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‘No.’ He rushed out the word. Shocked his son could think such a thing. ‘Just Willa.’
‘Here?’
‘No. Of course not.’
His son stared, eyes searching Warrington’s face, unsure. ‘Why?’
‘Willa’s moving to live with her new family. You’ll understand when you get older.’
This time, the eyes he saw staring back at him were his son’s and he could see his own likeness in Jacob’s face. His own eyes. Accusing.
‘You’re giving Willa away?’ Jacob asked, his lip jutting out.
‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘If she did something bad, she didn’t mean to.’
She burrowed against him and he felt trapped between the two children.
He knelt down, never taking his eyes from his son, and stood the little girl on her own feet. ‘She needs a mother.’
‘Why does she need a mama?’ Jacob asked. ‘I don’t have one.’
‘Boys only need fathers. Girls need mothers.’
‘We can put trousers on her and cut her hair, and she can be my brother and we’ll keep her.’
He saw Melina move into the doorway.
‘Explain to Jacob,’ he told her, knowing she’d heard the conversation.
Her eyes didn’t accuse. They looked troubled and saddened.
She took a step towards Jacob. She dipped her chin and her words were gentle. ‘I had a mana when I was growing up. It’s something little girls need.’
‘Why?’
‘We do. Like you need your papa. Think how lost you’d be without him.’
‘He went to sea with Uncle Ben and I had the tutor and I was all right. He showed me how seeds grow and everything. The stable master took me for horse rides. Uncle Dane told me stories about Romans and knights. We even saw a shooting star. I asked Uncle Dane, if Papa didn’t come back like Mama didn’t, would he keep me and Willa? He said he would.’ He sniffed in a large swallow of air and stood as straight as his soldiers. ‘Uncle Dane would keep us.’ His jaw jutted out. ‘I want to live with Uncle Dane or sail with Uncle Ben.’ He ran from the room.
Warrington heard each word and they went into his heart. They were true.
He went after Jacob, brushed by Melina, and he could hear Cassandra’s laughter.
But he was not keeping the girl. He’d already given her away. He had told them he would send a carriage for them on the next day.
* * *
Melina heard the steps in the hallway and knew Warrington was in his room. She sat in the blackness, feeling no need for light. Warrington had left after talking to Jacob and not returned until night.
The dark walls suited her well and one face kept floating through her mind. Warrington. Every servant in the house slept, but she doubted he did. And she needed one last moment with him. She wanted to hear his voice. To feel his scent cover her, and the skin that remained hidden from all the world to be hers to savour.
She stood, wearing her chemise, and crept to his bedchamber, standing. He opened the door after she called out, but kept his eyes on a miniature, examining it. He turned the painting so she could see it.
‘My father—he lived for my mother.’ His voice barely reached her ears. ‘If one of his boys displeased her, he would not hear of it. We could have stolen from the church and he would have not been so angry as he would have been from an irritation to my mother. And rightly so. If she had a fault, it was in loving us to distraction.’
He brought the miniature back into his view and put his arm around her, hand at her waist. Her heart beat faster and she felt like a part of him. She let her cheek rest against his clothing. In those seconds, she changed. When he breathed, she felt the movements inside herself. But also, she could feel his restraint. He was not to be hers.
‘And yet,’ Warrington continued, ‘almost the first woman he saw after the funeral, he began to court, thinking it a secret. Less than a month after my mother’s death, he told me he would be married as soon as the proper mourning ended. He was bouncing in his boots. He was so happy and could not keep the news to himself.’ Warrington moved the picture to his side. ‘I vowed...’
Warrington tossed the miniature to a chair. He expelled a breath. ‘Yet I lost my father because I was no different than he.’
She touched the softness of his shirt at his chest, feeling the heart beating beneath.
‘I never told my father, not once, how I hated the moment he told me he would remarry. Instead I told Dane and we moved to the town house so we would not have to see the blissful courtship. I didn’t move back until I wed. Whitegate is large, yet it wasn’t big enough for everyone. I’m tired of living in my memories, Melina. They are getting old and worn, and making me feel the same. Like leather rained on and then baked in the sun.’
