Pain flashed between his eyes, but nothing like before.
Jonathan made a guess. “So…that’s half right? There is something he wants to say to me?”
No pain. Which meant…
“Yes,” she said. “I think he wants to say he loves you. That’s usually it, isn’t it? He loves you and wishes you could have been on better terms.”
His father? The cold, stern disciplinarian wanted that?
He supposed it was possible. Especially since there was no pain through his temples to indicate the negative. If anything, there was kind of a cooling relief between his brows. But try as he might, he couldn’t quite believe that of his stern father.
“He’s done all this—thrown books at me, scared my horse, broke the carriage—just to say he wishes we’d been closer?”
Giselle shrugged. “The dead don’t have the same priorities as we do. Or perhaps all the little stuff is stripped away. Jonathan, what was between you two? What stopped all the communication?”
He thought back. He rolled through his memories to the first moment when he’d stopped trying with his father.
“You did,” he finally said. “It was when I wanted to marry you and he…”
“He sent us both to different parts of England.”
And Scotland. “Yes.”
They shared a look of wonder at finding each other again. And then anger surged through him at his father for keeping them apart.
But even as the fury shot through him, another answer came into his thoughts.
“He was just trying to protect me. Giselle, what he did was wrong, but we were sixteen.”
“So young,” she echoed.
“I was determined to wed you,” he said. “He shouldn’t have sent your family away, but I’m not sure anything else would have stopped me.”
Her eyes misted as she looked at him. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“Never! He punished anyone for speaking of you or your family. I might have been able to find you anyway, but…”
“He threatened to hurt me if you did.”
“Yes.”
She gritted her teeth. “What a horrible, horrible man,” she said as she glared into the shadows.
True. Very true, and yet, the man was his father. And he’d been trying to protect his son and heir.
“He thought you would make me spend all my money on the poor.” She’d been zealous in that opinion, thanks to her father.
“He wasn’t entirely wrong,” she admitted. “But the poor are endless. My family has spent their entire lives trying to help, and it’s nearly beggared us.” She looked at her hands. “Several times I’ve cursed my father for feeding others while we’ve gone hungry. If it weren’t for my mother’s work, we would have.”
“But back then…”
She snorted. “I was still too idealistic to see how extreme my father is. And that it wasn’t fair of him to demand such sacrifice of us.”
He smiled at her. “You’ve changed.”
“Grown more moderate, I should say. I still believe in my father’s work, but…” She shook her head. “There must be a compromise. I will not put my children through what he has done to us.”
Music to his ears. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d worried about that before. But now he saw that they could work together for what they both wanted.
