Exactly like the man who owned it.
She would never forget the surprise and near horror on his butler’s face when he opened the door to find her there. When he learned she was unchaperoned, it was even worse.
“Are youcertainyou want me to see if he’s in, Miss Fitzgilbert?” the older man asked.
She hesitated. The last time she’d seen her grandfather, he had been bent over Rosalinde, trying to choke the life out of her because she was attempting to break up Celia’s engagement. Only Gray’s swift and violent intervention had saved the day.
Celia would have no such guard today. And it was only the fact that she had what she believed Mr. Fitzgilbert might see as good news that she believed he would not strike out just the same way at her.
“Thank you, Cranston, but yes. Please do see if he’ll receive me.”
The butler nodded and stepped out, leaving her alone to ponder the prudence of her actions. She didn’t have long, however, for within moments her grandfather entered the chamber.
She caught her breath when she saw him. In the months she had been safely in the care of Gray and Rosalinde, her grandfather had clearly declined. He was thinner by at least a stone and a half, perhaps even two, and his shock of white hair was beginning to thin. His nose was crooked now where Gray had broken it months before. But his blue eyes, the ones she and Rosalinde had each inherited, were just as sharp as they had ever been. They focused squarely on her as he closed the door behind himself.
“I called Cranston a liar when he said you’d shown up here,” he said. “Struck him across his bloody face.”
She swallowed hard at that statement. “Well, you can see he was not lying, for I am here, Grandfather.”
He looked her up and down with a sniff and then moved to the sideboard to pour a drink. “Without a chaperone, he said.”
Celia pursed her lips. “I knew Gray and Rosalinde wouldn’t approve of my coming here, so I…I pretended a headache, then snuck out and walked. Your home is only half a mile from theirs through good neighborhoods.”
He faced her with a grin. “Are you not afraid your sister will put you out if she hears you broke her embargo and came to see me?”
Celia folded her arms. “Rosalinde wouldneverput me out. She is not likeyou, sir.”
“No, she isn’t like me,” he grunted. “Youwere always closer.”
She turned her face as if his words slapped her, and in a way they did. The last thing she would ever want to be in this world was anything like Gregory Fitzgilbert. He was cold, calculating, unfeeling, cruel, along with a dozen other worse adjectives.
“So you snuck out of Grayson Danford’s pitiful little manor and came crawling back to me,” Mr. Fitzgilbert mused as he took a seat and stared up at her. He took a swig of his drink. “What do you want?”
He had not invited her to join him, but Celia sat anyway. She took a long, deep breath and met his stare evenly, although it was hard to do so. It was like looking into the eyes of a reptile. A dangerous one at that.
“I am certain you must have heard that I am now being courted by the Duke of Clairemont,” she said, in no mood to dance around the subject with him. The sooner she did this, the sooner she could leave.
His jaw set and his grip tightened on his glass, forcing her to tense in preparation for the storm that might follow. “Did you come here to brag, Celia?”
She shook her head. “No. There would be no point in that. I did not accept his suit because of you, nor to spite you. But you once wished me to marry a title, didn’t you? You made a devil’s bargain for me to do just that not a year ago.” She drew in a deep breath. “Would that deal still stand?”
He pushed to his feet, and she flinched as he stalked around her to pace the room. He pivoted to look at her again, his smile predatory and smug. “You are talking about the bargain we struck that you would marry a title and I would tell you who your real father is.”
“I assume you won’t tell me out of the goodness of your heart,” she whispered.
He stared at her a long moment and then tilted his head back for a laugh. “Why would I give away my leverage? I assume that means Rosalinde’s husband has been unsuccessful in his searches for the man who all but stole your mother and saddled her with two children out of wedlock.”
She shut her eyes at the cruelty of his description. In truth, her mother had fled this man’s cold and angry household with a servant. No, she had never married the father of her children, but there was every reason to believe that their lack of vows had been a way to protect Celia’s mother from being found by Fitzgilbert.
When she died, Fitzgilbert had swept in, stealing the children and telling them their father had died too. But since Celia had found out the truth, that the man lived, she’d hardly stopped thinking of him. Knowing he was out there somewhere, it felt like a hole in her heart. A hole that could only be filled with the truth her grandfather kept in his pocket like a miser with gold.
“Answer me,” he said, his tone harsh.
Celia opened her eyes and stared at him evenly, praying her fear and loathing of him wasn’t written all over her face. “Gray has not been successful,” she said through her grinding teeth. “Your habit of abusing and discarding servants without reference has paid off. No one we’ve found can give us the information we seek. No one but you.”
He chuckled but said nothing.
Her eyes narrowed. “I know that is exactly what you want to hear, so you may crow about it. But I am not here for you to celebrate your victory any more than I am to celebrate my own. I’m here to talk to you about the bargain. So I ask you again…if I marry this duke, if I take on the highest title I can obtain without catching a prince…will you honor your earlier promise to reveal our father’s identity to me?”
