Chapter 22:Sins of Father(Part-1)

Content Warning: This chapter contains graphic depictions of sexual assault, violence, and disturbing themes. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

The ride back to Shaw Manor passed in silence as leaden as the priceless offerings now stowed beside them. Alistair stared unseeing through the motorcar's windows, his mind a cyclone of tumult. Though Jonathan's calculated slights and unspoken recriminations still stung, there was a pervading sense of...realignment, of having weathered the worst and emerged with their crucial alliance intact, if somewhat diminished.

It was only when the hulking edifice of Shaw Manor's main house loomed into view that Alistair seemed to rouse from his reverie. Squaring his shoulders, he gathered the ornate oak casket housing the celebrated Madeira into his arms, allowing Woodridge to retrieve the smaller coffer containing the jade seal. 

With ceremonial gravitas, they proceeded through the entrance colonnade and into the cavernous main foyer. Alistair's gaze drifted across the vaulted space almost absently, lingering fleetingly upon the family portraits and gilded embellishments gracing the walls. 

The waiting footman's presence nearly startled him, so consumed was he by the implications of his audience with Jonathan. Alistair felt something within him stir then - a flickering pride, a renewed sense of self-assurance despite the challenges overcome. He regarded the hovering servant through narrowed eyes.

"Summon Lady Evelyn and Percival to the morning parlour at once. I shall convene them shortly." His tone brooked no argument as the footman made to inquire about James's absence. "As for James, have him roused from his quarters and conducted directly to my private study upon arrival. There are...matters of grave import we must discuss. Privately."

Something flickered across the servant's impassive mask—a subtle undercurrent of trepidation, perhaps, at the prospect of disturbing the notoriously mercurial heir after such an evening's tumult. Yet one look at Alistair's set features seemed to cow any objections. With a murmured assent, the footman turned to carry out his directives.

As the echoing footfalls faded from the vestibule, Alistair permitted himself a martyred sigh. Pivoting on his heel, his attention was drawn towards a lone figure standing in the archway leading to the secondary wing.

There was Thomas—the weathered kitchen chef whose daughter's life had been so carelessly put asunder by James' depredations. The sight of his ravaged features, the hollows beneath his eyes betraying a sleep deficit borne of profound anguish, caused a flicker of recollection to kindle within Alistair's breast.

"You..." he murmured, recollections solidifying as he studied the haunted lines etching the other man's visage. "The incident with your daughter Abigail, was it not?"

Thomas regarded him through hooded eyes, giving a shallow dip of his chin that managed to convey neither obeisance nor insolence.

"Aye, milord," he replied in a tone as parched and colourless as drifting smoke. "The same shame that saw my sweet girl cast into darkness whilst you rewarded the fiend who tormented her with little more than a paltry indemnity."

Woodridge shifted beside Alistair, whether in discomfiture or subtle rebuke remained unclear. But the Shaw patriarch's brow furrowed as fragments of the encounter resurfaced—the tearful pleas, the indignant recriminations met with hollow reassurances and compensatory gestures.

He opened his mouth, some reflexive platitude rising to his lips, but Thomas pressed on in that same monotone rasp.

"I won't bore you with pleas for compassion or justice this morn," he stated, each word carrying a weary finality. "The hour is too far gone for that, I fear. No, I merely request an audience...to guide you to where this latest grievance has been committed."

Alistair felt his throat constrict as the underlying implications solidified. Through his lingering indignation over James' prior transgressions, some new horror had manifested. One that this broken father intended to put directly before the Shaw family's dispassionate scrutiny.

For an endless beat, Alistair wavered—the impetus to preserve willful deniability warring with a distant glimmer of paternal obligation. Then, as if lances of ice water had been injected into his veins, the full scope of his failure as a custodian of this dynastic legacy washed over him.

Straightening his spine, he met Thomas's haunted gaze with a look of grim finality.

"Lead on," Alistair said simply. Turning to Woodridge, he handed off the precious burdens borne back from their audience with the Whitmores. "See these secured in my private vault. And inform Lady Evelyn and Percival that our audience shall be postponed briefly to address...another pressing matter."

Woodridge opened his mouth, perhaps to protest the vagueness of the directive or question this unorthodox diversion, but seemed to think better of it. With a murmured, "At once, milord," he accepted the ornate containers and retreated down the corridor.

In the lingering silence that ensued, Alistair permitted his eyes to settle upon Thomas once more, truly taking in the harrowed desperation etched into the other man's demeanour.

