“Are you a frequent patron of Mattigan’s?” she asked, and frowned that she had to ask her own father a question very like what she’d ask a stranger because she knew him so little. Had he been a great reader? She couldn’t recall.
“No,” he said with another disgusted look. “Never liked bookshops. Your mother has decided to join some silly little book club and she asked me to pick up a copy of this month’s selection for her.”
Bernadette was surprised he would do so, as her mother and father were little closer than she, herself, was to them. “Well, that is…kind.”
His lips pinched. “I am surprised to seeyouout at all. We heard about your near-fatal accident at the theatre last night.”
Bernadette froze. Some part of her had known the story would circulate—there were too many eyes there for it not to spread. But for the news to have traveled to her parents so quickly when they didn’t exactly ask after her regularly…it surprised her nonetheless. What didn’t surprise her was how coolly statement was said. How little he seemed to care. Not surprised, but it still stung to be so dismissed and uncared for.
“Lord Etheridge.” She squeezed her eyes shut as Theo approached and her father’s gaze slid to him and then back to her with further disgust. Oh, this was about to get worse. Her father had alwaysdespisedTheo. He’d always complained about him when he came up as a topic of conversation and went on and on about what a disappointment Theo had been to his father.
“Lightmorrow,” the earl said, his tone icy. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you with my daughter. I heard you were her savior last night.”
Theo waited a beat, and Bernadette realized that he must be waiting to be thanked for the service. Her cheeks burned, for her father clearly had no intention of doing so. She drew a sharp breath before she said, “He was, indeed. I’d been attending the play with some of our friends and would have surely been rundown in the street were it not for…for Lightmorrow.” She found it difficult to call him by his title now.
“Indeed,” her father said. “It was explained to me that he swept you into his arms like a hero in some children’s fairytale and dragged you away from the oncoming beast.” His voice remained steady and low as he held stares with Theo for a moment. “How utterly romantic.”
Bernadette’s heart was racing now. She didn’t know why there was so much tension between Theo and her father, but it felt like it could be cut with a knife.
“Braveis a better word for it,” she said before Theo could say anything. “
“Brave, yes.” Etheridge shook his head. “And yet there are unsavory rumors going around about you and the duke. Likely from people who wish to add to the swelling story of the night.”
“What kind of rumors, my lord?” Theo asked, his tone edged with concern and also…dislike. He didn’t like her father, either, it seemed, though she wasn’t as clear on the reasons. Not that the earl gave muchtolike.
“The person who reported the news to me said they saw a certain light in the duke’s eyes as he looked at you after you were saved.” Etheridge said. “But that couldn’t be true, could it, Your Grace?”
Now Theo caught his breath and Bernadette swallowed hard. The undercurrents between her father and her lover were growing even more fraught. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have this discussion in a public place,” she whispered.
Her father didn’t stop looking at Theo. “Where should we do it, Lightmorrow? In the parlor at your father’s country estate? The same parlor where you were offered my daughter’s hand fourteen years ago? The same place where you looked at me with utter disgust and told me…how did you put it…that you would ratherdiethan be with her?”
Bernadette’s ears began to ring as she pivoted toward Theo. His cheeks were red, his eyes wide as he stared at her. She wanted to find something in his expression that said what her father told her was a lie. But all she saw in Theo’s blue eyes was that it was the truth.
And it felt like the world collapsed beneath her.
* * *
Theo had realized what the Earl of Etheridge meant to cruelly reveal in a moment before he said those horrible words. But he hadn’t been able to stop him. And now he watched understanding dawn on Etta’s face. He watched pain bloom there, betrayal. And it felt like he’d been ripped apart by a past he’d never wanted her to hear. Or at least not in this way.
He pivoted to her father. “What is the purpose of telling her that? Is it to hurt her? Your only daughter? A woman who deserves nothing but good things?”
“Actually, it was to hurtyou,” her father said calmly. “You humiliated me all those years ago and I have not forgotten it. Nor would Ieverapprove of a union between you two now.”
Etta’s nostrils flared slightly as her teary gaze moved back to her father. “He hasn’t asked. And neither would I. Perhaps I do not know much, obviously I-I didn’t. But the fact that you would choose to reveal this so publicly and so cruelly…to use me as a pawn to attack a man who ‘wronged’ you over a decade ago…it tells me everything I need to know.” She hesitated, her breath ragged before she said, “Do not reach out to me again.”
Despite Theo’s deep pain at how the past had cut her, when he looked at her in that moment, chin lifted even if it wobbled, certainty in her eyes, he had never loved her more. He had never been more proud of her for finally drawing a line in the sand between herself and those who would not value her.
“You can’t talk to me that way,” her father sputtered.
She shrugged. “I won’t talk to you at all. That should fix it.” She glanced at Theo briefly before her gaze darted away. “I would like to go now.”
She pivoted and swept past him toward the shop door. Mr. Mattigan, who apparently hadn’t heard anything of their quiet, destructive conversation, called out a farewell and she gave a weak reply before she exited into the chilly afternoon air.
Once she was gone, Theo stepped closer to her father. “That was poorly done, my lord. Perhaps you are too foolish to regret it, but you have lost something worth more than any fortune you have ever collected.”
The earl glanced toward the door, uncertainty in his gaze. At least he considered his daughter a tiny bit in that moment. But then he shrugged. “As long as you won’t have her, I suppose that will be enough.”
Theo cringed at this man’s cruelty. It was as sharp and cold as his own father’s, the violence of it less obvious, but still a pointed end of an ugly stick. “If you come near her, if you bother her, if you say anything negative against her, I will find out,” he said softly. “And perhaps you look at me and still see that eighteen-year-old foolish child who walked away from the one person who might have made his life…” He trailed off. No, he wouldn’t say something so intimate to this man. “But I assure you that I have a great deal more power than I did then. I have a great deal more power than you have on your best day. I’ll use it to make you sorry. Soleaveheralone.”
