Chapter 12 #2
He quickly thought through his options, then decided that offering a little information about what he wanted to know might bring him back enough of a return on the investment to make it worth his while.
“There is a child,” he said carefully. “Not mine,” he clarified when Persephone’s eyes went briefly wide.
“But she was delivered to me. Left at my doorstep.” He lowered his voice further, though the din in the ballroom made it easy for them to have a quiet conversation without being overheard.
“Wearing a medallion with the family emblem. Says her mother was one of us.”
Even without a true fear of being overheard, he felt it best to remain a bit circumspect. The name Lightholder attracted nobles like flies to honey.
Persephone went very still. Hugh swore quietly under his breath.
“Do you know who?” Hugh asked.
Ezra shook his head.
“The girl is only four, so even if she had said how old her mother was, I don’t know that we could take her at her word.”
“Children have a dreadful sense of such things,” Persephone said grimly. “Corinna—” This was their older child, who was a year or so older than Iris. “—recently asked me when you would be one hundred, Hugh.”
Ezra made a mental note to find this hilarious later, when he wasn’t focused on obtaining information.
“Wretched child,” Hugh muttered, with unmistakable fondness in his voice.
“But you’re right, children that small don’t pay attention to those kinds of things.
” He paused, frowning. “If the mother were young, it could be the current generation… But I just can’t see it.
They’re all too happily married—except for you,” he added pointedly, looking at Ezra.
“If I thought it possible that it were me,” he commented dryly, “I certainly should not come around here and ask questions, now would I?”
“Fair enough,” Hugh said.
“It would be sneaky, though…” Persephone mused.
“And yet so much more complicated than doing nothing,” Ezra countered.
“It has to be the old guard, don’t you think?” Hugh suggested. “One of the uncles?”
The uncles. The name they’d all used for the four dukes that Grandfather Cornelius had wrangled into the family by offering power, money, and his daughters’ hands.
Ambrose Lightholder, Moses Warson, Reginald Blackwood—and the black sheep, Jeremy Swifton.
Three of the four cut down before their time.
“That’s what I thought,” Ezra agreed. “But… The mother told Iris she was a Lightholder. Not a Warson or a Blackwood or a Swifton.”
Hugh immediately saw what Ezra meant.
“So you think Ambrose,” he said. Xander’s father.
“Or Grandfather,” Ezra said.
Hugh swore again.
“Yes,” Ezra agreed. “Exactly that.”
Persephone looked thoughtful.
“I remember there was something Uncle Ambrose was cross about right before he died,” Hugh said, startling Ezra.
He’d gotten so caught up in wondering about Iris that he had not considered that family gossip might also lead to information about the fire.
“If he found out that Grandfather had a by-blow, he likely would have wanted to care for her, at least financially.”
“This was right before he died?” Ezra demanded.
Hugh nodded, but he didn’t seem terribly concerned about this detail. “I assume that was just when he found out, if that’s even what he was bothered about. If it was, he must have died before he could take action. A true poor turn for your little girl’s mother, if so.”
Ezra was desperate to know more about something that had been bothering his uncle right before the fatal fire, but he needed to focus on Iris for now. Persephone spoke next.
“Can I ask…? Why do you need to know, Ezra? I mean, are there implications beyond curiosity? Legal ones, I mean.”
“Unlikely,” Ezra said. “She’s a girl, for one, and certainly not legitimate. She doesn’t have a claim to the estate, though I am not going to throw her out, obviously. But she deserves to know.”
Persephone nodded, then hesitated.
“It’s admirable that you plan to keep her, Ezra,” she said carefully. “But you are a bachelor. If you would prefer, we could…”
It took Ezra a moment to realize that she was offering to take in Iris. The instinctive rejection that swelled within him was so forceful it almost felt like rage. He carefully tamped down the feeling, as he knew that the offer had been made with a generous spirit.
“No, thank you,” he said tersely. “She is adjusting. She has a dog now. She seems happy. I don’t want to disrupt that.”
She asked to call me ‘uncle,’ he thought. And someone had brought Iris to his door. That was where she belonged.
“Of course,” Persephone said. There was something knowing in her expression that Ezra did not like in the least. “If we can help, though, please. Don’t hesitate to ask for it, Ezra. We are family, after all, and we know what it’s like to raise little girls.”
“I appreciate that,” Ezra said, trying not to show how much he wanted to bristle over her claiming them as family. “But we are doing well.”
“That’s why you hired the governess!” Hugh said suddenly. “I guess you win that wager, Percy.”
“The two of you were wagering on me?” Ezra asked, incredulous.
Neither of them looked even the least bit sorry.
“It’s good that Miss Knightley gets to continue working with the family,” Hugh commented.
There they were again with this family business.
“I could not understand why she wouldn’t want to travel with Xander and Helen, when she supposedly got on well with the children.
They were offering to pay her rather handsomely to go with them to Belgium for the year. ”
Ezra had vaguely known these circumstances.
Letitia had told him as much when he’d first interviewed her for the role of governess.
But all that had taken place before he’d seen how she interacted with Iris, which was to say, before he’d found a reason to act upon the strange draw that he’d felt toward her.
And truly, he had not much cared why she’d left Helen’s employ, only that this meant she was now available to join his.
But now, he knew her. He knew that she was pragmatic, even if she occasionally got swept away by her temper or her passions.
He knew that she cared for Sarah immensely—that she had been paying for her friend to live in London for the full year that Letty herself had been in the countryside with Xander and his brood.
More than that, he knew Sarah now, too, and knew that her disability didn’t stop her from being perfectly independent.
She didn’t need Letty’s proximity to survive in that little flat, just the money.
So why had a sensible woman abandoned a position she knew was good—good money, honorable employers, children she liked—just because she didn’t want to spend one measly year in the country where she had spent the bulk of her life?
This question nagged irritatingly at his mind.
It tugged and tugged, like ill-fitting clothing, as he gave in to Persephone’s cajoling and danced with her. It prickled at him as he bid his cousin and his wife farewell. It continued to bother him throughout the entire carriage ride home.
He simply could not stop thinking about it. Because it seemed that little Miss Letitia Knightley had more secrets than he’d ever paused to suspect.
And he would not be able to rest until he knew it all.
Until he knew the whole truth of her.