“Unexpected?” Hangleton echoed. “That’s putting it mildly. I distinctly recall telling you to go back to Bridestowe and stay there.”
“I couldn’t. Papa, I need you to listen to me. The Princess of Monfalcone—”
Hangleton, who’d half lowered himself into his chair, rose at Ruby’s words. “This again? By God, Ruby—”
Ruby’s face had gone pink. She looked wretched and embarrassed. “I know you told me not to interfere in the princess’s affairs,” she said thinly, “but I had no choice. She—”
“Not to interfere?” Hangleton gave a derisive little laugh. “When have you ever in your life listened to me when I told you to keep yourself out of situations where you do not belong? Let us simply add this to the long list of public embarrassments your actions have engendered.”
Archer’s pulse beat hard in his ears.
He looked at Ruby. Her eyes had gone to her lap, and her shoulders curved down, as if to make herself smaller in her chair.
His jaw tightened. His teeth ached. Words leapt to his mind, to his mouth—but he strangled them in his throat.
“Please, Papa,” Ruby said. “If you’ll only let me explain—”
“I’m sick of listening to your excuses. I cannot think why I imagined that a few months at Bridestowe might do you some good. You are once again entangled in a mess of your own making.”
Ruby’s face had gone from pink to white. She looked—
Not just hurt. Resigned. As though she’d expected this. As though she’d been braced for such a blow.
“I have long despaired,” Hangleton went on silkily, “of your ever learning to behave differently. But now I begin to think that you are incapable of—”
Archer found himself on his feet.
“That’s enough,” he said, very low.
And—shit. Bloody fucking hell. He had not meant to say it. This was not how he’d intended for this meeting to go. He was meant to help, tocharm. Not hurl himself into a confrontation that might ruin their chances of securing Hangleton’s help. He had not, under any circumstances, meant to give in to the siren call of honesty.
But Ruby—
Ah God. Her transparent face was utterly stiff, and her blue-gray eyes looked faraway. Fogged over, as though she could not see clear.
And he couldn’t bear it. He could not sit and watch, not even if he ruined his best chance of finding the princess. Not even if, later, Ruby blamed him for intervening. He could not stand idly by and, through his own inaction, fail her when she needed him most.
He would not let her father make her feel ashamed.
“What’s that?” Hangleton snapped.
“That’s enough,” Archer said again. “Sit down.”
Hangleton’s gaze focused on Archer for the first time, and he treated Archer to a slow up-and-down perusal. “Sit down, is it? I beg your pardon. Who the devil are you to tell me what to do in my own house?”
Archer couldn’t help himself. He looked back at Hangleton and smiled very slowly. “No one of import,” he said. “Only your son-in-law.”
Hangleton goggled. “You—” His face went mottled, then scarlet. “You are—”
“Cheers,” Archer said blandly.
Hangleton turned to Ruby, his expression transfigured by fury. “I should have known. I should have suspected that you would run off and get yourself into some ghastly, humiliating—”
Archer cut in, his voice so soft that Hangleton, despite himself, went quiet. “Perhaps you did not hear me,” he murmured. “I said,Sit down. And do not speak another word until you’ve listened to what your daughter has to say.”
He was a good two decades younger than Hangleton and no doubt outweighed him by several stone, but it wasn’t the threat of physical violence that brought Hangleton’s words to a halt. It was Archer’s tone—the low assurance, the lethal command he’d honed a thousand thousand times aboard his ship.
This was what he did—spoke in such a way that people believed him. That people looked into his face and saw the truth.
