Page 25 of The Hidden Heart

“Did she? And what did your Miss Jessica tell you?”

“She told me that you were giving me away because it is in my best interest—that I should have a married man as my guardian, so that his wife can bring me out.”

“Exactly.” Richard let loose a little sigh of relief, somewhat surprised that the governess had adhered to his story. “You will need a woman who can introduce you to society properly.”

He stole a quick glance at Gabriela. He had not yet really looked at her, merely catching glimpses in the distance. He had not wanted to see her. Yet he could not keep from looking at her now.

She was older than Alana would have been if she had lived. Alana would have been only seven, half this child’s age. Still, he could not look at her, or even think of her, without it bringing his own dead child to his mind. Alana would have been this age in seven more years; he tried to imagine what she would have looked like.

It was harder all the time to summon up Alana’s image in his mind. She had disappeared from his life more years ago than she had lived before she died. She had been lost to him longer than he had known her. Yet she had made a greater impact on him than anyone else had ever made—or ever would make now, he supposed.

Gabriela’s coloring was different. Alana’s hair, like her parents’, had been coal-black, and her eyes had been hazel. Her merry little face, with its chubby, rosy cheeks, had been far different, too. This girl looked up at him solemnly, gray eyes wide in her heart-shaped face, a frame of straight, light brown hair falling around it.

“But I told her I knew that was nonsense,” Gabriela went on, shattering his hope that she understood and accepted his reasons for seeking a new guardian. “It is bound to be easier to find a suitable lady to guide me through society in four years than to persuade someone to take over my guardianship for the next seven.”

“It would be better for you to stay with the same person,” he began persuasively, but his voice trailed away as Gabriela leveled a look of skepticism at him.

“And is that the reason you have not met me? That you are never anywhere I am? You have not even spoken to me.”

Though she spoke in an even tone, she could not completely dispel the note of hurt from her voice. Richard’s heart twisted within him.

“I am sorry,” he said again. “I was acting very selfishly. I—I did not stop to think how it must look to you. I assure you, my not seeing you had nothing to do with you or not wanting you.”

“Miss Jessica told me that you had a daughter, and she died. She said it was because of that. Is it? Because I’m not like her?”

“No. It is nothing about you. The fault is all in me. I was…I guess I was afraid of how I would feel, seeing you, being around you. Do you understand what I mean?”

“It would make you unhappy to see me?”

He nodded. “That is what I feared. That the sight of another child, even one of a different age, would remind me of Alana. And the pain would be worse.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you feel bad.”

He smiled faintly. “You don’t. The truth be told, it is not Alana you remind me of. When I look at you, I can see your father.”

“Really?”

“Yes. His eyes were quite like yours. He used to look at me in that quiet way when I suggested some idiotic scheme or other. He was generally more sensible than I. But then he would smile, and there would be a little twinkle in his eyes, and the corner of his mouth would go up—yes, just like that.”

Gabriela chuckled, her eyes shining. “Really? Am I truly like him?”

“Your eyes are very like his. Otherwise, in looks, you are much more like your mother. Who was, I might add, a very attractive woman.”

“Yes, she was,” Gabriela agreed, a note of pride in her voice. “But I wasn’t sure I look like her. The General said I did, but I couldn’t see it. I thought perhaps he just said it to be polite.”

“Well, you need not worry about that with me,” Richard assured her, “since we both know I am frequently not polite.”

Gabriela laughed. “I like you.”

“Do you? Then you are a most forgiving person, for I fear I have acted abominably where you are concerned.”

“You are sad about your daughter. I understand about that. I’m sad about the General.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I forget and think I need to tell Gramps something. Then I remember that he’s gone.” She paused. “Do you ever do that?”

“Yes. I did it frequently right afterward. I would wake up and think, ‘I’ll take Alana for a ride this morning.’ Or, ‘I must tell her about the new puppies down at the kennel.’ Then I would remember that I could not.” He looked down at her and added, “But it got better after a time. Now it almost never happens.”