“Any trouble I find I came looking for.”
“I do not understand.”
“It is best you don’t.” He twisted water from the rag. “I don’t want you involved any more than I want to bring more pain on my mother.”
More pain.Somehow, hearing him say the words was numbing. He had never admitted to injuring his parents. He had never admitted to injuring her. Did he realize, all these years later, what he had done by leaving them all behind? Was he feeling guilty for it now?
He slipped his hand underneath his coat. “You had better go.”
“You need a doctor.”
“He has already come.”
“You do not appear well—”
“Miss Whitmore.” Frustration lined his words. “Please. I am asking you to leave.”
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, hating herself for the quiver in her knees, for the overwhelming desire to take the rag from his hand, peel back his coat, soothe the injury he would not speak of.
To the man who had given her so much pain, she should not have pitied his own.
But she did.
“Very well.” She strode past him and paused at the door. “But you had better make haste, for you are needed outdoors.”
“Why?”
She hesitated. “I fear your son has found some trouble of his own.”
Too many of the guests stood gawking, the ladies with their hovering parasols and the gentlemen with their swishing sherry glasses. Their murmurs spread across the lawn, as sickening as the sea thunking the base of the ship over and over again.
Simon waded through the circle of guests. Whispered insults vibrated in his ear, breaking out his skin in more sweat.
“Shocking,” someone gasped.
“What comes of raising children in savagery.”
“We should have expected no less.”
“Indeed, I would never leavemychild alone with such creatures…”
Shouldering his way into the opening, Simon pulled to a halt.
Six or seven children all lingered together, some already being coddled by a nanny, others staring at the eleven- or twelve-year-old boy on the grass.
Some of the buttons on his blue skeleton suit were missing. His white collar was grass stained. Bloodstained too. He clamped a defiant hand over his leaking nose, despite the governess who tried to dry him with a fluttering handkerchief.
Then John and Mercy.
They stood alone, hand in hand, eyes as frantic as two years ago when the cabin had caught afire. Those flames had been easy to douse.
These, perhaps not so much.
Simon strode to them, frowning at the rip on John’s new coat and the dirt smearing his cheek. “What happened?”
“I shall tell you what happened, Fancourt.” An overweight, curly haired gentleman approached, his bottom lip protruding as obnoxiously as his paunch. “That ferocious offspring of yours attacked my son.”
“Is that true, John?”
