Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

A beautiful estate, a good amount of wealth, a well-liked wife, and two charming daughters. It was a perfect life, or it would have been if Jonathan had wanted it in the first place.

He had so hoped to remain a bachelor. He was the youngest of five, the eldest being a son, Edmund. That was supposed to mean that he had no estate to inherit, no title to uphold, no requirement to be perfect. He disliked Society and its watchful gaze and the never-ending rumors, but he at least knew that he would never need to play a part in it. He knew it even at the age of three and ten.

Then his father died, and he felt something beginning even then. In the blink of an eye, his brother was married to a lady that he had never met, and he was the head of the household. He was but two and twenty and woefully unprepared for all that was to come his way. Fortunately, the two of them had a good bond, one of the best ones that brothers can have.

"Can I help at all, Brother?" Jonathan asked one evening. "You seem tired."

"It is nothing for you to concern yourself with, John."

"But—"

"Be glad that I do all of this so that you need not do it yourself. That will be more help than you could ever know."

Jonathan nodded with a smile. He was not quite sure of what his brother had meant, but his brother was an intelligent man and so he knew to listen.

He did not like the new Countess. She took over the household the moment she set foot in it, overshadowing even his mother and refusing to allow her to have a say in anything. He would have loathed her entirely, but her way of doing things seemed to work.

Their issue, however, was that three years passed and they did not produce an heir. It was not for a lack of effort, which was how the Countess worded it, but it simply was not meant to be. This was not a solution, however, merely an excuse. At last, the Countess did fall pregnant, but then she lost the baby.

"Where did it go?" was all that Jonathon could ask at the time. "Can we find it again?"

Fortunately, he had asked his mother, who gently explained that sometimes horrible things happened and babies did not survive. He struggled to understand for a long time, but soon enough, the Countess was once more with child, and she carried it to term and had…

A girl.

The marriage between the Earl and the Countess became a struggle from there. They did not like each other, and they never had. Their marriage had been arranged in a panic when the late Earl had passed, and so Edmund had agreed to a hasty marriage, one arranged with the first young lady who seemed willing. They resented each other, Edmund because his wife could not give him a son and his wife because that was all Edmund cared about. She was a failure in his eyes.

Jonathan wondered if that was why she disappeared one day. It was quite known that she was disliked by most, to the extent that they were quite relieved when she was gone. Then Edmund followed suit, vanishing one night, and all eyes turned to Jonathan.

It no longer mattered that he did not want the title or the wife or the heirs. It did not matter that by then, he was but seven and ten and not at all fit to marry. The day he came of age should have been a celebration, but it felt more like a trip to the gallows. His freedom would be ripped from him in a few mere moments, and he wished he could go wherever it was that his brother went.

"It is quite alright, Brother," Roberta said gently. "Edmund was never any good at being an earl, but you shall fare much better. We all think so."

"But I do not want to. This is Edmund's role, not mine. Can we not find him and bring him back?"

"He has already brought shame on us once. There is no use in locating him and dragging him back only for him to do the same a second time."

"There is a use. It shall save me from a life I would detest."

"You and Edmund are insufferable, you know."

"You do not understand!"

"Of course, I do not. John, you shall have a purpose far greater than mine could ever be. You shall have the world at your feet, and you could reach for the moon if you wished. My sisters and I, however, must sit with our needlework and simper in the hopes that a man will marry us. You have choices. We do not."

"And what if I choose to run away?"

"Then we shall be out on the streets. What Edmund did may seem like a wonderful idea to you, but one day you will understand that what he did was cruel and selfish to us. You are our last hope until you sire an heir."

"So I need only have a son?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Then I shall do just that."

And it may have been because of that conversation that he agreed to marry a young lady the day he came of age, even if he had never met her. He was surprised at first, because she was far prettier than he had expected. She had a soft voice and small hands and seemed quite excited to meet him, but she never gave him a son, and so he hated her.

After two girls, he knew that he needed to leave. He knew that he would face the same fate as his brother, trapped in a loveless marriage without an heir and needing to remain there else he would ruin his family. Regardless, he had to find a way out.

It was a miracle what a curtain and a candle could do.

He hadn't meant to cause anyone any harm, only ruin the house just enough that they had to leave. He wanted time away from being the Earl of Colton, with his two daughters and no sons. He wanted to be Jonathon Winston, no more and no less, but it was not going to be possible so long as he was there. He had not considered that a fire could not be controlled and that it would not care whether or not his pleasant wife, whom he simply could not bring himself to love, was sleeping. He had no control—not even an earl can dictate who lives and dies in a disaster, even if he caused it.

Even if Jonathon loathed his wife, he couldn't help but fall to his knees when he was informed of her passing. They had married so young that she was all he had ever known, and given that they had only had their first daughter but six years prior, they had spent the longest time just the two of them. He hated the late Countess, but he needed her, and he couldn't stand that.

"There is a letter here for you," his butler told him one morning, not long after the fire.

"Leave it on my desk. I shall look at it soon."

"You may wish to read it now. It is from your brother."

Jonathan felt his heart stop for a moment. He had not heard from Edmund in years by that point, and he fully believed that he had passed.

He tore the envelope open and scanned the letter immediately. Edmund was well, better than he had been in years, and living in Scotland. Word travels fast, he explained, and that he had come to know of his wife's passing. How terrible, he said, but how wonderful that it presented him with an opportunity to start anew.

He could go.

Jonathan could make the carriage ride to him in a matter of days, and find the freedom that he had always wanted. The trouble was that he still had his girls, but there was always a solution. His sister arrived to care for the three of them, hoping to guide her poor younger brother through his devastating loss, and the plan formed in his head instantly.

