Chapter One #3
He needed to bring this conversation to an end. Alistair approached the desk and slid the leather folder back towards his father. ‘No. I don’t think I will go. It’s unnecessary. The letter can be sent by post. There’s no need to upend my Season and put yourself out of the travel expenses.’
‘The post?’ His father nodded as if considering the argument before pushing the folder towards Alistair once more.
‘No, I’m afraid the letter is too sensitive.
I need someone I can trust to act as a courier.
’ Alistair knew he was supposed to be flattered by that endorsement, perhaps even distracted.
He met his father’s gaze and matched the considering nod with one of his own, sliding the folder across the desk.
It had become a shuttlecock between them in this verbal battledore.
‘If it’s about trust, have Hayes do it. He can extend his trip.
It can’t be that urgent if you’re encouraging me to linger in Florence. ’
‘Information can still be sensitive even if time is of only moderate concern,’ his father countered, the folder coming Alistair’s direction with a new firmness.
‘The Roses will expect you in September. By then, Hayes will be too busy with his own endeavours to make the trip. Even so, the Roses have always been more our friends than the Wintertons. Thomas has asked this of me, not your uncle.’ His father’s tone was steely, a sure sign that he was entrenching.
The time for politely making a case was past for them both.
This would be settled one way or the other before they left this room.
Foreboding filled Alistair as to how that might play out.
‘Thomas Rose is your friend. Perhaps you should be the one to go instead of pawning this off on me.’ Alistair knew he was approaching insolence now.
His father asked so little of him, which made his lack of performance in life all the more disappointing to them both.
But how could anything he did compare to his father’s accomplishments?
The cream cartel had proven it. And people would compare.
People would expect any effort he made to measure up to his father. They had in the past.
His father smiled. ‘That is one solution, but then you would lose your allowance, and I would not be here to oversee planting and harvesting at Sessile Oaks.’ Ah, so that was the stick his father would wield when the carrot of travel to Naples failed to inspire.
It had been neatly done. His father never threatened.
He just stated facts. If his father said he’d pull the allowance, he would.
His father wouldn’t budge; he was not a compromiser.
It was something else they had in common—an unfortunate familial characteristic to share in this situation.
‘So you will force me by leaving me no choice?’ Alistair bristled, matching his father hard blue stare for hard blue stare.
‘I’d rather not. I’d rather you simply do as I have asked.’ There was frustration in his father’s words. No doubt, Hayes had not put up any resistance. He was an obedient son and an officer. He knew how to follow orders.
‘I expect you’d rather have me do quite a few things.’ They had reached their impasse now. Or perhaps it was just him. He couldn’t stay without funds, and he had no desire to go, but he had no leverage to counter his father with.
‘I would settle for having you do one thing, Alistair, anything. You haven’t tried anything since the cream cartel, or at least not seen anything through.
’ There was a crack in his father’s coolness as emotion seeped through.
For the first time, Alistair saw the tiredness in the older man’s eyes.
Guilt pricked. The exhaustion was there because of him.
It was his fault. Sixty-four was not young, although it was hard to remember that when his father seemed to exude vitality.
‘By the saints, Alistair, you are thirty-two years old. You are blessed with so many talents, and you don’t apply them to anything of merit.
You’ve let one failed venture define you.
’ The words carried exasperation, not condemnation, with them.
Alistair would have preferred the latter.
Then he could have felt justified in defending himself.
‘Nothing I do will ever be good enough. I will never live up to your achievements. People will say—’ Alistair began.
His father came around the desk. ‘Those men who celebrated your defeat lacked vision. They are old men with no eye to the future. Your cartel will work in the future once railroads are established. Your idea had merit, just not the technology to make it feasible today. I say, try it again in ten years, and the results will be different. I plan to.’ He gave an encouraging smile.
‘You have to say that. You’re my father.’ It didn’t change the fact that he’d lost money for others, that others had risked themselves for him, and he’d failed them. Nor did it change how those without his father’s belief looked at him now—the acorn that would never be as mighty as the oak.
‘Even so, who cares what people might say? You are the only one who has to live with yourself. If I’d let the words of others guide me, I’d never have attempted to restore Sessile Oaks, never have attempted to rise above my father’s failures.
I just want you to try, Alistair. I worry for you.
’ Those words embodied the sum of their relationship: the tension and the love inextricably intertwined.
The tension was there because of the love, and love begot responsibility. Alistair owed his father a better son.
Alistair dropped his eyes, the confession soft on his lips. ‘I worry for me, too.’
His father reached for him, his hand on the sleeve of Alistair’s coat, earnestness in his touch. ‘Then, go to Naples. Let it be the place where you step out from the shadows you believe you walk in. No one will know you there. You can be whatever and whoever you choose. Thomas will guide you.’
Alistair lifted his head. The hope in his father’s eyes was hard to look at.
He didn’t want to disappoint him again. A new start was a tempting idea.
He’d not thought of Naples or even the sum of this onerous trip in that way.
But it couldn’t last. ‘It seems like a temporary solution. Coming home to England will undo anything I achieve abroad.’
‘Then, stay in Naples, if you desire.’ His father shook his head when Alistair protested leaving them.
‘You’re not happy here, Alistair. Go find your happiness, and you will find your place.
Your mother and I will miss you, of course, but your happiness is more important.
’ His father’s eyes were suspiciously misty, a sign of what this offer cost him, a sign, too, of how much Alistair was loved by both his parents.
He could not fight this. The argument was lost.
Alistair felt his own throat tighten. His words were hoarse when he spoke. ‘All right, I’ll go to Naples.’ He couldn’t promise how it would turn out, but he could at least give his father this. Who knew? Maybe he’d find whatever it was he’d been searching for.