“Safety. Men in power are targets of blackmail and extortion. Their children make them vulnerable.”
She nodded, her chest growing painfully tight. “Especially bastard children, I imagine. I was not the only one there.”
He didn’t even bother to nod.
She did. “I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, that people like you were more concerned for grown men than their inconvenient girl children.”
He got ruddy. “That wasn't my fault...”
“I'm sure. So, my father was a man of...power?”
“I thought you didn't want to know.”
She caught her breath, swinging on Flint, who stood by looking not nearly outraged enough. “Youtoldhim?”
He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “I did not.”
“Your headmistress did,” the duke informed her. “You and my niece evidently broke in to look at files.”
“I see. Did Miss Chase get paid to spy on us?”
“No. Miss Schroeder did.”
Another blow to the stomach. Miss Schroeder, who had swooped in to save all the girls from the abuses of Miss Chase. Miss Schroeder, whom they thought they could all trust. Of course she must have worked for this man. Of course she would have passed on the big and little secrets she'd learned over the years. And yet, it felt like a worse betrayal than Flint's. Felicity had never quite trusted Flint. He had always seemed too good to be true. She had trusted Miss Schroeder.
Really, she should have known better.
“Oddly enough,” she said without looking at Flint, “I seem to have changed my mind. Why was I given a place at Last Chance Academy?”
The duke kept his silence.
Flint turned on him. “You will tell her, or I’ll have this place burned down with you still in it,” he snapped.
The duke stiffened. “How dare...”
“How dareyou, sir? Have you become so lost in your own consequence that you no longer consider human cost? Tell. Her.”
The older man shot his son a glare that Felicity was certain had intimidated legions. Flint didn’t so much as blink.
Finally, the duke turned back to Felicity. “Because your father was a high-ranking diplomat connected to the house of Bracken. My sister-in-law's step-brother.”
Felicity was still trying to weave through all of Pip’s family stories to find a connection when Flint burst out laughing. “Good God. Uncle Andrew is her father?!”
She turned on him. “You mean Randy UncleAndy?” she retorted much too loudly, stunned.
The duke actually flinched. “That is the Marquess of Melborne, young lady.”
Felicity shook her head, rather enjoying the duke’s evident discomfort. Although why he should be disconcerted, she didn’t know. According to Pip, he had been the one to send Pip’s cousins and brothers out to Randy Uncle Andy for training in the ‘manly’ arts.
That thought brought its inevitable conclusion. “Good God. Pipismy cousin.” She swung around on Flint. “You'remy cousin. Did you know?”
The glare he was directing at his father was positively deadly. “Of course not. How could I? And that’sstep-cousin.”
She had a family. She had Pip after all. She had...No, there was no benefit to claiming the men in this room.
“And my mother?” she asked.
“Died in childbirth,” the duke said. “You cannot threaten her.”
