Thank God the Kilmorgan servants are more loyal to me than they were to Father. Our majordomo approached me one day with what a housemaid had told him—that she’d overheard my father whispering to a man that he would pay him to slip into the asylum and kill Ian, by whatever quiet method the man chose.

As I listened to the majordomo report this horror, I realized that I could no longer wait to act.

I believed the truth of what the housemaid had overheard, because I knew that my father was capable of such a thing. It was nothing to do with Ian’s madness. You see, Ian witnessed my father commit a crime.

Ian told me about it in bits and pieces over the years, until I finally put together the entire truth. What Ian saw was my father killing my mother.

The way Ian described the incident, I don’t believe Father intended to kill her, but his violence certainly caused her death. He grabbed my mother and shook her by her neck, until that neck snapped.

Father found Ian crouched behind the desk and knew he’d seen it all. The next day Ian was hauled to London to sit before a commission for lunacy. Ian had always been half mad, but facing the commission was beyond him, and of course, they declared him insane. The action saved my father—if Ian were declared mad by a commission, then whatever story Ian told about my mother’s death would likely not be believed.

At the time, I had no idea of any of this, but I fought my father’s decision. In vain—Ian was taken straight to the asylum, where my father had prepared a place for him in advance by paying them an obscene amount of money. I wasn’t yet old enough or experienced enough to know how to defeat him. I simply did all I could to make Ian comfortable where he was, as did Mac and Cam.

Of late, for some reason, Father began to believe that Ian was going to expose him. Perhaps Ian had grown more coherent about the incident, perhaps one of the doctors reported to my father that Ian was talking about his mother’s death—I never learned. In the end, I assume that my father feared someone at last believing Ian’s words and investigating. So he set his plan in motion.

I stopped that plan; I stopped it dead in its tracks. I found the men in my father’s pay, and I paid them to go far away. I sent my own people to guard Ian and had all missives from the asylum waylaid and passed to me.

My father found out and raged at me, but I knew he would try again. And again. My father was a ruthless man, as you know, selfish to the point of madness. I started proceedings to release Ian from the asylum into my guardianship, but the process was slow, and I feared my father would find a way around me before Ian was safe.

I knew I had to confront my father, to stop him for good.

One evening, two weeks ago, I went to his study at Kilmorgan. Father was well drunk, which was nothing unusual for that time of day. I told him that Ian had confided the story of our mother’s death to me and that I believed it. I told him that I was perfectly willing to testify to the truth of it, and I told him that I had put plans in motion to get Ian’s commission of lunacy reversed.

My father listened as one stunned, then he tried to attack me. But I am no longer a terrified little boy or a fearful youth, he was drunk, and I easily bested him.

He was surprised when I punched him full in the face. He’d trained me to be his obedient slave, to let him beat me any time he wished and to not shed a tear over the pain. He said he’d done it to make me strong. He’d made me strong all right, and now he was understanding how strong.

At the same time I started proceedings to have Ian’s commission reversed, I’d had my man of business draw up documents for a trust, one that divided the current wealth of the dukedom and the Mackenzie family into four equal pieces, one for each son, Ian included. The documents also give me custody of Ian, making Ian’s fate mine to decide.

Father railed against me, of course, but my man of business had done a thorough job. With one stroke of a pen, my brothers would be free, and Father’s money would be given to the sons he despised.

He shouted at me and told me he’d kill me, told me he’d kill my brothers and see us in hell. I had to threaten him with violence, and I do not want to tell you about what I had to do. It is enough to say that, in the end, he signed the document and regarded me in stark fear. I’d become a monster, in his eyes, but I am only the monster he created.

I gave the papers at once to my man of business’s courier, who was waiting outside. He took one copy to Edinburgh and one copy to London, and there they both reside.

My father raged until he fell into a stupor and was put to bed. The next day, he strode out with his shotgun, saying he was going after a buck. He took the ghillie along, but I didn’t trust him not to double back, get himself and the shotgun onto a horse, and ride across country to the asylum where Ian still resided.

