Loving father.
But they weren’t true any more than anything else had been true.
“Get out of here,” said Lord Gresham again, with less volume. His blood-red features altered some, and the new look smoldering in his eyes seemed more pleading than anything else. “Have you no inkling what this could do to me?”
“I wish no harm to your reputation, but a dying man has bidden me to find you.”
“Dying man? What dying man?”
“The gardener at Rosenleigh.”
“I know nothing of any gardener. This is preposterous.” His voice boomed again. “I have been true to her terms and faithfully sent the five thousand pounds every year—”
“You paid to keep me a secret?”
“Do not pretend ignorance to me, you conniving and foolish blackguard.”
William fended off the insult, just as he did with his aunt. “Never mind all of that. It is not why I have come.”
“Then why have you come?”
“Because my life is endangered. I need to know why.”
“Endangered how? I know nothing of it.”
“The gardener at Rosenleigh sent me to find you. He thought perhaps you had answers that would divulge who would want me dead—”
“He thoughtIwanted you dead, is that not so?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, it is untrue.” Lord Gresham stormed to the door, and his hand shook as he clasped the knob. “I have wished you out of my life since Constance’s sister wrote me of you. I have paid a great price to keep you away. I have sacrificed more than you know—not just for myself, but for my daughter.” Moisture filmed his eyes. “I will not have you destroy me now.”
“My lord—”
“Get out of this house, and if I ever cast eyes upon you again, whoever is trying to kill you may not get the chance. I shall do it myself.” He slung open the door and waited stock-still, eyes hot and raging, sweat rolling down his temples and down his neck.
William nodded and quit the room, bitterness coursing through him.
Loving father, indeed.
She had imagined a hundred things, but never this.
Isabella hugged her arms at the sitting room window and waited until Mr. Kensley’s hackney drove away. She squeezed herself, indignation heating her blood flow. She’d been eavesdropping at the study door long enough to hear the abominable Mr. Kensley speak those incriminating words to Father: “I am your son.”
The nerve of such a contemptuous lie! To think she had laughed with him, and fraternized with him, and played chess with him, while all along he was …
Planning to blackmail us.
A maid had swept into the hall before Isabella could hear more, and she’d been forced to retreat back to the sitting room lest the maid tell everyone what her mistress had been up to.
Now Isabella bounded for the study and found her father at the window, the last burning light of day on his face, shoulders hunched. “Father?”
“Leave me, child. I am in no temperament for anything at the moment.”
“I heard.”
The confession turned him around. He stared at her, his gaze long and hard and undecipherable. “You should not have listened—”
