Evan’s smirk faded slightly, but his grip did not loosen.
“And?”
She licked her lips. “That you made your fortune on your own. That the title came later.”
“Well, at least they got that part right,” he said simply.
“I did not mean to offend?—”
Evan let out a quiet chuckle, cutting her off. “You did not.”
She blinked, taken aback.
Evan glanced away for a moment, as if deciding whether to continue, then—without looking at her—he spoke again.
“My mother was a commoner,” he said simply. “My father—” he scoffed lightly “—was not.”
His tone was so even yet she knew instinctively that this was not something he spoke of often.
“My father only acknowledged me later,” Evan continued. “I spent most of my childhood believing I was nothing more than a bastard.”
Isadora swallowed hard, her fingers twitching slightly against his shoulder. It was already far more than she had ever expected him to admit to her. Simply put, she knew not how to react.
“I was raised in the backstreets of London,” Evan went on, his voice growing more distant as though he was only a narrator in someone else’s story. “My mother did her best, but it was never easy. But we survived, and I learned how to survive with her.”
Isadora’s chest tightened. She could picture it—a young boy with sharp eyes fighting to take what the world refused to give him.
“And yet, you made a fortune,” she said softly.
Evan let out a low chuckle. “Ah, yes. That is what people like to say, is it not?” His expression darkened just slightly. “That I came from nothing and built an empire. That I clawed my way up.”
“Is that not correct?” Isadora frowned. “Did you not?”
Evan lifted a brow, as if debating how much to tell her.
“I was always good at business,” he admitted. “I knew how to read people, how to find opportunity where others saw ruin. But wealth—?” He exhaled. “Wealth alone does not earn a man respect. It is the title that does that.”
Isadora’s heart ached unexpectedly.
She had grown up surrounded by her own privilege—and yet, here stood a man who had spent his life proving himself worthy of what others had simply been given.
I want to know more.
She wanted to know everything.
But before she could, Evan’s expression shifted. The moment was gone. His jaw tightened.
“That is enough for tonight,” he said suddenly, stepping back.
Isadora blinked. “What? We are in the middle of?—”
“I have business to attend to,” he said dismissively.
“At this hour?” she argued, knowing full well that it was no more than a convenient excuse to be rid of her swiftly.
“Yes. At this hour.” He stepped back from her, and she felt the loss of contact. Almost achingly so. “Now if you please…”
She frowned. Just moments ago, he had been at ease and even opening up to her, but his retreat had been swift, and his walls were back in place.
