“Wouldn’t you be curious, if you’d found out that the governess who’d been raising your child for months wasn’t who she claimed to be? Wouldn’t you want to know the truth of the matter?”
“Perhaps, but there are people you can hire to do that. I’ve heard you already hired one. A verygoodone.”
“He’s as discreet as he is expensive,” Hayes said truthfully.
“Which is why he still enjoys breath.”
Bradford found the veiled threat amusing; he smirked.
Cavendish leaned forward and steepled his fingers over his desk. “His motivations were easy enough to figure. What are yours?”
“I appreciate the directness of your questioning. Most gentlemen would try to feel me out, see if they could figure it out without actually asking.”
He frowned. “That was nowhere close to an answer.”
“No disrespect meant, Lord Cavendish, but I hardly think I owe you one.”
Cavendish glowered at him. “I’m her brother.”
Bradford smiled evenly back, an expression that didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re acting as ifshe’sthe wronged party here, when the opposite is true.”
“If I didn’t know better, I would think you’d come to force us into some settlement.”
It was a casual hint, but Bradford saw the hook hidden in the worm. “I’m not interested in blackmail, if that’s your fear.”
Cavendish cocked his head and frowned. “Yet aren’t you blackmailing my sister with your very presence?”
“She hasn’t requested that I leave, yet,” he said lightly.
“Because she doesn’t realize she has the right to do so. She’s gentle and sweet. It never would occur to her to ask you to leave.”
Bradford shook his head. He supposed he might have seen Lily in the same light, once, when he first met her. Now, he knew there was a backbone of iron underneath that fragile beauty—one that had served her well both in obtaining her governess position and in acting as such to Rebecca, who was exceedingly strong-willed.
Bradford couldn’t fault Cavendish for not knowing the depth of his own sister’s fortitude and resolve. After all, he wasn’t the one who had tracked her determined trek across the Northumberland landscape.
Cavendish took his silence as consideration and pressed. “Her mind doesn’t tend toward the devious; it never has.”
“Yet she was devious enough to take on a false identity and lie to my face for four months.”
Cavendish studied him for long moments and said, “Is that it? You’re here because she fooled you? It was an act that was completely out of character, born of desperation.” Her brother sighed. “You don’t know Lily as I do?—”
“Funny, I might say the same to you.”
“And you’ve come to…what?” Cavendish flicked open his hands in question.
There was a moment of taut silence where Bradford decided how to answer. He finally said, “Figure out who was living in my house under false pretenses. Wouldn’tyoube intrigued, were our situations reversed?”
Cavendish frowned. “Perhaps.”
Bradford relented enough to add, “Though my business in town is my own, I understand your protective instincts. The best I can do is to assure you that I have no plans on disclosing my previous contact with your sister to anyone. As far as I’m concerned, Miss Sarah Hughes and Miss Lily Preston are two completely different persons; one has naught to do with the other.”
Cavendish frowned as if unsatisfied with his answer, but there was little he could do about it, and they both knew it.
“We are at a stalemate of sorts,” Bradford said. “You cannot throw me from your house and prevent me from seeing her, because I have information detrimental to your family.”
His eyes narrowed. “That sounds like a threat to me.”
“On the contrary. It would be an embarrassment on both sides were that information to come to light. Please believe me when I tell you that, apart from every area in which you and I disagree, we at least share one firm spot of common ground.”
