He softened, just as she’d known, with a defeated sigh. “Very well, my dear. If you have no wish to see the prestigious Lord Livingstone again, I shall not be the one to force you. Though I shall warn you, my dear, if you keep this up forever, you shall never—”
The butler entered the sitting room with a quick bow. “Forgive me, my lord, but a visitor is come.”
“At this hour?” Father pulled the pipe from his lips. “Good heavens, we are nearly an hour after dinner. Who is it?”
The butler glanced at Isabella, as if in question of how to answer. Then he said only, “He wishes to remain anonymous until he is seen.”
Mr. Kensley.For reasons unknown, her heart sped faster. Perhaps because, though she did not know what the meeting was about, she knew it meantsomething.Something important to the laughing, teasing, pleasant Mr. Kensley, who had entertained her so well of late—and whom she could not help but feel a certain attachment to.
Father unbent his knees and placed his pipe on the stand. “Very well. Send him in.”
“He wishes a word in private, my lord.”
“Very well, very well. I shall wait for him in my study.” He and the butler left, and Isabella waited several seconds before she too crept to the still-open doorway.
She drew in a breath and held it as she waited for sufficient time to pass. When the study door thudded shut, when the butler passed by without noticing her, she slipped into the hall and pressed to the outside of the study door.
Her curiosity was to be satisfied at last.
Edward Gresham was everything William had imagined. Tall and broad and dressed in black, well-tailored clothes, every hair in place. The study desk he stood behind was meticulous—the ledger straight, the letters stacked, the surface without ink spills or pencil shavings.
His eyes bored into William. “Well, sir, you have your private audience, even if it is at an inconvenient hour. Now what do you want?”
Want?William’s chest suffocated with emotion. All his life, he had wanted a mother and a father of his own. He had wanted a home where he was not afraid of being locked in dark rooms. He had wanted assurance against the cruel, demeaning words always shouted at him by his aunt.
Now, he wanted nothing.
Except answers.
“Well?” Lord Gresham tapped his fingers against the desk. “I have only just returned from a long journey, and I have many pressing matters to attend to—”
“I am your son.” The words raked from his throat.
The tapping ceased. Color flushed from Lord Gresham’s neck to his cheeks as the longcase clock ticked away the seconds. Fury settled into the man’s gaze. “Who are you?”
“William Kensley, son of Constance Kensley of Rosen—”
“How dare you come here.” His father stepped around the desk, sweat beading across his face. “How much do you want? How much has she sent you for?”
“Sir—”
“Answer me!”
A tremble raced through William, but he kept the man’s stare and pulled himself taller. He spoke with the feigned indifference he’d practiced with his aunt endless times. “No one has sent me, and I have come for naught but answers.”
“Answers to what?”
“Why you allowed me to think you dead.”
A curse blew from Lord Gresham’s lips. “I will not be blackmailed. I will not be interrogated. Get out of here—”
“I will have my word with you.”
“You will have nothing from me.”
Pain prickled through William as the rejection seeped deeper and wrapped clawlike fingers around his heart. He would have rather kept his father dead. The lichen-covered headstone with the short and kind epitaphHere lieth the body of a pious man, devoted husband, and loving father.
He had clung to those words a thousand times.
