Good gods.
Not this again.
“Father—”
Ansley lifted a hand and waved it in his son’s direction.“Let’s not argue.You say she was quick-witted in the stables?”
“Quick-witted” did not cover it.
“I’ve never met a woman with a sharper wit.It’s quite thewonder I don’t have cuts all over me.”
Ansley watched his son closely.
Then he noted quietly, “She pleases you.”
If the woman was half as clever in bed as she was out of it,she was to be the perfect wife.
He did not share that.
He stated, “She’s lovely to look at and she has the spiritof a bull.”
“That’s an odd comparison.”
“Bulls are stubborn.I’d pit her against any bull breathing,I don’t care how sharp their horns.She’d best it by just not giving up.”
His father smiled.“In other words, she pleases you.”
“Her father is a toad.”
Ansley’s chest expanded with the big breath he took, andthen he released it.“Even before he lost the stature he built for himselfconniving and borderline thieving and making himself richer off the hides ofhis friends and acquaintances, Edgar Dawes was a man with whom you watched yourback.”A pause before he asked, “You heard them have words?”
“The exchange I witnessed was brief.But one thing was madeclear during it.She can’t stand him.”
“Hmm,” Ansley hummed.
“What are you thinking?”
“His wife killed herself, you know.”
Loren nodded.
“After he sent Maxine away to boarding school.”
Loren said nothing.
“No one quite understood it.He was respectable enough.Histitle holds power.He has great wealth.At the time, he was quite good-looking.He’s gone rather to seed of late.But that’s only recently.She had the lifemany women struggle quite valiantly for.”
Loren remained silent, though he did it wondering whatMaxine would think of that remark.
“No one sends their child away to school for twenty yearswithout her coming home at least to visit,” Ansley remarked.“While you werewith her in the stables, and I’d rejoined him, Derryman told me she hadn’t beenback toHawkvalesince he sent her away.Not once.Intwo decades.”
“Should I take a seat, or are you going to get to thepoint?”Loren ribbed.
His father’s mouth quirked.
Then he said, “I think Maxine is a twin.”
Loren had no idea what he expected his father to say.
