Forcing his features into stone, William entered and bowed. He waited for an errand, a letter to be delivered or a tray to be fetched.
But Lord Manigan remained standing behind his cluttered desk, his eyes on William, a twinkle in his gaze. “Do relax, dear boy. I am not about to send you on a footrace against a carriage, you know.”
Despite himself, a small smile lifted the corner of William’s lips. “I am very fond of racing, my lord.”
A chuckle followed. “Perhaps another time, then. Sit down there, won’t you?”
William hesitated.
“Come now. Are you in my employ or are you not?”
William sat and closed his fists on each knee to keep them from bouncing. Silence swallowed the study, disturbed only by the squeak of Lord Manigan’s chair as he sat.
“I have learned that you have been quite diligent in my absence. My steward has been more than impressed with the work you can handle.” Lord Manigan pulled out a drawer in his desk, lifted a drawstring bag of coins, and slid it across the mahogany surface. “You have paid your debt in excess, my son. I cannot in good conscience allow you to leave without first recompensing the difference.”
“There is no difference. If I have paid my debt, that is all I have done.”
“On the contrary. You have done more, and it has been quite well earned.”
“I do not need it.”
“Do not need it?” Brows rose. “I daresay, such pride is more distasteful than accepting what you have already worked for.”
Pride? What pride did Lord Manigan imagine William had left?
“Permit me honesty, son. Will you do that?”
“As you said, I am in your employ.”
“This is hardly the same young man I credited with such praise mere months ago. You have changed considerably, and it is not to your credit.” A frown intensified. “I have always known you to have a certain exuberance for life, and now I must wonder, is that to die alongside your misfortune?”
“What do you expect of me?” Cold rage worked up from the toes he curled in his boots. “I am merely endeavoring to survive—”
“Survive what, may I ask? Do say it. I should like to understand.”
Heat pulsing his face, William stood. “If that is all you wish to discuss—”
“Sit back down.”
“I have no intention of enduring this. With all due respect, my lord, you must forgive me if I am solemn of temperament. I have lost everything and everyone dear to me. I have forsaken my home to a cousin who is so indulgent in his own grief that he cannot manage his own health, let alone the care of an entire house. I am changed from a gentleman of stature and significance to a workhouse beggar in livery and wig—and worse yet, I have no family at all.” He thumped his chest. “Am I to bear all of this with the same vivacity I had before? Forgive me, but I cannot. It is a feat too great for me.”
“Then you are less of a man than I had imagined.”
William flinched. Shame speared deeper.
“I can respect a man, to a certain degree, who enjoys life when things are prosperous and he is surrounded by the circumstances that best suit him. But I would admire a man far more if he were to lose all his comforts yet still retain that same joy, because there would be a man who was not shaped by the tempest of the wind, but by the morals of his own inward self.”
William’s shoulders threatened to cave, but he held them firm by sheer force of will. He nodded, bowed, fled from the room.
The words followed him like a nightmare. One he wanted to run from.
But he didn’t run. He faced them, every brutal word, that night in his blanket on the floor.“Just have to forgive dem.”The last thing he wanted to do, but Mrs. Shaw had been right.
Lord Manigan was right.
How long did William think he could go on like this, tangled in his own bitterness, suffocating in pity as if he were the only person in the world to suffer injustice?
His aunt had done him wrong. He would live with those wrongs the rest of his life.
