Chapter 11
“Miss Wetherby, His Grace would like to see you in his study.”
Bridget looked up. She had been sitting on the floor with Emma and watching as the girl played with one of her dolls in silence. The butler stood in the doorway, his expression stoic, waiting for her. “Did His Grace say what he wanted?”
“Only that I was to bring you to him at once.” The butler raised his eyebrows. “Best not to keep His Grace waiting.”
Bridget nodded and rose to her feet. Emma looked up at her in mild alarm.
“Don’t worry,” Bridget reassured her. “I’ll be back very soon. I just need to go speak to your father for a moment, all right?”
Emma hesitated, then nodded slowly.
Bridget followed the butler down the hall toward the study, hoping this wasn’t going to take too long. She didn’t like leaving Emma on her own. The girl was still so fragile. She needed someone with her at all times.
The butler knocked on the door. “Miss Wetherby, Your Grace.”
“Send her in,” the duke’s voice came through the door.
The butler nodded at Bridget and held out an arm, indicating that she ought to go forward.
Bridget bit her lip. She didn’t want to feel intimidated by the duke, but she did. It was something she was just going to have to get over, though, because she was determined to stay here and to do all she could to help Emma.
She opened the door and went into the study.
The duke was seated at his desk. He looked up when she came in, and instantly her feelings of intimidation multiplied. He wasn’t exactly glaring at her, but his eyes were narrowed.
“Miss Wetherby,” he said. “Come in and sit down.”
She made her way into the room slowly, feeling as if she might accidentally provoke him to anger, and took the seat opposite him at the desk. “You wanted to see me?”
“I wanted to speak to you about what happened at dinner last night, when I tried to persuade my daughter to talk to me about her kidnapper.”
“Oh.” She had expected something like this, and she hoped that he meant to speak to her for Emma’s well-being.
“I think that was what was to be expected, pressing her like that so soon after her return to you. You can’t expect her to let go of everything that happened so quickly—it was a lot for such a young person to cope with.
If you’re patient with her, if you let her take things at her own pace, I’m sure you’ll find that she’ll be ready to talk about it in no time. ”
The duke narrowed his eyes. “My concern, Miss Wetherby, is that she won’t feel as if she has to talk. I think you’re slowing her recovery with the way you’re babying her.”
“Babying her?” Bridget drew back, eyebrows lifting. “I don’t think I’m babying her, Your Grace.”
“The message you’re giving her is that she doesn’t have to try to speak, because someone will always jump in and talk for her. That you will.”
“You did bring me here to help her,” Bridget reminded him.
“Yes, to help. Not to meddle in my relationship with my daughter, and certainly not to try to prevent me from finding out who’s responsible for taking her.”
“You can’t honestly think I’d want to keep you from finding that out,” Bridget protested.
“I didn’t stop her from telling you anything.
She wasn’t going to tell you anything. You saw the way she was reacting just as clearly as I did.
You should know as well as I do that she wasn’t going to be able to speak to you about it.
The fact that you kept pushing her… that isn’t my fault.
But you brought me here to care for her, and I’m going to do that to the best of my ability! ”
“Well, I want to see her captor brought to justice.” He glowered at her. “I won’t rest until that’s done.”
“I want that too, but you won’t get there any quicker by badgering your daughter to speak before she’s ready. Once she knows she’s safe, she’ll relax, and then she’ll be able to talk.”
“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”
“I am,” she said. “I’ve been through this before, as I told you. I’ve helped many children who have suffered through similar things. I know you don’t want to believe it, but I do know how to help. All I need is for you to allow me to do it.”
“And you say she needs time.”
“I do.”
“I’ve given her time.”
“Give her more.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s how you speak to a gentleman of my station? I think you’re forgetting yourself.”
She leaned forward. “Do you think that my deferring to you and showing you respect is more important than doing the right thing by your daughter?” she asked.
