Mad Jack (Sherbrooke Brides 4)

But Jack wasn’t listening. She was staring at Farley St. Cyre’s wig, powdered stark white, tied in a black ribbon at the nape of his neck. Very slowly, she touched her fingertips to his forehead. “Look closely, Gray.”

“What is it? He’s wearing a wig. It was the style then

.”

“No, see how the wig doesn’t completely conform to the line of his hair? Don’t you see it? He has a widow’s peak, Gray. You can see the arrow of black hair that the wig doesn’t cover.” She turned to smile up at him and touch his forehead. “Just as you have a widow’s peak, a small one, but it’s there.”

He stared down at her, mesmerized. “I never knew there was even a name for it. Widow’s peak? Isn’t it common?”

“Oh, no, not at all common. Yours isn’t all that visible because your hair falls over it, to the side, but look at his, straight and right in the center, a sharp arrow. Yours isn’t nearly so dramatic, but it’s still there.”

“A thing called a widow’s peak,” he said slowly, stepping away from both her and the large portrait. “To accept this monster as my father because we share this same uncommon hair growth?”

“Well, there is something else as well,” Jack said, and she told him how she had gone to his mother’s room, and what his mother had told her.

“Do you remember Thomas Levering Bascombe coming here after your father’s funeral?”

“No, I have no memory of him at all, ever.”

“She said she refused to see him. She knew he wanted her again, wanted to marry her.”

“She’s quite mad, Jack.”

“Perhaps, but there was no madness in the story she told me, Gray. My father raped her in order to force her to wed him. But it wasn’t his child that grew in her, it was your father’s, her new husband’s. There was no reason for her to lie about the miscarriage, about how your father nursed her, ultimately blamed her for not coming to him a virgin, and beat her, but evidently cared for her nonetheless.”

“A very strange sort of caring. I daresay she could have been a saint and he still would have beaten her.”

She shuddered at the truth of what he said. “Strange indeed. She wasn’t making it up, Gray.”

“You said she refused to tell me of this? You said she refused to write it down? That makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t she want to tell me?”

It was hard. She didn’t want to say it, but now there was no choice. “She won’t write it down because she wants you to suffer.”

He said nothing for a very long time. He simply seemed to stare into his father’s black eyes. “He never hit her face, I remember that now. He worshiped her face, touched her face whenever he passed her. But her back, my God, Jack, she must have been scarred endlessly from the beatings of his belt on her back.”

“Yes, more than likely. But it was a long time ago, Gray. Unfortunately, your mother still lives in that time, still sees him as the man who, when he wasn’t pounding her, worshiped her. She can’t seem to bring herself to forgive you.”

“You mean she’s always spoken so little to me when I visited because she hates me?”

“Probably. I think now that seeing me so unexpectedly, seeing my father in my face, she let down her guard. She had to speak. I suppose I was the catalyst.” Jack knew what she’d just said was true. She also realized that whatever madness gripped his mother, her feelings of hatred for her son were deep and abiding. She thought of Gray as that twelve-year-old boy, saving his mother the only way he knew, and she’d hated him for it. She wanted to weep for the pain he’d endured from these two people who were his parents and should have loved him and nurtured him, but hadn’t.

Gray said, “All these years and I simply didn’t realize it. Jesus, that bespeaks a fine sensitivity on my part, doesn’t it?”

He was wallowing in guilt, and she was appalled. She said matter-of-factly, no hint of emotion or pity in her voice, “What it bespeaks is the demented spirit of a woman who could never accept the truth of things, who didn’t have the strength to stand up to a man who hurt her, who turned herself into a victim and sought his cruelty as a drunkard would seek drink.

“I plan to speak to her again tomorrow. You will listen, hidden, perhaps, and she will tell it all to me again.

“Now, my question to you is, Gray, will you believe the proof of your father’s widow’s peak combined with the words from your mother’s own mouth?”

“But why was Lord Burleigh so convinced?”

“Because my father believed it so deeply. My father was a very serious man, a proud man, a very intelligent man. I also believed him honorable and loyal and infinitely honest. I was wrong. He committed a grave crime against your mother. He is dead, so there is no retribution for him.

“I must also believe that my father wanted to recognize you as his son because he failed to sire a son by my mother. He had me and that was it. Gray and Graciella.” Jack shook her head. “Such tragedy, Gray. But it’s not our tragedy. Let it remain in the past where it belongs. We’re free of it. You are not my bloody brother. You’re my bloody husband, thank God.”

Still he held back. “I want to hear my mother speak of it. I must.”

“Yes,” she said, and she even managed to smile up at him, “I know you must.”