“Have you any alternative?”
I looked up into his face, his daring eyes.
“Right, right. A question. Strike the last comment.” He shuffled forward, free hand in his pocket. “I won’t give him up so easily, though. Not to just anyone.”
I watched his profile, and there glimmered on his countenance the briefest crack in his cheeky nature. “He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”
Silence. “Aye.” That single word carried a great deal of weight. He’d sobered as fast as a stone plummeting in a riverbed. He turned me gently to face him. “Look, I’m weary of dancing about. I know you can help me free him, that you know something, and it won’t cost you a thing to say it.”
Oh, but it would, Mr. Dorian. If only you knew just how much it would cost me.“I wasn’t aware that he was imprisoned.”
“Only by his own self. He’s a shell of a human. He ceased to live the night of the fire, and I need to know—for his sake—what happened. I need answers you obviously have.”
“Mr. Dorian, I value my privacy. If he truly is innocent, theremust be other ways to clear his name. I will not give up the one thing that is solely mine.”
“I should think you’d want his freedom as much as I do. Isn’t the man your father?”
I bristled. “I will not answer such private questions.”
“That was all the answer I needed, love.” He kicked a loose pebble.
“How can you possibly assume such a relationship from mere similarity of the eyes?”
He looked right at me. “You gave away more than you know. There were other things. What I don’t know is why you won’t claim the man, even to me.”
I straightened. “You would presume to know all about my life, all my reasons?”
His eyes were a storm of colors. “That would trouble you, wouldn’t it? Having someone see past the lifelong cloak of secrecy you were raised to wear, past the safety of your secrets and shields to the big, looming fear that’s underneath. Fear of those around you—whose opinions have become like oxygen—fear of your own doubts and faults, fear that your smooth white eggshell exterior will crack, and the truth will come oozing out at everyone’s feet.”
I couldn’t stop trembling. My legs first, beneath my skirts, but then my arms, all the way down to my fingertips. I wanted to stop him, but I was so stunned by this mirror held up to my soul.
“You do not belong—that’s what you believe, isn’t it? Because you’ve only trained two years when the lot of them worked ten years or more. Because you aren’t certain who you are, or to whom you belong. Well, let me assure you, Ella Blythe, youdobelong. You have a gem of a father who’s aching for the missing pieces of his life, for forgiveness, for freedom I believeonly you can provide. Think of what you both could mean to each other.”
I gripped a mossy headstone and recoiled from the sliminess. The trembles passed like lightning through my body. Think about it, he’d said. In truth, I couldn’tstopthinking about it.
“You value your privacy like a bank box to hold your valuables. Yet I wonder—who are you protecting? Someone you love? Or perhaps yourself, who isn’t always as invincible as she pretends to be?”
My voice came out low and soft. “Why do you do this to me?”
“I won’t give up on him. Too many already have.”
But why? I stared at him, searching for resemblance to the man in the portrait—to me. “Who are you, exactly?”
“How long have you?” His expression glittered with quiet mischief, then he fell silent.
How was it that I’d come here for answers, for closure, but found myself two steps back on both counts? Curiosity rippled through me, and a sense of rejection that my father would be known by this man but not his daughter. It wasn’t fair, of course, feeling that way, but my heart could be like that at times.
I breathed in, the gap widening in my fatherless soul. “Very well then, what is it exactly you want me to do, Mr. Dorian?”
He took my hands with overflowing earnestness and held them to his chest. “I have to know—please tell me—how are you connected with Delphine Bessette? What do you know of her death?”
I withdrew my hands, taking a step back. “What makes you think I am?”
“The red slippers. I know you have them. I want to know how—and why.”
Heat poured down my face and through my neck. “Thatis the one thing I cannot tell you.” Whatever had happened between them, whatever love or tragedy, she deserved the protection I’d promised her years ago. “Besides, I no longer have them. They were stolen.”
At the shock on his face, at least I knew he hadn’t been the thief.
