“I didnae?—”
“Mean to? I find that difficult to believe.”
“I—”
“What I am struggling to understand is why?”
Her lips curled into a familiar smile, equal parts bitter and wry—the same one Gabriel always wore around father. I’d hated it on him and I hated it now.
“Truly? Ye dinnae know why?”
“Fine, I know why. But you could have written—if I had known of you—you would’ve been cared for. I didn’t know you existed.”
“Why should ye? I’m no one to ye.”
My stomach dropped and realization crashed over me. She didn’t know. Of course she didn’t—how could she?
“I—forgive me. I thought—assumed. I thought you would know.” My fingers itched with the urge to explain. They always worked faster than my words.
“Ken what?”
“Nothing, never mind.” I waved away my previous comment, desperate to avoid this conversation. “Where is your mother?”
“Dead.” Her expression, her affect was flat. There was something impossibly sad in that. Not to mention how much more difficult it would be to explain my relation to this woman.
“I am sorry for your loss.”
Shrewd eyes narrowed at me once again. “Why did ye not ask after my pa?”
“I—no reason.”
“Or my husband—I’m with child as ye can clearly see.”
“Do you have a husband?” My curiosity suddenly peaked. I didn’t know if a husband would make everything more or less complicated, but it was certainly her best hope to avoid scandal.
“No, but ye dinnae know that. Why would ye have cared for me? Because I’m with child?”
“Yes,” I supplied with no real thought beyond moving past that topic. “Can we return to the reason you’ve been fleecing me?”
“Should’ve thought that would be obvious. I needed the coin.”
“How long?”
“Me or Mam?”
“Your mother, too, then?”
Miss McAllen nodded.
My hand slipped free from where it was clutching the armrest to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Both, I suppose.”
“Seven years, or near as much. Ma started after Pa died. I only continued the practice.”
So she had a father. Perhaps I was wrong and she just bore a striking resemblance to my brother. There were other overdrawn brows in the world, other ladies with striking jawlines and chestnut hair and eyes. Just because this one happened to be around the right age to have coincided with my brother’s visit didn’t mean she was his.
“And the money? Is there any left at all?”
And then she dipped her chin in the same defiant manner Gabriel always used when father was lecturing him. Something twisted in my belly at the sight—whether it was longing at the mannerism or chafing at the unfamiliar sensation of relating to my father was impossible to tell.
