Tessa froze.
The voice went on, “I’ll call again next week to compare the numbers. Mark my words. No regret!”
Her heart missed two beats.
Now a gloved hand extended beyond the open door, an ebony walking stick clutched just below its golden handle.
Tessa knew well the gloves and the stick. She knew the voice.
Her father, Wallace St. Croix, hovered in a doorway, right here, right now, a foot from her.
Every muscle in Tessa’s body went tense, as if a thief had leapt from the alley to rob her.
Not a thief,she told herself—her father hadn’t stolen from her, he had abandoned her.Worse than a thief,she thought, breathing hard. She felt like the marionette puppet that hung on the edge of Christian’s crib. When she pulled its string, his arms and legs restricted wildly. Tessa felt wildly restricted. She felt like folding herself into a square of brown wool, doubling over until she was inside herself.
She looked franticly around, searching for a place to hide, but then her brother August emerged from the door, followed by her next brother, Lucas. They were putting on their hats, their faces were obscured, but of course she knew them. She had known them all—from the first note of her father’s voice.
And now here was her father, stepping beyond the door, still calling to someone inside.
Her impulse to hide dissolved. The sight of him sent a surge of fresh anger straight to her heart. She would not run or play the victim. She would force him to see her.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was weaker than she preferred, but she forced the word out. It was something. It was more than the three of them managed. They stared at her as if she’d dropped from the sky.
She realized she’d not seen the boys in nearly a year, her father not in six months. And now her anger was mixed, inexplicably, with a shot of joy. Oh, how she’d missed them. The thick, athletic handsomeness of her brothers. The round, stooped stodginess of her father. The confident bellow of his voice. Her brothers trailed her father around like ladies in waiting. It was a sight she’d seen a million times, and a million times she’d regarded them with an affectionate shrug.
There they go. Smart and successful and adoring.
No longer.
Her joy evaporated when her brothers turned their faces away. Could they not even look at her? Meanwhile, her father’s watery eyes narrowed and his mouth puckered like the pit of a plum.
Shame on you,she thought.Shame on you for regarding me like a maid you fired for theft.
Shame on you for bringing up the boys in the ways of business but teaching me nothing but how to flirt and look pretty and to entrap a man.
And most of all, most pitiful of all, shame on you for choosing not to know your grandson.
For how long they stood, staring at each other, Tessa could not say. Eventually, her brother August turned to her and half whispered, half called her name. He sounded as if he was embarrassed to say it out loud. He sounded as if they were meeting in an alley instead of a busy street. She raised her chin a notch.
“Tessa,”August hissed again.
“Hello, Gus,” she said at full volume.
Her brothers had not been present when her parents had disowned her. Wallace and Isobel St. Croix had come to Belgravia alone. Even so, the boys had made no effort to contact her again. They’d disowned her without even looking her in the eye.
“Where,” asked her father, “is the child?”
He appeared truly confused, as if he believed Christian would be forever attached to her, along with a sign the stated the date of her wedding and the date of his birth, a mere six months apart.
“My son’s name is Christian,” she said. “And he is at home. With his nursemaid.”
Her father glared at her as if she was willfully lying. He looked right and left at the crush of businessmen and sailors maneuvering around them. A boy with a wooden placard and a tall stack of broadsheets had set up business nearby, and her father took her by the arm and pulled her behind his sign. Her brothers closed rank around them. She was walled in by disapproving St. Croix men and a broadsheet boasting the first weeks of the new king’s reign.
“A nursemaid?” repeated her father. “And who pays forthis?”
Tessa stared at him. Did he really believe her to be destitute? She knew her family wanted to detach from her, but had they also wanted her to suffer? Her churning stomach dropped.
She said, “My husband, Joseph Chance, provides for us.”
