Chapter 28
Agnes was still reeling, shocked by the admission that Gordon had a son. Where was the boy? Had something happened to him? Was that why Lizzy’s babbling had bothered him so much?
At the same time, a second jolt of shock struck her, hearing a voice she had not heard in months. In truth, she hadn’t known if she would ever hear it again.
“Father?” she rasped, whirling around.
He was not such a terribly old man at fifty-one, but years of grief and isolation had aged him.
His sandy hair was now streaked with white, his hazel eyes sunken, his complexion sallow and drawn, his body fixed in a perpetual stoop from endless days of sitting in the dark, in his armchair, doing nothing.
He had been handsome once. There were portraits to prove it, and her mother had always cooed at how breathtaking he was to behold, especially when he swept her into his arms to dance in the hallway or the drawing room with her. For no reason at all.
Agnes ran to him but stopped short of embracing him. After her mother died, he had ceased to be affectionate to his daughters. She doubted her absence had changed that.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, flushed.
Had he read her letters and decided not to write, but to come and see her instead?
His hazel eyes narrowed, his lips pressing into a grim line.
“I received an invitation to the betrothal party and thought I would leave at once so that I did not miss it. As such, I arrived a week early.” He cleared his throat.
“I saw you in the hallway. I called out to you, but I don’t think you heard me. Clearly, you did not hear me.”
Invitation? Who on earth sent it?
It certainly had not come from her.
Her father surveyed the room and Gordon with an aloofness that she was all too familiar with. He loved her; she did not doubt that, but every time he looked at her, he saw her mother. And now, her sister too.
“If I could just explain—” Agnes began to say, but he interrupted, his gaze fixed on Gordon.
“What do you mean ‘fake’, sir?” His voice carried an edge of threat that she didn’t like one bit. “Do you not intend to marry my daughter? Explain yourself.”
Oh heavens.
The last thing Agnes needed was her father and Gordon getting into a duel over this. After all, she had seen Gordon fight in the training yard and had no doubt that he was an excellent shot. It would be no challenge for him.
“Father, why don’t we take tea downstairs and I can—” she tried again.
“I am not talking to you, dear girl,” her father cut in firmly. “I wish to hear what your supposed betrothed has to say, for this is news to me.”
Gordon puffed out a breath, the streaks and splashes of paint making him look all the more intimidating in the low light, as if those marks were not paint at all.
“I apologize for yer confusion, sir, but this was a mutual agreement,” he replied, his tone polite. “If it’s a surprise to ye, that’s nay mistake of mine.”
Agnes gulped. Maybe she should have been more forthright in her letter to her father, but it was too late to remedy that now.
“I cannae, and willnae marry anyone,” Gordon added, as if for her benefit too. “It’s a vow I made some years ago. But I do mean to protect yer daughter and yer granddaughter from those who wish to harm them. I ken that’s nae what a faither might want to hear, but I cannae be anythin’ but honest.”
Her father seemed to shift through a carousel of emotion, his mouth opening and closing without speaking a word, as if he couldn’t decide what to say or how to respond.
“Is this true?” he asked at last, turning to her.
Agnes nodded. “It is, Father. The ‘betrothal,’ such as it is, is my protection.”
The older man’s brow crumpled, his hunched shoulders slumping further. And in his eyes, Agnes saw something that might have been disappointment, but could just as easily have been sorrow. Either way, he was not happy.
“I’ll leave ye to talk,” Gordon said gently, and left the room before she could beg for the reassurance of his presence.
Standing there in the flickering candlelight, Agnes waited for her father to speak first.
“I do not understand why you would do this,” he began, his voice rough with emotion. “Has what happened to Christine taught you nothing?”
“It is not the same,” Agnes replied, her voice catching. “This is… a ruse. It is not real.”
It pained her to say it, when not so very long ago, she had insisted that it was entirely real. But she didn’t think that would placate her father much.
“You do not know the struggles I have endured, Father,” she continued, sucking in a steadying breath.
“You do not know the threat that faces us. I had to do something in order to protect Lizzy, and this is it. If I had not acted, Edwin would have taken her from me and placed her in a convent. Or worse, he might have got rid of her altogether.”