"You need not preface this with explanations or warnings, Thomas," he declared, each word falling like granite masonry. "Simply convey me to the heart of this latest outrage so that I might judge the appropriate course with eyes fully open."

Thomas turned and began leading the way down a dimly lit service passage. Alistair fell into measured step beside him, bracing himself for whatever fresh horror awaited at the end of their solemn procession.

The pathways seemed to twist and narrow around them until Alistair felt the encroaching claustrophobia of the manor's bones themselves closing in. At length, they emerged into a hushed antechamber with an oaken door broken in from the night before. 

Thomas paused before the threshold, shoulders heaving with a sigh that seemed to emanate from some fathomless well of sorrow. 

"In there, milord," he rasped, indicating the warded entry with a trembling hand. "See for yourself what vile depths your son has plumbed this time."

With those words, he seemed to retreat inward, hunching against some intangible onslaught as he stepped aside to permit Alistair passage. The older man stared at the unyielding portal for several heartbeats, trepidation battling with morbid compulsion. 

Then, squaring his shoulders with a subtle inhalation, Alistair pressed forward and laid his palm upon the latch of the broken door.

The bar gave way beneath his insistent push, and the door hinged outward with a subdued groan—as if the entrance itself were reluctant to yield its dreadful secrets. Alistair felt the hairs prickling along the nape of his neck as he crossed the threshold, senses straining against the shadows cloaking the interior in oppressive gloom.

"James?" he called out, his voice carrying with more bravado than he truly felt. "Where in God's name are you, boy?"

No answer came to save the creak of settling timber and the faint patter of displaced debris across the bare wooden floor. Moving further into the enveloping dimness, Alistair felt his bootheels grind against scattered shards and sawdust, the crisp scents of whiskey and other sickeningly familiar effluvia wafting up from the wreckage.

Then, as his eyes began adjusting to the muted illumination slanting through the room's shuttered windows, the full panorama materialized in increments too visceral to rationalize away.

Alistair felt his throat constrict as his gaze settled upon the dishevelled, insensate form of James sprawled amidst the ruin of his bedchamber. His son's face was slack, lips slightly parted as if in a ghastly mockery of repose, unblemished skin marred only by the carmine streaks painted across his mouth and chin and the marks at his back.

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of sexual violence and assault.

Alistair felt his stomach churn as he took in the full scope of the desecration before him. Though Sophie's broken form was no longer present, the visceral evidence of the atrocity remained like a festering wound.

Tattered remnants of fabric lay strewn amidst the wreckage, scraps of lace and delicate cotton that may have once composed a maidservant's modest frock. As Alistair's gaze tracked across the chaos, flashes of lurid colour amidst the detritus snagged his focus—a woman's silk stocking ripped asunder and stained with russet streaks, mingled with what appeared to be the tattered cups of a camisole.

Bile scorched the back of his throat as the visceral implications solidified. These weren't merely random cast-offs, but the systematically shredded vestments torn from a victim's body by grasping, ravenous hands.

His footfalls nearly faltered as his eyes settled upon an even more damning artefact—a scrap of filmy lace and satin, the delicate construction leaving no ambiguity as to its purpose before being discarded like soiled linen.

Everywhere he turned, the wreckage seemed to radiate outward from the dishevelled bed, its sumptuous coverlets rent and gouged as if it had been the arena for some primal, unrestrained violence. Here, the unmistakable speckling of crimson upon indigo brocade; there, an errant smear of something too viscous to be blood streaking across antique mahogany.

Alistair felt the room's confines pressing in as each new detail compounded the lurid abomination reconstructing itself within his mind's eye. He could envision it all too vividly—the terrified maiden's screams rebounding from the very walls as she was set upon, beseeching hands shredding at her garments until she lay exposed and vulnerable.

Then the true savagery would have commenced, her virtue assailed amid that ornate featherbed until her desperate flailings and muffled cries began weakening...only to be renewed at each fresh outrage perpetrated against her innocence.

The silence that followed seemed to stretch into eternity, rife with unspoken implications too pernicious to give voice. 

Then, with the weight of an executioner's blade falling, Thomas replied in tones elemental and damning, "The young master has committed an act of utmost depravity upon an innocent member of the household staff. An act so egregious, so patently evil...that it can only be described as one thing."

He held Alistair's stare, letting the unvarnished truth's magnitude resonate like a thunderclap before uttering its name.

"Rape."