13. Chapter 13
“I’ve heard a number of stories today.” I hedge, clutching the coat around me. We’ve paused on the rocky path winding up the cliff face toward the house.
“Mmm,” he says with a faint smile as the wind blows his dark hair. How at home he seems on these cliffs. His features have eased considerably since coming here.
I steal a glance at him. “I wouldn’t mind hearing another. Yours, for example.”
He slows and turns back toward the sea. “Not worth telling.”
“Please.”
He faces me. “You won’t find your father in it, if that’s what you’re hoping.” He shoves his hair off his face. “We were only connected by proximity.” He watches the docks for another moment before adding, “You understand now, don’t you?”
“I never saw them before. It was always a sea of bodies, but to look into their faces… I feel as though I’ve done it wrong all this time.” As if I’m ready now, for the first time, to find my father.
He pivots on the rock, his smile kind. “Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s impossible to know what a body has lived until you walk in his shoes.”
“Then let me walk. Take me there, show me. Teach me. Let me be humbled until…” Until he’s willing to be found. Willing to come home with me.
“You do not know what you’re asking. That life is nothing like this.” He points toward Dunn House, set way back from the cliff.
I cross my arms. “You did it. You’re currently existing in a world entirely different than what you know.” I look up at him, at that finely cut jaw. “Aren’t you? Or were you once… better situated?”
He shrugs. “I’ve had my share of abundance.”
The house looms above us, growing nearer. I slow, unwilling to break the lovely intimacy that has wrapped around us. “Do tell more.”
“Why do I feel as though you are accusing me of something?”
A cluster of servants pass on the narrow footpath, chattering and laughing.
When they’re well ahead, I corner him in the shadows of the rock cleft. “When were you going to be honest with me?”
“About what?” His eyes snap, breath coming in puffs between us.
“That you are the future Duke of Ashbourne. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because that would be lying.”
I pull back, uncertain what to believe. “So you're not the Duke of Ashbourne’s son?”
He stands perfectly still on that cliff, then a muscle jerks in his cheek. “Titles never did anyone any favors.”
I search his face for clues.
The Duke’s son, Jane said, has been missing for more than two years.
Missing.
But I’ve found him. Right where no one else would bother to look.
“You are his son, aren’t you?”
He squints, grimacing. He shifts his weight.
I frown. “What about—”
“You brought me here to change my story—not hear it recited.”
“I know you’re running from the law. That you’re hiding. I promise not to look upon you any differently, whatever you’ve done or not done. Only… please tell me the truth.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with it.” He braces one boot on a boulder, looking out over the Atlantic. “Truth is full of sharp edges.”
I gasp and cling to a bare tree branch. On the heels of those words, I can smell Papa’s aftershave. Feel the rumble of his voice against my shoulder. “You were wrong about one thing, Mr. Balfour.”
His eyebrows lift.
“That I’d never find my father in your stories. You’ve just said the very thing Papa told me before he left.” I hand him back the coat as we stand at the fork in the path. I must go one way, and he another.
His jaw flinches again, then goes rock-hard.
I open my mouth, but a shout sounds above us. Sally is charging down the footpath, yelling my name.
Uncle has returned.
Freedom has ended.
I turn back to Simon Balfour, but he’s already moving quickly down the footpath toward the cottage, hands deep in Papa’s coat’s pockets.
I let out a breath. The truth must sleep a little longer.