Only this last remnant of discontent from her old life remained. Both Stephen and Robert urged her to put it to rest.
When she turned again, he was standing at the entrance.
“Father!” Her heart constricted. When had he become an old man? She gestured toward the table set up near the hearth. “I have sweet wine and cakes for you.”
“You remember my sweet tooth.” He pulled a handkerchief from inside his tunic and blew his nose.
After pouring him a cup of wine, she took a cake for herself from the platter between them. There were so many unspoken words between them, she did not know where to start.
“I am grateful to your husband,” he said, “for bringing the children to visit me from time to time.”
Isobel’s cake caught in her throat.
“Sir Stephen is well respected on both sides of the border,” he said. “He seems an honorable man.”
The word “honorable” hung between them like an accusation.
“His eyes shine when he speaks of you,” her father said, his voice cracking. “I need to know you are happy, Issie. Tell me you are.”
Her happiness mattered to him.She nodded. When she could speak, she asked, “Why did you do it?”
Even after all this time, she wanted to know.
He ran his hands through his white hair. “We lost everything. Everything. I was responsible for the three of you. Geoffrey was so young, and your mother… she was never strong like you. You were the only one who could restore the family. I could think of no other way.”
He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I did not believe Hume would live through the winter.”
Isobel folded her hands on the table and fixed her gaze on them. “I know men marry off their daughters for such reasons all the time,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “But you did not raise me like other girls. You made me believe I was special.”
“You were special from the day you were born,” he said, wrapping his big, warm hands over hers. “God knows I’ve made more than my share of mistakes, but the one thing I did right was to claim you as my own.”
Isobel’s eyes flew to his face. Could he know the truth?
“Your mother gave birth six months after we were wed.” He gave Isobel a bittersweet smile and shrugged. “I can count as well as the next man, but what was I to do? Send her away?”
He never considered it, Isobel was certain.
“She seemed happy enough in those first years,” he said. “But when our lands were taken, she saw it as God’s punishment for her sins. I thought if I could get them back, she…” He sighed and shook his head over long-ago regrets.
“His name is Robert,” Isobel said in a quiet voice. “I met him in Normandy.”
His eyebrows shot up, but he knew whom she meant.
“He would not have made her happy, either,” she said.
After a quarter century of traveling and philandering, Robert finally settled down. Thank God he found Claudette.
“He is a good friend now. But when I was a child, he would not have been as good a father to me as you were.”
As soon as she said the words, she knew them to be true. For the first thirteen years of her life, he was the best possible father she could have had.
He was looking at her with such hope, such love, she felt the bands of anger around her heart give way. She leaned down and pressed a kiss against his rough knuckles. When she looked up, tears were running down the crevices of his weathered cheeks.
A squeal of laughter tore her attention from her father to the arched entrance of the hall.
“They escaped their nursemaid again,” Stephen called out as he came through the doorway carrying one child under his arm and holding the other by the hand.
“I found the little one outside eating dirt,” he said, tilting his head toward the giggling boy under his arm. “His big sister told him to do it.”
