Page 59 of Mail-Order Lady

The hostility in his tone made Clara’s fingers tighten around her fork.

Nathan lifted his gaze to the brother. Enoch met it squarely.

With the two of them in profile, staring at each other, the resemblance was impossible to miss. The same dark hair. The same line of jaw. The same set of the brow, though Enoch’s carried anger where Nathan’s held something closer to resignation. Nathan was a few years older, that was also clear. His skin had weathered in ways that not even ranch life in the Montana mountains could accomplish.

“I went to see if I still had a father.” Nathan’s voice held a barrenness that made tears spring to Clara’s eyes. The knot at his throat bobbed, and his tone came stronger with his next words. “I didn’t remember much about him. Only had my mother’s surname engraved on the back of her watch. Took a bit to locate him.”

Tears burned in her throat. A small boy with his mother’s watch, the only thing he had left of her. Searching for a father who’d believed him dead. Who might even be dead himself.

“And when you found him?” Clara couldn’t help but ask, even as part of her registered the way Enoch’s jaw tightened further at her question. “What did he say?”

Nathan’s gaze shifted to her, and for a moment that guarded expression eased. Just a little. “He wept.” The words came out matter-of-fact, but something in the way he said them—the careful flatness—made her chest ache. “Thought I was a ghost at first. Then he called for someone to fetch a physician, like maybe I was dyin’ and he needed to save me.”

The image formed in her mind before she could stop it. A duke in his London townhouse, face to face with the son he’d mourned for thirty years. The disbelief. The desperate hope. The fear that it couldn’t possibly be real.

“How did you prove who you were?” James eyed him.

“The watch, for one. Had my mother’s name on the back an’ he said it was a gift from him. I also remembered things—small things. A dog we had. A dish the cook made. The garden where I’d played.” He paused. “And there was a birthmark. On my shoulder. He remembered it.”

A birthmark. The kind of detail a man couldn’t invent if he were trying to deceive. The kind a father would remember even after thirty years.

The duke would see that mark and know—know—that the man standing before him was truly his son. Not a ghost. Not a trick. Flesh and blood, alive against all odds.

“What happened then?” Clara had to know the rest of the picture, to hear how the story ended.

Nathan’s gaze flicked to her, then away. “He brought me into his home in London. Gave me a room. Clothes.” A pause. “Tried to teach me how to be a gentleman.”

The way he said it made a knot twist in her chest. Tried. Not succeeded.

Thomas leaned forward again. “How long were you with him?”

“A few months. He had a lot to do with Parliament. I think he realized I was a harder case than he had time to take on.” Again that almost shrug. “Sent me to meet you lot.”

A harder case. Like he’d been something that needed fixing. A man broken beyond repair.

Part of her wanted to reach across the table and take his hand. To tell him he wasn’t broken. That surviving what he’d endured took a kind of strength most people would never have to find. She didn’t, of course. But maybe she could find a way to encourage him later.

“So our father sent you here to learn from us.” Robert’s voice carried that careful tone again. The one he used when he wasn’t ready to show his hand yet. “To become a gentleman.”

Nathan’s gaze swept across Robert’s face, then back to the food on his own fork. “Something like that.”

“And if you don’t?” Enoch again. Every word from him felt like a blade being tested against a whetstone. “What then? You go back to sea? Give up your claim?”

Nathan didn’t look at Enoch, not like he had every other person who addressed him. Just focused on his food as he gave a quiet shake of his head. “I’ve found my family. I’m not leaving again.”

Bea made a low sound—not quite a word, but the kind of reprimand that needed no translation. The sort of noise that had probably worked on five rowdy boys and still carried enough weight to make grown men shift in their seats.

“Let him eat.” Bea’s voice came out with the kind of quiet that wasn’t soft at all. “All these questions. The poor man is hungry.” Thank goodness for Bea.

Enoch’s jaw worked, but he said nothing. Just reached for his own fork and stabbed at the meat on his plate.

CHAPTER 18

Robert had not been alone with Clara since the kiss.

The thought pressed through him as he stood at the windows in the main room, hands braced on the sill, staring out at the pasture where James and Enoch were teaching Nathan how to repair the fence.

Every time he’d tried to find a moment with her yesterday—after the meal, after Nathan had been shown to his makeshift quarters in the barn, after the household had finally settled for the night—someone had needed their attention. A question about the watch rotation. Kate requiring help to her room. Mandie asking about plans for tomorrow’s breakfast.