“Too late.” Papa slid a document out from under the newspaper. “The farm has been in my daughter’s name since November.”
“What?” She snatched the document from the table to scan it, then slammed it down with disbelief so she could communicate with both hands. “You said you were giving the farm to Elijah—”
“I said I would give him all ofmyshares.” Papa’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “It’s not my fault I don’t have any.”
“Itisyour fault. It’sliterallyyour fault. You signed a document giving control to me, and you didn’t tell either of us.” Her fingers trembled. “Youliedto me. Tome, Papa.”
Her throat pricked and her chest constricted. All these years, her father had been the one person who had always been on her side. Her stalwart, through thick and thin. Her best friend. Her bastion of unconditional love.
And he’d manipulated her with the same ease and flippancy with which he fought his petty battles with the enemy he despised above all others.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Papa said. “The farm is yours outright. It’s a gift.”
“It’s not agift.” Her lip curled. “It was a stab in the back to Elijah and his father. You were never trying to heal the rift. You were out for vengeance, just like Milbotham. And just like the marquess, you were willing to use your own child as bait.”
How was she supposed to forgive a betrayal like that?
Papa took a step closer. “My intentions toward Milbotham were of secondary concern. You have always been the center of my life. And our farm has always been the center of yours. It was within my power to give you the thing you wanted most, but first I wanted to prove to you that it wasn’tallyou wanted. It is perfectly fine to want more out of life than just a farm. I wanted my beautiful daughter to have the world.”
“Why not tell her so?” Elijah said. “Why not let her make her own decisions?”
Thatwas why she loved Elijah. He didn’t just treat her like an equal. He believed she was one.
“I’ve told her the farm wasn’t everything a hundred times. This land isn’t her only legacy. She also inherited my stubbornness. I taught her to hold grudges, and she learned the lesson far too well.” Papa turned to Olive. “I set you up towin, sweetheart. There were too many people for me to understand what was being said that day, but my eyes work just fine. I saw that kiss. You both meant it.”
Olive crossed her hands over her chest.
Papa’s eyes hardened in remembrance. “I also knew Milbotham was the person who ruined it, as he ruins everything. I wanted to give you both a second chance. As far away from the marquess as I could manage, with as few barriers to trying again as possible. For Weston, that meant separating him from his father. Arriving with a license in his hand. But for you... I knew the farm was the only lure that would tempt you to try.”
Olive glared at him. Of course he was right, the manipulative scoundrel.
“The farm was always yours, no matter what. But if I could give you a lifetime with the man you love, too...” Papa’s gaze was earnest. “You deserve to have it.”
“Diabolical... yet heartwarming,” Elijah said. “I can only imagine what your partnership with my father must have been like.”
Olive slanted him a look. “You can’t possibly forgive him for shamelessly manipulating us, just because his intention was to...”
Her voice trailed off.
“Ah, yes.” Elijah winced. “I do have a questionable history of valuing good intentions over potential damage. But in your father’s defense, Ihadbeen an arse to you. My father dines on underhanded tactics at teatime, so he can hardly act pious when he discovers—”
“Slow down. You both are speaking too quickly to interpret.” But that didn’t make sense… Olive thought back over the conversation. “I was too caught up in the argument with my father to remember you couldn’t follow along...” She stopped speaking aloud, and continued only with her fingers. “But you weren’t lost at all, were you?”
“I followed the gist,” he replied with his hands, spelling out the wordgistrather than use the sign. “I don’t know all of your words, so I have to extrapolate from context, which is difficult, because you two sign so quickly and messily, it’s like...finger-mumblingat high speed.”
His signs were clumsy, but comprehensible.
“We could have slowed down,” she signed back, taking care to form each word clearly and properly, like Elijah had done when he’d spoken to her father. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I was here for nefarious reasons,” he reminded her, spelling out the wordnefariousbetween otherwise competent, if inelegant, signs. “Deceiving you was bad enough. Ingratiating myself with your father would only have compounded my sins.”
She nodded slowly. That sounded like Elijah. Even playing the villain, he would have wanted to inflict the least damage possible.
“Besides,” he continued, “it’s not just the speed. Even when I know the word, some of them are different now. You’ve modified them over the years. Or perhaps I’ve forgotten exactly how they went.”
“Papa learned to sign at Braidwood’s Academy for the Deaf,” Olive said. “How didyoulearn to sign?”
“Milbothom,” Papa answered. “He was my age and our estates shared a boundary. We played together from the moment we could toddle. On holidays from the Academy, I taught him everything I could. He was clever, and outpaced my parents from the first. I could speak to him almost as easily as with my Deaf friends.”