“If I were you, I would spend less time worrying about the kind of conversation you want to hear from me and more time thinking about why Emma doesn’t yet feel safe enough to speak. ”
“It’s probably because she knows her captor is still walking free,” the duke snapped. “I don’t know how she could possibly feel safe under those conditions.” He eyed Bridget. “I’d never have guessed you were from a noble family with the way you conduct yourself,” he said.
“What in the world is that supposed to mean?” Bridget suspected she should be offended, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel that way. What he had said was simply too strange, too inexplicable. If it were supposed to be an insult, he was going to have to find a way to be clearer with his words.
“You think you know everything,” he told her. “You don’t listen to anybody. A lady from circumstances such as yours ought to know better how to conduct herself.”
“Well, maybe I just don’t consider those things to be of much importance in a situation like this one,” she said, irritation blooming within her.
Was he really going to try to give her a lesson on manners?
It was clearly a subject he himself knew nothing about, so she didn’t see how he could justify saying anything to her about it.
“I suspect,” she said, “that you’re simply not used to anyone questioning you.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that I’m a lady.
I could be the queen, and you wouldn’t be able to hear criticism from me, because you don’t think anyone ever knows better than you about anything. ”
“That isn’t true,” the duke said. “And it’s not just the way you constantly question me that makes me doubt your upbringing.”
She sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “Go on.” If he had something to say, let him say it.
“You leave your life at the orphanage and come here with no thought about what anyone in your life might have to say about it,” he said.
“You ride away with a stranger. Now, if my daughter tried to do such a thing in the future, I would intervene and stop her. I would warn her of the risks to her safety. Not to mention her reputation. Is that why you didn’t tell anyone you were coming with me? You didn’t want to risk being stopped?”
She snorted. “Hardly.”
“I’m hard pressed to think of another reason you would keep it a secret from your own family.”
Bridget sighed, temper flaring. “If you must know, I know for certain that my parents would not have stopped me,” she snapped. “They don’t care what happens to me. They never have. What do you think I was doing at the orphanage in the first place?”
The duke looked up. “Your parents threw you out? That’s why you work at the orphanage?”
“I’m there because I want to help the children, of course—but it’s my home, too.
I live at the orphanage because I have nowhere else to go.
My parents threw me out of their home after I failed to find myself a husband.
They were unwilling to have their unmarried daughter living with them any longer…
not that they were ever particularly enthused about my living there. My father never wanted a daughter.”
The duke went quiet for a moment.
“Oh,” he said at last. “That sounds… truly awful.”
“Well, I don’t imagine it’s uncommon. Fathers with titles want sons to whom titles can be passed down,” she said. “He wanted an heir, and I wasn’t one.”
“A good father is happy with his child no matter what she is,” Reeves said, his voice tight. “A good father wouldn’t wish his child were someone else to satisfy his own selfish needs.”
It was a thought Bridget had had many times, but to hear it coming out of someone else’s mouth was powerful.
She regarded him for a moment. Whether his definition of a good father was strictly true or not, he had inadvertently told her something else here—how much he cared for Emma. He really did want to help her.
She could trust his motives.
She wanted to say something to him, to let him know that she appreciated what he was saying.
That Emma was lucky to have a father like him, and that she was sorry she’d had to fight him at every turn.
He cared for his daughter. He didn’t deserve to be treated like her enemy.
They would find a way forward that didn’t mean working against one another the way they had been so far.
Before she could say it, though, the door to the study burst open, and Agnes came rushing in.
“Reeves,” she said. “Bridget.”
Her face was flushed, and her hair was untidy. She was wringing her hands in front of her. Bridget could tell at once that something was very wrong. She jumped to her feet. On the other side of the desk, the duke did the same. “What is it?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
“I just went to the nursery to check on Emma—one of the maids let me know that Bridget had come here, you see, and I didn’t want her to be on her own…”
Bridget noticed the way the duke stiffened at the sound of his daughter’s name. “And?”
“And she isn’t in her room,” Agnes burst out. “I don’t know what could have happened, but… Emma is gone!