Facebook.”
“They came back to the States and no one told you?”
She nodded. “My sister, Pearl, is pregnant.” She smiled tremulously. “I guess I’ll ask Ilse what’s appropriate in terms of gift giving.”
“They didn’t tell you themselves. You don’t owe them a fucking thing. Not even a second fucking thought.”
“I thought I’d take the high road.”
“They blew up both fucking roads. You just forget those people. They don’t deserve you.”
His vehemence was adorable.
“You’re good with kids,” he said, rubbing her scalp the way she liked.
“Your nieces are great.” She grinned, thinking about how much fun it was to play silly games with them and teach them how to handle the dogs.
“You want kids?”
She shrugged. Talking to him about this when he was half in the bag was probably a bad idea.
He released her and rose, walking to her dresser. As he opened her top drawer, she frowned, getting the feeling she knew what he was after. Sure enough, he turned back to her with her latest pack of birth control. Checking up on her?
Rather than looking at what day she was on, he stalked to her bathroom door and threw the pack. She heard it hit the garbage.
“Done.” He fell back into his chair.
“But Mister Leduc –”
She’d be fishing those out of the garbage can as soon as he took his drunk ass out of her room.
“You want kids, so those have to go.”
“Uh...I didn’t say I was ready now. There’s plenty of time. I’m not that old.”
He pressed two fingers over her lips. “Shh. Don’t remind me.” His expression was comical, pained, as though she was a step away from jailbait.
“I’m just saying that we can wait. I wasn’t even sure if you wanted kids.”
“With you? I don’t think I could resist.” His smile turned soft and he rubbed a thumb over her bottom lip. “I’ll probably be a shitty father, but I can hire someone to help you with baby things.” He laughed and tipped back his head. “Money? That I can do. The parenting and affection not so much.”
“But Master, we’re not even married yet.”
“No one cares what we do here, other than you and me, Miss Korsgaard.” A low noise, like a growl, vibrated the air. “What you want, you get.”
“Except if I’ve been a bad girl and need a spanking and some orgasm denial?”
“Precisely.”
“Why do you think you’ll be a bad father?” she asked, seeing the opportunity to question a drunk Severin when he was in a peculiar mood.
He sighed. “I don’t know how to be a father. You know my history.”
“Some of it. Church didn’t really have a father since he died with Church was so young, but he figured it out. You’ll have him as a role model, if nothing else.”
He shrugged. “At least Church used to have a father. I don’t remember my father. At all.”
“Not everyone has a stellar childhood. I’m sure you’ll figure it out if we have kids.” She examined his strong face. His jaw was slightly clenched, but he was still mostly relaxed. Time to try again. “Do you remember much about your first mother?”
His lips went tight. “Some.”
“What was she like?”
“Distant, mostly. Exacting otherwise. She was always on the phone or...hosting.”
“Business stuff? Charity?”
His hands tightened on the arm of the chair and she waited for him to storm out, but he stayed.
“I think it was business. There’s a lot I’ve had to piece together.”
There was something there – she was so close to the thorn in his paw, but one wrong move and the lion would eat the mouse.
“So you were alone a lot? With servants, or...”
He relaxed. “Yes. I liked them. I remember one woman crying when the tall man took me away in the car. I thought he was going to take me home with him. The servants always left us after supper, but he took me to the airport. He cried too.”
“Your father, maybe?”
“No, I don’t think so. He wore a servant’s uniform.”
“He sounds like a nice guy.”
Severin shrugged.
So when you did spend time with your mother, what did you do?”
He shrugged, shifting in his chair. “She had me in lessons – I guess the way rich kids are? I don’t know. People taught me what forks to use, how to walk nicely, and singing, I think. I don’t remember everything – I was so young. I remember getting punished when I wasn’t polite. She took care of the harsher punishments herself.”
“Harsh punishments? What could you have done that was so awful when you were so little?”
His gaze snapped to the crackling fire.
“Being a bad host.” His jaw set in what looked like a painful clench, and he stared into the fire in silence for so long, she wondered if she’d lost him entirely.
“Severin?”
Nothing.
She pushed herself to her feet and went to the drink cart, and poured him a tumbler of whiskey. When she pressed it into his hand, he drank it in one long swallow.
Push or back off? She was so close, but did he need her to know, or did she just want to know? It was so hard to know what to do. Whatever had happened still ate at him twenty-five years later. She took back the glass and set it aside, then knelt at his feet. His hand wound into her hair again, as if it comforted him.
“Monsieur Charles was the one who visited the most, but there were three or four. I didn’t like Monsieur Charles, but he liked me. Mother would leave us alone to play in my room.” There was no whispering and no anger. Just fact.
