Chapter 9 #2
Her father was leaning back in his favourite armchair of his library, flinching each time that Nerissa brought the cloth a little closer to his arm. She sighed, placed it back in the shallow bowl of warm water, squeezed it out, and took a deep breath.
“I am going to sit here and attempt to do this until you let me clean that wound,” she said severely. “I do not trust that Doctor Blythe, far more interested as he is in the medicinal port that he has than his patients. Now, did he clean this cut?”
Her father had the grace to smile begrudgingly. “No, my dear.”
Nerissa rolled her eyes. “Then I will need to do it now, and the longer that you struggle against this, the longer that it will take, and I am tired.”
As though to emphasise her point, the clock on the mantlepiece stuck but once.
“One o’clock in the morning,” she said with a weary smile. “Now, will you let me clean it?”
Mr Fairchild did wince slightly as the warm cloth touched his skin, but he did not completely pull away as he had before, and Nerissa was finally able to start gently cleaning the soil away from the red wound.
“And what were you thinking,” she berated, a little more softly now, “duelling with a man half your age?”
“I was only doing it because I wanted to protect you – protect your honour!” Her father protested.
Nerissa snorted. “Honour? My honour does not need protecting.”
But she could not prevent her cheeks darkening slightly as she spoke. She knew full well that her innocence was lost, and lost forever to Anthony. There was no getting that back.
Forcing the thought from her mind, she focused her full attention on ensuring that every little bit of grit was removed from the wound her father had sustained.
“And speaking of honour,” Nerissa said quietly, unable to look at her father’s face as she spoke, “what about the catastrophe at the Olympic Shipping Company, hmmm?”
She could feel him stiffen with awkwardness, even without looking at his eyes.
“What about it?”
Nerissa sighed and leaned back, finally raising her eyes to his own, which were sorrowful and a little embarrassed. “You know full well, father. You allowed it to happen, did you not? You are far too good at what you do for the financial ruin to be an accident. You caused it.”
“Caused it!” Mr Fairchild blustered. “Caused is a strong word, my dear. I saw it coming, perhaps, and did not do all that I could have done to prevent it – ”
“Which is just as bad,” Nerissa said sadly, shaking her head. “Why, father? Why did you do it?”
He did not answer her for a moment, but his gaze focused on something a little way behind her. Nerissa turned, and sighed as she saw the engraving of her mother on the mantlepiece.
“I did it for her, of course,” he said sadly. “Not for her exactly, but for her child, for our daughter.”
Nerissa turned back to face her father, her mouth open.
“From the very day that you were born,” Mr Fairchild said fondly, a weak smile on his face, “I knew that I needed to provide for you, to keep you safe, financially. I wanted you to have a dowry as much as the daughter of a baronet, perhaps even a baron! I wanted you to marry for love, my dear, and for that you needed a dowry large enough to tempt whomsoever you wanted.”
“But…but…” Nerissa could barely comprehend what he was saying. “But father, you and mother! You loved each other, and she had barely a penny to her name when she married!”
The faint smile on her father’s fade started to fade.
“Ah, my dear. I loved her, and I had money, you see? So it did not matter that my darling Sarah had nothing. And she grew to love me, or at least I think she did. She certainly loved you, and she wanted you to have the chance to marry whoever you wanted. She did not want you to feel…to feel bought and paid for, as she did.”
There were tears in his eyes now, and Nerissa found that tears of her own had sprung up in her eyes.
“Father, she – she never felt that,” she managed before Mr Fairchild interrupted her.
“Oh no, not by the time that you were born,” he said reassuringly. “You were born from love, real love. But at the beginning, it was hard for her. I did not want you to fall in love with a man and find that his affections could be overpowered by his financial concerns.”
Nerissa thought unwillingly of Lady Olivia Stratham, left and abandoned by the man that she loved for want of a fortune.
“‘Tis of no matter now, anyway,” she said finally, tying a bandage around her father’s arm. “I will never marry, whether for love or not.”
Mr Fairchild raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? You are still young, my dear.”
Nerissa laughed drily. “And yet the man that I truly love does not want me. He never wanted me, I think, except perhaps to settle…settle a score.”
Her head tilted down, her sadness overwhelming her for a moment. What had she shouted at him?
“I do not wish to marry you. Even if you begged me.”
That bridge was burned now, she knew it. The fact that Anthony had been unable, or unwilling to harm her father said nothing. It was all over between them, and before it had really begun.
Her father leaned down, placed a finger underneath her chin, and pushed it up. “My darling child,” he said gently. “That young Anthony evidently was never able to see what he was about to lose, whether it was money or a woman. The question is, do you?”