You will never have her never have her never have her.Eversea’s words echoed in his head.
Isaiah's fingers spasmed into a fist and he fought to flatten his hand again against his thigh.
“I think I'll have a little talk with Eversea about his son,” his father mused darkly.
“No.”
Only when his father's head jerked toward him did Isaiah realize he'd issued the word like a command.
He'd never spoken to his father that way before.
“That is, the matter isn't worth your time or mine.” Isaiah took pains to match his father’s bored delivery. “I considered calling him out for his insolence, but decided doing so would impart a sort of gentlemanly sheen to mere...” Isaiah drew in a breath and delivered the last word on a sigh. “...thuggishness.”
It was theater.
But it was masterful.
His father stared at him for a good long while.
Then gave a short nod, acquiescing.
His eyebrows dipped as he tucked the cheroot into his mouth again.
Someone had neglected to draw the curtains and he could see his own face reflected, distorted and dark, in the window glass.
Eversea's eyes hadn't been blank and mindless with rage. They'd blazed with a very fixed and personal antipathy. Eversea hadn't attacked him because he'd lost control. He'd been entirely in control of himself.
It was Isaiah who had lost control.
The Everseas and Redmonds might be instinctive enemies.
But what now lay between Jacob and Isiah—and Isolde—was no byproduct of myth.
It was personal.
And it was dangerous.
“Why did he do it? Was it about a girl?”
Isaiah hadn't noticed his father watching him.
Isaiah returned his gaze to him.
So funny to think that his father's eyes were so very like his own. So very like twin hot pokers when the force of his displeasure shone through them.
For the first time, his father’s displeasure didn’t affect him at all. He was grateful for the numbness, because he could simply observe.
“You needn't concern yourself, father. The matter is between myself and Eversea. And the matter is done.”
And thusly Isaiah retrieved his power from his father.
He knew then that he was never going to cede it again. He decided he would, in fact, increase it a thousandfold when he had his own family.
He knew precisely his position and his worth. He understood the cards he held. He would soon be officially engaged to a beautiful, coveted, wealthy woman and the attachment could not be sundered without the sort of grave scandal his father wouldn't now risk.
Furthermore, he had money of his own. Nothing yet like the fortune that would be his when his father cocked up his toes. Oh, but it would be.
Currently, his father needed him more than he needed his father.