Roberta,

You will hate me for this, possibly forever, but I cannot bring myself to care. I have sacrificed my life for this family, and I cannot do it any longer. I need to find my own life, and some real happiness of my own, before returning to the hell that I have been suffering for all too long.

We never know when we will lose our lives. Losing my wife has shown me that if I do not act now, I may never have the chance to. I never got to see the world, and I need to do it. I need to see more of life than the same home in the same town with the same people. I cannot do this any longer.

You promised me I could go once I had an heir. Now I shall never have one. I have no choice. I must go. If you never forgive me, then it is a burden I shall bear. Perhaps you might one day understand.

Thank you for the sacrifice you will make for my daughters. We can consider ourselves matched in what we have done for one another.

Jonathan.

It was not the best in terms of saying goodbye, but it was the best way of abandoning his family that he knew. At least he had the grace to leave a note—something his brother had never done.

Scotland was gray, and it rained for the first several days, but it was the most incredible place in the world to him. Everything was new, and he could be anyone and anything. He was happy for the first time since he could remember, and even before he could find his brother, he found her.

She was tall, with deep black curls and the brightest blue eyes. She smiled, and it was as though the room smiled with her when she did. They were in a bar, and he had had far too much to drink, but he was conscious enough to know then and there that she was going to be the love of his life.

"Peggy," she said softly to him. "I thought it best to introduce myself. I do not believe that we have met."

"John," he replied. "It is impossible that we have. I could never have forgotten such a face as yours."

"I shall take that as a compliment."

"That is precisely how it was meant."

She motioned to the door. "You and I should have a look around, I think. I do not believe that you are from around here."

"Is it so obvious?"

"You sound like someone from England. Might I be correct in such an assumption?"

"It would appear that you are both beautiful and intelligent."

It was almost too good to be true. After so long, here she was, the perfect woman, the one he had spent his whole life dreaming of and never quite finding, all because he had to be elsewhere. He needed her. He couldn't leave her, not for anything.

So he didn't.

She was not a lady of any titled family. There was no grand estate, no incredible wealth of any description, but that did not matter to him. What mattered was that she was there, and she was the most perfect thing to ever stand before him. She lived a comfortable life, one where she did not give too much, nor did she get too much, but she was happy, and he so craved some of that happiness for himself.

And after two mere weeks, perhaps because he was in a drunken stupor, or perhaps because he truly did fancy himself in love, he remembered that he was now unmarried and asked her to marry him.

"This is fantastical." She laughed. "It is impossible. We have only just met."

"Where I come from, that is the norm. We could do this, Peggy. Nobody will dare question us, and we can live here and have a family of our own. We could be so happy. I want to make you so happy."

"Then I have no choice but to accept!"

Gretna Green was Jonathan's safe haven, and the journey there could not have passed fast enough. One small trip later, he was married for the second time, not that his bride knew that. He had not told her a thing. Peggy was none the wiser about his daughters, or his late wife, or even his title. As far as she knew, he was John Winston, a man of moderate means and nothing more, and he adored that about her.

Their marriage was perfect until that changed.

He hadn't meant to let it slip, but one day they were in their bedchambers, wrapped in each other's embrace, and he had not fully awoken from his slumber when he spoke softly.

"I am so glad I left my life behind. I could never live the life of an earl again."

"Again?"

"Again, yes."

She pulled away from him, sitting up in their bed and staring at him with wide eyes. "You are… an earl?"

"In none of the ways that matter. It is a title and nothing more."

"And you thought it unnecessary to tell me that in the last seven years?"

"Of course, I did. What difference would it make beyond making you see me differently?"

"Because you lied. You told me you were nothing more than a gentleman who had traveled from town to town."

"That is all I was. It just so happened that instead of traveling from town to town, you just so happened to be in the first town that I came to."

"Then tell me, John—if that is truly your name—why were you in Scotland? Why were you so far from home?"

"Because I could not do it anymore," he sighed, exasperated. "I could no longer sit in that house and look at those girls and be reminded of my wife."

"Oh, God, you have a wife there? You have daughters?"

"Yes. Well, no. My wife passed away. And my daughters, well, they are alive and well, as far as I know, but they were not sons. I have no heir, and so?—"

"And so you thought you would find a way to have one. Is that it? Well, I will not play some part in your plans to abandon your daughters as if they are nothing. Go back to them."

"I will not abandon you."

"You will go," she thundered. "You know perfectly well what my father did to me as a girl. You will not do the same to them simply to fill out the list of demands that came with your title."

"Peggy, dear, I?—"

"I shall give you until tonight to have your affairs in order, and then you will leave. You and I are not going to continue."

"I am your husband."

"You are a liar. You have left those girls, I suppose without so much as a goodbye, and you expect me to be happy about it. I am not. Your duty is to your daughters. Go to them. You have no home here."

And just like that, he lost the only place that had ever truly felt like home. He should have gone home, and he knew that, but he could not bring himself to. He couldn't look the girls in the eye, knowing that their existence had made him lose the only person he had ever truly loved. If he hadn't hated them before, he certainly did then and there.

After a few more years of living in a stupor, he had nowhere else to go. That had been the only reason why he returned to the manor house, and it was there that he found a letter addressed to him. It was Peggy, and he prayed that it would say that she had changed her mind and that she wanted him to return to her. Instead, it was a letter telling him that she had found him through asking around and that she thought he was a terrible man, but that she was with child, and that as they were married, he was a legitimate heir.

I hope you are content at last , she signed it off, and in spite of what she had called him, he could not help but rejoice.

A son. He had an heir. An heir that was to come of age and take over his estate.

Things needed to change.