My father must have known I would come after him, because he sent our ghillie ahead and waited for me in an isolated spot. Sure enough, the moment I caught up to him, Father had that shotgun in my face, his finger on the trigger.

I fought him. It was a mad struggle for the gun there in the woods. The barrel seemed to be pointed at me forever, and I knew that if I died this day, my brothers wouldn’t have a chance against him, even with the documents he’d signed. He’d find a way to annul the agreement and make their lives an even greater misery than he had before. And Ian would be dead.

I finally got the shotgun turned around, and now the barrel faced him.

I can lie and tell myself that it was an accident. That I was fighting for the gun and it went off. But I had it in my hands, El. I saw in my mind’s eye, in the split second before I pulled the trigger, the years of terror we’d have to endure if he went on living. Our father was a devious and insane man, and God help us, we inherited our bits of insanity from him. I saw that Ian would never be safe from him, no matter how diligent I was, if I did nothing.

I ended that hell in the woods. I pulled the trigger and shot him in the face.

The ghillie came running, of course. I was holding the gun by the barrel, looking horrified. It had jammed, I said. Backfired when it had gone off.

The ghillie knew, I know he did, but he said that, aye, His Grace must have failed to check that the barrel was clear before he fired at a stray bird. Accidents happened.

And so, the thirteenth Duke of Kilmorgan is gone. My brothers suspect the truth, just as the ghillie did, but they have said nothing, and I have not enlightened them. I vowed in that woods that they would never have to pay for what I’ve done.

Tonight, I confess my sins to you, Eleanor, and to you alone. Tomorrow, Ian comes home. Perhaps the Mackenzies can find some peace, though I doubt it, dear El, because we are so very bad at peace!

Thank you for listening. I can almost hear you saying, in that clearheaded way of yours: “You did what you have done. Let that be an end to it.”

I wish I could hear you say it, in your voice like a soothing stream, but do not worry. I will not rush to Glenarden and throw myself at your feet. You deserve peace as well.

God bless you.

Hart heard a faint sound. He looked up from the letter, tears in his eyes, to see Eleanor standing in the doorway, prim and proper in a dress buttoned to her chin, her lips parted as she stared back at him.

Chapter 11

“You were supposed to burn this,” Hart said. He couldn’t get up, could not move, drained from what he’d just read.

Eleanor closed the door and came to the table littered with the letters. “I couldn’t, somehow.”

He noticed that she did not need to ask which letter he meant. “Why not?”

“I don’t know, really. I suppose, because, of all the people you could have told, you chose to tell me.”

“There was no other person,” Hart said. “No one in the world.”

It hung there. Hart closed the book and stood up, his feet heavy. He needed to touch her. She watched him come to her, said not a word when he cupped her face in his hands and leaned to kiss her.

She tasted of sunshine. Hart didn’t pause to wonder why she’d come upstairs, whether Isabella expected her to rush right back down. Hart only cared that Eleanor was here, that he had the warmth of her under his hands, the woman who knew his direst secrets and had never told a soul.

He felt strong again in her embrace, his hurts flowing away under Eleanor’s caress. He waited for dark needs to grip him, to ruin this moment, but they didn’t come.

He feathered kisses across her cheek, catching the freckles that he held so dear. “El…”

“Shh.” Eleanor pulled him all the way into her arms and rested her head on his shoulder. “Say nothing. There’s nothing to be said.”

Hart pressed a kiss to the top of her head, loving the satin warmth of her hair. His heart was sore, but Eleanor was soothing away the hurt.

“You pasted the photographs into a book,” he said. “A book about me.”

Eleanor raised her head. She caught the look in his eye, and her face flamed as red as her hair. “Well, I…”

Hart felt light as he watched her struggle for an explanation. He saw her go through several, then she grew redder still, and said in a tiny voice, “You are very fine to look at.”