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She jerked free from Warrington. ‘Yes. It’s best you told me. I will have the whole night to hate him more.’
He stood silently, watching.
‘How many children—here—does my father have?’ she asked.
‘Four, I believe. Maybe only three.’ He paused. ‘I believe one may have taken ill and died. I’m not sure.’
She heard her voice and the bitterness she couldn’t conceal. ‘Do they have the birthmark, as well? The one like we have.’ She touched the mud-coloured bodice where the mark hid beneath.
‘Not that I am aware of. Well, perhaps the son has a small spot near his ear.’ He squinted, thinking. ‘I’m not sure.’
On Melos, she’d never considered her father could be married to someone else. Maybe a mistress, but not a marriage. She’d seen the seamen dock. Many of them had sweethearts or family somewhere else, but her father had seemed different. He stayed for long stretches of time and he loved his painting. He hardly had time for anything else.
‘He had to take his paintings to England to sell.’ She held her hand out, palm up. ‘I should have known.’
‘Not everyone has a wondrous family. Even kings.’
‘I will tell him what I really think of him and the daubs of paint he calls techni. But you heard the man at Somerset House. They are not true art.’
He pulled her back into his grasp, and although his arm was around her, she felt no comfort. The coldness inside her blended with a hot anger boiling into her chest and arms and forehead, causing spikes of pain behind her eyes.
He didn’t speak at first. ‘The wife’s father supported the family while he lived, but when he died, he left all his funds to a favourite nephew. Not a pound to his only child. The father trusted the nephew to allow the daughter to control the funds. The nephew inherited the wealth and made a great show of letting Hawkins’s wife have freedom with her father’s funds. I suppose the men made an agreement before the old man died.’
Melina shuddered. ‘But my father would not care about who has the purse. As long as he has pigment and canvas, he is happy.’
Warrington turned sideways and pulled her chin so she had to look at him. ‘Perhaps not. A man expects to control the purse strings since a woman’s property becomes the husband’s on marriage. When your father found out his wife didn’t inherit, it’s said he had to be restrained. His father-in-law had given Hawkins a grand slap.’
She stared at the harpoon and thought of the man she knew on the island. ‘I would not be surprised if Melos was his revenge. If he stayed with us to punish the woman in England. Just enough to annoy but not enough to enrage.’ She shook her head.
‘I understand it better than you might think—parts of it, anyway. My wife, Cassandra... I think, even our son, Jacob, the heir she’d had for me, and perhaps even the little girl, were merely tools for her to use.’
‘If you are saying you know what it is like when someone doesn’t care for their children—still, it doesn’t make me feel better. My sisters. My mother. He forgot about us.’
‘My wife—forgot about me.’ He dropped Melina’s hand. His voice hardened. ‘No, she didn’t forget. She didn’t care. She left when I was ill and came home carrying another man’s child. And she begged my forgiveness—because it was going to be impossible for me to think the child was mine. I was sick, grieving for my father, angry at her for leaving me when I was about to die. I hated her, and yet I could not stop myself from wanting her. She was silken, soft, alluring—when she wanted something—and she wanted to be back in my home, as I had not heard a word from her in months and I severely curtailed her funds. Besides, how powerful she must have felt, knowing I hated what she had done, knew the child was not mine and yet I still desired her. But I had conditions on her return and I insisted she meet them.’
He stood and his words became soft. ‘And I hurt the night she died... That was the worst part of all. How could I feel sadness when I was free from such a person? I should have gone out and celebrated. I mourned and was disgusted with myself for it.’
He turned back to her, letting his arm rest on the back of the sofa. His knee touched hers. With his arm still aligned on the back of the furniture, he reached out his other hand. ‘Yet sometimes I think I miss her. That is the oddest part and makes me the most angry.’
He ran his forefinger along her arm. ‘I tell you about my wife so you will know you are not the only one betrayed. That I have experienced disloyalty, too, and I don’t want you alone in this.’
