“Then why aren’t I dead?”
“Because you smiled at me. I had the knife at your throat, but you smiled and I couldn’t do it. I decided to end my spotless career with a blemish after all, though until this day, only one other person knew that I didn’t kill you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was paid to get rid of you, half the gold paid in advance. To ‘get rid of you’ could mean only one thing. I didn’t doubt what the job was. And yet it could be open to interpretation. I never went back to collect the rest of the payment, letting them assume I died while completing my task. And your disappearance spoke for itself. The job was done to the letter, as it was described. I had gotten rid of you. That the ones who hired me assumed you were dead was of no consequence to me and a benefit to you. It meant they wouldn’t be sending anyone else to kill you.”
“Did you let my parents think I was dead, too?”
“No, actually, I didn’t. You were quickly teaching me compassion, and giving me back the feelings of a parent. I thought I would never feel such things again. Your mother had already died of natural causes, but I sympathized with your father and sent him a missive several months later to tell him I would keep you safe until he found out who wanted you dead.”
“He’s alive?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yes.”
“He’s that one other person you just referred to, who knew you failed to complete that job?”
“Yes, the only one I ever told.”
“Thank you for letting him know.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m not even sure he got my missive. And the news of your disappearance traveled so fast, I heard of it before I got too far from Lubinia, since I was delayed by the necessity of finding a nursemaid for you who would be willing to travel with us. Your father only thought you had been stolen. I don’t doubt he expected you back after he satisfied a demand for ransom. My missive may have been harder for him to bear because it indicated that you wouldn’t be returned to him until he eliminated the enemies who had tried to harm him by killing his daughter.”
“So my death was only to be a means of hurting him?” she guessed.
“Of course.”
“But eighteen years have passed, Poppie. In all this time he didn’t find out who did this?”
“He’s a good man, but in matters of intrigue, he has proven to be utterly incompetent,” Poppie said with some disdain. “He had to have known who his enemies were back then, yet no confession was ever obtained.”
“How do you know? Do you know who it was?”
“No, I would have told him if I did. But I rarely ever dealt directly with my employers. They were typically too fearful of having a finger pointed at them later, for having hired an assassin. Some of my clients came cloaked, disguising their voices. Most of them sent lackeys to hire and pay me. A few times a voice would whisper to me from the shadows and a purse of gold would be tossed at my feet. I didn’t care. They were making me rich and I was living a dead life, devoid of happiness, devoid of anything to care for—until you entered my life.”
“How have you kept apprised of what my real father has or hasn’t done? Or is he English? No, that was a stupid question. Of course I’m not really English. You wouldn’t hide me in the same country you took me from.”
He raised a brow. “Assumptions, Alana?”
She blushed. “Ignore them and answer the original question please.”
“I monitored our country indirectly. I joined a gentleman’s club that catered to European émigrés and was also frequented my members of His Majesty’s Foreign Office, who knew the latest information about foreign affairs. They were willing to share that information as long as it was common knowledge in those countries rather than anything secretive.”
“This was your source of information?” she asked incredulously.
“It was a safe way to find out what was going on without drawing attention to us. And it did produce results. It took four years before your father’s name was mentioned, but it wasn’t the news I sought, merely that he had remarried finally. When you were seven, there was another tidbit, that with so much time having passed, it was now presumed you were dead.”
Two things occurred to her immediately. Poppie didn’t really want to give her back, and her father, with a new wife, probably didn’t want her back.
“How could you be so passive about finding out what was going on in our homeland? How could you leave it to chance like that?” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you go back yourself and find out for sure?”
“I wasn’t going to leave you for that long a time or take you with me. Our homeland isn’t exactly close to England.”
“I don’t believe you! Admit it. You love me too much. That’s why you haven’t made any real effort to find out if it was safe to return me to my father.”
He didn’t try to calm her. The tender smile he gave her was from the heart. “You are correct that I love you too much. But I honestly didn’t think I would have the care of you for this long. I thought a few years at the most. After that, I thought each year would be the last. After ten years, I began to teach you in earnest to protect yourself, because I still thought I wouldn’t have you much longer. But I was no longer leaving it to chance. I was alarmed when I learned your father presumed you were dead. I thought about sending your father another missive, to assure him you were still alive. But again, I couldn’t be sure it would reach him. So I assumed my old ways of secrecy instead and hired someone who didn’t know who I was, didn’t see my face, couldn’t trace me in any way, and could find out exactly what I wanted to know.”
“Did he?”