There was nothing a desperate man wouldn’t do to save his own skin, and she had wondered for some time if sending Lizzy to a convent had merely been a euphemism for making her vanish permanently.
“You should have written to me,” her father replied gruffly. “I could have protected you both.”
“I did, Father,” she said, her temper rising.
“I wrote to you week after week and heard nothing in reply. I know it is not because you didn’t care, but because you cared too much that you couldn’t bear it.
Nevertheless, I had only myself to rely upon…
and Aunt Tabitha too. She understood that this was a viable way to keep Lizzy safe. ”
I was grieving too! She wanted to scream at him. I was heartbroken beyond measure, but I did not have the luxury of locking myself away from the world! Someone had to step in to look after Lizzy, and it certainly wasn’t you.
She managed to hold her tongue and suppress her anger, but it fizzled in her veins regardless. All the things she had felt these past months since Lizzy’s arrival into the world and Christine’s departure from it, all the things she had bottled up because she had been given no other choice.
“I realize it might not seem ideal,” she pressed, “but the Laird is a good man. He promised to look after us, and he is… he is my… he is my ally. He has asked for nothing in return, and I know that Edwin would never be stupid enough to try and take Lizzy from this place.”
Her father’s eyes were misty as he croaked out, “But you will be ruined, Agnes. No one will marry you when they hear of this.”
“No one will marry me anyway because I have no intention of leaving Lizzy,” she shot back. “Do you think any gentleman will agree to take in my niece? I am ruined anyway, even if no one in society knows much about what I am doing.”
“Ruined anyway?” Her father’s jaw clenched. “What do you mean? What have you done?”
He had misunderstood her completely.
“Nothing! Nothing has happened, Father,” she replied, her face flushed. “That is not what I meant. I meant that… my hands are already tied, and my options are already limited, but at least here, my niece—your granddaughter—is safe. That is all that matters to me.”
Her father seemed pensive, mulling over the meat of what she had just said. Either that, or he was trying to figure out if she was lying to him.
I am never going back, she wanted to tell him, but that sense of belonging that she had experienced a short while ago was fading by the day.
“If that is true, and if society really doesn’t know much of all this, then…
we must find another husband for you, as soon as possible,” her father declared with a decisive nod.
“You are still the daughter of an earl. You still have merit, and I am certain there is someone out there who will accept Lizzy too, before that wretched beast, Edwin, can do anything.”
Agnes’s heart sank. True, she had considered the same thing, had even searched through her almanac of lairds for someone more suitable. The trouble was, she had continually found herself back on Gordon’s page, reading between the lines of his entry.
Marrying someone else would be a good idea, if only for Lizzy’s long-term safety, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it.
“I should speak to the Laird,” she said hastily. “Meanwhile, you should settle in. I will have the housekeeper prepare a room for you.”
She darted out before her father could say anything else, in case what he had to say was, “I am not staying for the party, and neither are you. We are going back to England at once.”
Gordon sat down behind his desk and swept a hand through his hair, feeling uneasy about the entire evening. He glanced at his arm, still covered in paint, and shook his head.
What is the lass doin’ to me?
He had lost all control in her bedchamber, and he had lost all control tonight, destroying years’ worth of work. Paintings that he would never be able to get back, moments in time that were now ruined.
To add insult to injury, now he had to deal with her father, who probably wanted to kill him for not marrying her.
He sank back in his chair, closed his eyes, and expelled a weary sigh. He had never felt this tired in all his life, exhausted to his very marrow. The chair was not at all comfortable, but he could easily have fallen asleep there.
Footsteps in the hallway outside snapped his eyes open, his brow furrowing as a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” he called warily.
Agnes stepped inside, surprising him. He had assumed she wouldn’t want to see him again anytime soon.
“Apologies for the intrusion,” she said, sounding oddly detached.
He shrugged. “I trust ye had an illuminatin’ conversation with yer faither?”
“Yes… Yes, something like that.” She moved further into the room.
Daenae ask about me son, he begged silently, for that would surely sap what little vigor he had left. Indeed, he wished he hadn’t mentioned the boy and was not entirely sure why he had.