“I will not allow any son of mine?—”
Jonathan’s father stopped and turned his head, his face transforming into a mask of surprise when he spotted Charlie standing just inside the doorway from the kitchen.
For his part, Charlie looked as though he’d stumbled into something that he wanted to flee from as quickly as possible. His blue eyes were round with shock, and his cheeks were splashed pink.
“What is this depravity?” Jonathan’s father growled, lip curling as he swept his gaze over Charlie’s costume and the vee of smooth skin dusted with the faintest bit of blond hair near his neck.
The terror in Charlie’s eyes was far different from the intimidation Jonathan had seen there when Brutus stood in the place of his father. It was the fear of memories, perhaps of his own father.
Jonathan didn’t like it one bit.
“Father, this is Charlie, my—” He scrambled for a way to finish the introduction as he crossed the room to stand by Charlie’s side. “My apprentice.”
The statement was both true and as far from the truth as could be, but Jonathan was satisfied with it.
His father wasn’t. “I know you too well to believe that,” he said in a gruff voice.
“You can believe what you want, but it’s true,” Jonathan said, shifting to stand behind Charlie with his hands resting possessively on the young man’s shoulders.
He was not using Charlie as a shield between him and his father. He wasn’t.
His father sniffed and stood at his full height, looking down his nose at the both of them. He cleared his throat and said, “Youwill attend to your mother with all due haste, making your most abject apologies to her.”
“I’ve nothing to apologize for,” Jonathan said, holding his ground. It was ground he had fought hard for and won only with blood and tears. He wasn’t about to give it up.
“You should apologize for your very existence,” his father seethed.
“I am proud of my existence.” Jonathan mirrored his stance, standing just as tall and proud as his father. He hated the way mimicking the man he hated more than any other made him feel, though, so he blew out a breath and stepped to Charlie’s side. “I have never made any secret of who I am, nor have I flaunted the self that I have created in front of your precious circle of parliamentarians and nobs,” he said. “I’ve kept well out of your way. Isn’t that ever going to be good enough for you?”
“No,” his father answered, plain and simple.
After all these years, that single word should not have flayed Jonathan the way it did. It curdled something within him and filled him with as much sadness as he would have felt if his father had died. More sadness than that.
“We have nothing more to say to each other, then,” Jonathan said with a shrug, pretending he didn’t care. He turned toward his table of equipment and busied himself arranging boxes of plates, his spool of magnesium ribbon, and various other bottles of caustic powders and fuses as if his father had already left the room.
“You will not do what is right, then?” his father asked. “You will persist in making a mockery of this family and all that we stand for?”
The hypocrisy of those words was so acrid that Jonathan snapped to face his father again.
“Our family is a mockery of itself,” he hissed. “You all parade about town, dressed to the nines, creating this image of theperfect, pious, British family, when the truth is that you dine on other people’s suffering while blaming those who are starving for the blows you and everyone else in Westminster rain down on them.”
“Enough of this!” his father shouted. “I came here in good faith to bring you back into the fold. I will not be insulted by your defiance for a moment longer.”
He turned to go, making Charlie flinch as he stomped through the studio, throwing aside the curtain so he could march through the shop and out the front door.
Jonathan followed him, but only so that he could slam and relock the door behind the bastard.
And then plant his forearm on the shuttered glass, burying his face against it while he calmed himself.
Why did standing his ground and defending who he was and the choices he’d made feel so much like dying a slow, agonizing death?
A few moments later, the softest of footfalls sounded behind him. He pulled back from the door and turned to find Charlie shuffling in the doorway between the shop and the studio, hands clasped and fingers twisted together in front of him.
Charlie’s mouth worked, the muscles controlling it twitching and pulling as if he wanted to deliver some oratory, but his lips had been sewn shut. Jonathan held his breath, waiting for whatever it was that wanted to come out of the lad.
Finally, when his skin was prickling, the anticipation was so acute, Charlie sighed and said, “Fathers.”
One word, and it was like the man cracked him open.
