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“I didn’t realise you know him.”
“Your father has mentioned him to me,” Ryan explained.
“You seem to have quite a close acquaintance with my father.”
You seem to know more about my father than I do.
“You know we have been acquainted for a long time.”
“He doesn’t talk to us much,” Sian sighed.
Ryan frowned. He sensed she was desperately unhappy, and immediately tried to find the cause of her discontent. If he could Ryan knew he would then be able to do something to cheer her up a bit.
“Would you like me to escort you into the village?” he asked.
“I am fine, thank you,” she replied with a smile that didn’t eradicate the shadows in her eyes.
Ryan, reluctant to leave Sian alone with the young man now striding toward them, hovered protectively beside her. Sian suspected he was waiting for Cedrick to join them but had no intention of waiting for the man to catch up.
“Well, I will be on my way then,” she began with every intention of increasing her stride.
“It isn’t safe for you to be walking around the lanes without a chaperone,” Ryan informed her.
“Might I ask you a question?” As she spoke, Sian looked worriedly at Cedrick.
“Of course.” Ryan was more than happy to answer any question she put to him, so long as he could spend a few more minutes with her.
“Is my father in financial difficulty?”
Ryan sucked in a breath. He squinted off into the distance for a moment while he tried to decide what to tell her.
“He is my father. I think I have a right to know. After all, if he is it involves me directly.” Sian waited with bated breath, not least because she wanted to know how Ryan saw her.
“It is not my place to say. Have you not asked your father directly?”
“Father has a horrible penchant for treating us all like we are lacking intelligence,” Sian huffed.
“I don’t think it is that,” Ryan argued. “He is the man of the house and runs the family finances.”
“Yes, but those finances affect all of us. Why will he not tell us? There is a problem, isn’t there? Just how bad is it?”
Ryan winced. “I never said there was a problem.”
“But you didn’t deny it either,” Sian argued.
“Look, just ask your father. I confess, he has told me that he has a few problems with a couple of business dealings he has had, but apart from that I am not going to be privy to your father’s private financial affairs.”
“But he is good friends with your father. If he is in financial trouble he would turn to your father for advice, I know it.”
“Really? And what do you know about your father’s business dealings?” Ryan challenged.
“I know that he and mother had a blazing argument last night, or this morning, just after Wilhelmina and Cedrick arrived. My father made it clear that we-” Sian sighed and looked doubtfully at him.
If her father hadn’t sought Ryan’s advice on his financial problems, it wasn’t for her to stand in the middle of the street and tell Ryan about them. However, Sian knew that Ryan was aware something was going on. It was annoying that he didn’t seem to think she had the intelligence to understand the problems either.
“God, you are all the same,” she hissed.
“Pardon?” Ryan blinked. It was all it took for Sian to vanish. When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the empty space where Sian had been standing. He did a double take when he looked around and caught her striding down the road toward the village. With a glare at Cedrick, Ryan hurried after her.