Minnow’s bones felt cold and hollow, and she suddenly wanted to beg him to stop telling her, but she’d wanted to know – had guessed maybe something like this had happened, but now that he was saying the words she didn’t know if she was strong enough to hear them.
“He liked to play...games. His hands were clammy. His breath stank and he had big yellow teeth.” Severin shuddered. “I told Maman I didn’t like him. I told her about the games, and she told me to quit being a baby and be a good host – to do what Monsieur Charles wanted. The next time he visited, she stayed in my room with us, and I remember thinking this time she would see and stop him. He forced too far in my mouth. I choked and fought. I couldn’t breathe. She kept yelling at me to be polite. I wasn’t trying to be rude, I thought he was trying to suffocate me and she didn’t care.”
“Oh, God.”
“I bit him. There was blood in my mouth. I had a big fit. I couldn’t stop screaming. I scratched Maman’s face and called her all the bad words I knew. I screamed and broke thi
ngs for hours – all night I think – until the tall man came to our house and put me in the car. I begged him not to let Monsieur Charles do the same thing to the babies. My sisters were so small.”
Minnow sobbed quietly, not wanting to interrupt him, but clinging to his leg as tightly as he was hanging onto her hair.
“Then I was here and there were strangers everywhere, jabbering at me. They didn’t speak French. No Maman, no sisters. No servants I knew. But I also didn’t have to be a host here. I stayed outside a lot. I didn’t talk to the servants. I think the nanny was afraid of me. I used to growl and snap like the dogs outside our house in Marseilles. I ate out of a bowl with my hands or with my face and threw cutlery at people if they tried to tell me to use my manners.” He shrugged. “I think that’s why she never sent for me again. She knew I was too fucked up to use anymore.”
“Then Church and his mother came?”
He nodded, smiling crookedly. “The first time Church tried to get me to play with him, I bit him. I remember plain as day thinking I had to get rid of these people fast. They were too nice. Church called me a bad dog and hit me with a newspaper. It became a game, and the next thing I knew he was my brother.”
“It didn’t matter that he missed the beginning of your life.”
“I’m so glad he wasn’t there. He doesn’t feel like he’s suffocating sometimes for no reason. He doesn’t feel like people are touching him even when he’s alone. There are no sisters he failed to save.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, as though he felt like he needed a toothbrush. “If the girls had been crazy enough to bite, they would have ended up here with me, I guess. Or maybe it was just me that drew the men. Maybe because I was a boy. Or maybe there was something about me that encouraged that sort of thing.”
“Severin, no.”
“If I’d been a good boy and let it happen – did my best even though I didn’t like it – then I would have been raised there with my family. Like a normal kid. Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucked up.”
“I can’t imagine how staying would have been better.” She squeezed his knee and he drew her up into his lap. “It would have been worse.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he admitted. “I must disgust you. Knowing I was used as a whore.”
She kissed the tick in his jaw, smoothing it away.
“Nothing about you disgusts me. I’m only disgusted that the person who was supposed to protect you let people abuse you.”
He paused for a long time, and she could tell he was working up the nerve to tell her something. His mouth opened, closed. Opened again.
“Sometimes I cooperated.” His expression was guarded, and she could feel him trying to shield himself from her judgment.
Fuck. She could tell he hadn’t admitted that to anyone before.
“You’d been taught to cooperate. Groomed for it. You were so young.” Such a strange way of thinking, for him to assume any of what had happened was his fault – to persist in thinking that even though he was an adult and he knew better. “If that had happened to me. Would you think it was my fault?”
He fell silent, then finally admitted, “No.”
“Then why do you keep trying to take responsibility for what happened to you?”
He shrugged.
She raised her face for a kiss, and he took her mouth gently, but possessively. He drew back and blew out a breath.
“I didn’t know if you’d still want me.”
“Why on earth would I reject you after you trusted me with that?”
“Submissive women don’t like weak men.”
“Anyone who acts like they’re not vulnerable – that they’ve never been hurt – is lying. I don’t want there to be lies between us.”
He twirled her hair around his finger then watched it unravel again. “So you really don’t care?”
“Don’t care?” she echoed, her tone cold. “Oh, I fucking care. I want to take a trip over to that bitch’s house and beat the ever-loving crap out of her.” She felt her fists curling but was helpless to stop her reaction.
He smiled then smoothed her hair back affectionately. “Sutton wanted to go after I told her, but I refused. My mother is a calculating woman with enough money and influence to make her own child disappear. I can’t find anything much about my family online – not even my sisters. I assume the money comes from criminal activity. Sending Sutton there... What was she going to do? Knit my mother an angry sweater?”
“I’ll go over there myself and eviscerate her with Sutton’s knitting needles.”
He chuckled, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “Someday maybe I’ll go speak to her – but not now. Someday when you and I are settled, and my head is on straight. I have to find my sisters and make sure they’re okay. I tried to do it from here, but every effort I’ve made through investigators gets stonewalled.”
