She rounded on him. “Did you plan this all along? I don’t understand you. Do you care about your father’s pocket watch at all? Do you simply want to torture me and keep me imprisoned? Or perhaps Marjory has been in your sights all along. Don’t glare at me, sir. I think I can demand a few answers.”
Stephen glanced away, a muscle twitching in his cheek. He clenched his jaw until she was sure she could hear his teeth click.
“All will be explained in due course,” he said. “Needless to say, I put a few things together. I don’t mean you harm, believe it ornot. I don’t mean to harm your sister, either. But I must have answers, and you’ll give them to me, or you’ll stay here. Do you understand?”
She stared up at him, trying desperately to read his face.
That was a skill she’d learned at the modiste’s. It wasn’t just about sewing. It was about making sure a customer who bought something on credit would actuallypayand not take the gown, unpick some stitches, tear the fabric, and claim it had been given that way.
Some people were very good at lying, but there was always somethingto give them away. One just had to know what one was looking for.
“If I tell you who my family is, I will lose even more than I have already.”
His gaze sharpened. He took a step closer. Now, they were practically chest to chest.
Amelia’s breath came hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Heat radiated from him, heatingherup. She imagined her blood boiling in her veins. Perhaps that would account for the strange tightness of her skin and the knot in her gut.
“Tell me who your family is, or you will never escape this place,” Stephen whispered. His voice seemed to grate in her ears, sharp and low at the same time.
She closed her eyes. “My sisters and I are… are related to the Viscount St. Louis.”
There was a long silence.
Was this what he’d wanted? What he’d expected to hear?
When she opened her eyes, Stephen was staring down at her, his eyes wide, almost frantic. As soon as their gazes met, his face shuttered. Abruptly, he turned away.
“As I thought,” he muttered. “Their family name is Holt. I imagine you know that the old Viscount is dead, leaving his son to take his place. He died about half a year ago.”
“Y-Yes, I know,” Amelia stammered.
“Can I assume that you and your sisters are the Viscount’s bastards? The old Viscount, that is.”
She flinched at that awful word.Bastard. There wasn’t a thing one could do about it once one had been born with that word attached.
“Yes,” she answered, almost dazedly. “They would call us bastards, yes. They’d call Mama a whore, too, if they knew the truth. There isn’t a word for our father, though, is there? He’s just a man doing what he wants, living an ordinary life. But we… we live a life of secrecy and humiliation. Is that fair?”
“Fair? Of course not. I never said it was fair, never pretended that it was fair. The fairness of your situation does not concern me.”
Her anger flared. “You say that, but you seem very interested in other aspects of mysituation, as you put it.”
He gave a grim, close-lipped smile. “I’m curious as to how daughters of the Viscount St. Louis are poor enough to work as seamstresses and steal.”
“I am a dressmaker,” Amelia spat, jabbing a finger at him.
Her anger did not seem to faze him. If anything, he seemed more amused.
“And if you must know, we lived a fairly comfortable life when our father was still alive. We were not wealthy, but we did not need to work. Everything was fine, except for the shame of who we were. Then our father died.”
She did not elaborate.
Stephen blinked, some of the anger fading from his eyes.
“You have a brother,” he said.
She breathed out. “Yes, I do.”
“Do you see him? Know anything about him?”