“I’ll go with you. We’ll figure it out.”
“There’s nothing much to figure out. Just a person to tell off and two others to check on.” He closed his eyes. “It’s not like I can go back in time and fix things.”
Chapter Sixteen
The letter arrived in a plain white envelope, hand addressed to S Leduc. Tucked in the midst of several letters of business, Minnow hadn’t noticed it when she left them on his desk, but it probably wouldn’t have drawn her eye the way it did to Severin.
The sender’s handwriting was too similar to his own.
He held the letter at arm’s length, his guts churning, then turned in his chair to suspend the thing over the fire. Burn it? Open it?
Gilbert and Montague roused from their nap in front of the hearth to look up at him then wagged their tails uncertainly. Together, the two of them were already big enough to pass as an overly alert bear rug.
“What would you do?” he asked them.
Both dogs cocked their heads to the side as though they were contemplating his dilemma, but diplomatically chose not to answer.
Minnow paused in the doorway, trailed by Harvey and Theodore. The dogs already came to her knee and they weren’t yet full grown. Husky, German Shepherd, and probably a few other things. He’d taken to calling them the hellhounds.
“Mister Leduc?”
“Come here.” He put the envelope on the desk, then wiped his hand on his jeans, as though holding it had left a taint.
The girl stopped at his knees, just short of touching him, and folded into a graceful kneel. Her canine attendants flopped on the floor behind her in front of the fire with their brothers.
“What’s wrong, Master?”
“A letter. From someone in my original family.”
She gazed over at his desk, brows lowered in distaste. “You can tell from the postmark?”
He hadn’t even thought to check it. “Read or burn?”
“Can you tell who it’s from? Maybe it’s from one of your sisters?” she asked hopefully.
Grimacing, he held it out to her. He was pleased his hand didn’t shake.
“You want me to decide?”
“It doesn’t affect only my life.”
“You need answers, for closure if nothing else.” She accepted the envelope, but still paused before ripping it open. Her hands were shaking, and she didn’t bother trying to hide that from him.
When she tried to hand it back, he shook his head. “Read it aloud for me.”
She drew it out as though it might explode. “Dear Seb,” she paused. It says here Seb instead of Sev. Is that you?”
Shock made his mouth drop open. His heart raced and heat flooded his cheeks. “They usually call me Severin in correspondence. That’s what they told people my name was, but it used to be Sebastien.”
Minnow bit her lip. “Are you sure you want me to read this?” Her eyes remained on his face, as though she didn’t want to be rude by scanning ahead.
“Do it.”
She drew a deep breath, bracing herself, then continued. “Dear Seb, I felt it important to inform you that after an extended and
mysterious illness, our mother is dead. One quarter of her assets will be sent to you via your man of accounts, Rodrigo Solis. It was not a bequest. All of her monies were left to me, but I thought it fitting to liquidate and divide her wealth between her primary victims – her children. May she rot in hell.” She paused and looked up, face white. “It’s signed ‘ton frère, Loïc.’”
That mother was dead too? Three for three. At least this one wasn’t a fucking loss. It didn’t even sound like she was a loss to a child she’d kept close.
Loïc. He had a fucking brother, and no one had ever told him. He’d signed the sale of this house to Severin, and he’d wondered who he was at the time.
He pushed back his chair and stood, taking the letter from her hand and reading it himself.
“He’d be younger than our sisters, unless he’d already been hidden away somewhere.” Was he older, younger? Were their sisters upset about their mother’s death? He read the line again ‘her primary victims.’ The girls had been abused too. A dim haze settled over him.
“Master, stop.” Her voice came from far away. “Severin! Stop!”
The girl was at the door. He wasn’t sure when she’d moved, but the dogs were gone, she was almost in the hallway, and his study was fucking trashed. He looked around at the destruction, bewildered.
A blackout? He hadn’t had a blackout since he was a little boy.
His chest was heaving, and he had the strong urge to leave the house – to get away from Minnow and the dogs before he hurt someone by accident.
“Miss Korsgaard, the number for my psychiatrist is next to the kitchen phone. Dr. Jindal. Call her and tell her I need her to make a house call.”
She stepped into the room instead, and Severin held up a staying hand. “No. Stay away from me until I’m sedated. I can’t trust myself.”
“Okay, Master, but I trust you.” Her voice was thin. Needy. But he couldn’t be there for her right now, and that pissed him off and shamed him.
“You shouldn’t trust me. Did you get the boys somewhere safe?”
“They ran for their room.”
“I didn’t hurt them, did I? I didn’t hurt you?” His hands tightened on the crumpled letter he still held in one hand, willing her to say no while he forced himself not to hug her and check her over.
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