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Lord Graham slammed his fist down on the table, and every object on his desk, in addition to Robert, jumped.
“I WILL NOT BE CONTRADICTED NOR TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF, YOU FOOL! ADMIT TO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, OR I SHALL SERVE YOU THE MOST SEVERE PUNISHMENT,” Lord Graham boomed.
Now, every cell in Robert’s body was telling him to get out of that room, but he knew he could not leave. He did not know what to do – he could not confess if he did not know what he had done, and he could not continue to defy his terrifying father.
As he sat there frantically trying to decide how to respond, his right eye began to twitch, and he knew that he was in trouble. The twitching was an automatic response that his body had to his father’s anger, and he knew that he only had a few minutes to get out of this situation before it would escalate into a full-face twitch.
“I... I am sorry, Father,” Robert stammered.
“SPEAK UP, YOU MUTTERING IMBECILE!” Lord Graham roared.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Robert heard himself saying in a far calmer voice. “I apologize for what I have done, and I will accept whatever punishment you bestow upon me.”
When the words were out of his mouth, Robert wanted to be sick. He despised the timid, submissive, quivering man that he turned into in front of his fatherbut knew there was nothing to be done about it now. Lord Graham had been this way with him his whole life, and no matter how hard he tried, Robert had never been able to stand up to him.
When Robert met his father’s eye again, he was giving him a thorough looking-over. He didn’t think that his apology was going to work, as it seldom did, but then, a miracle occurred.
Lord Graham took a deep breath, un-knitted his fingers, and leaned back in his chair. Make no mistake, he still looked utterly terrifying, but Robert no longer feared that he would be leaving this study with one less extremity.
“...Books. That was what it finally came down to, didn’t it?” Lord Graham asked him judgementally.
Robert was baffled. He still didn’t have a clue what his father was talking about, but he decided to go with it.
“I’m afraid so. I know that you have counselled me many times to take my nose out of ‘those blasted books’, but I could not resist,” Robert suggested. He sincerely hoped that what he was saying matched the crime that his father was accusing him of; otherwise, he’d have a bigger problem on his hands.
“You should have heeded my warning, Robert,” Lord Graham said, shaking his head and drumming on the desk. “If you had, you would not be in this... unfortunate situation right now.”
Robert’s heart began pounding once again. “What... what situation would that be exactly, Father?”
Lord Graham gave his icy chuckle once more. “A fortuneless one, my son.”
Robert’s heart dropped into his stomach. “A... a what?”
“When I discovered that immense amount of money missing from my accounts,” Lord Graham explained, “I knew immediately that it had to have been your doing. But then to discover through some... investigating, shall we say, that you had wasted it all on books? I was disgusted. And so, I have decided to teach you the true value of money. You shall be cut off immediately, and I expect you to be gone from this household within a week.”
Robert could hardly believe his ears. But what he could gather from what his father was telling him was that someone had spent an exorbitant amount of money on books, and because Robert was both the reader of the family, as well as the least favourite child, it had been blamed on him. He wasn’t surprised, but he was rather at a loss for words regarding his punishment.
“Father, I won’t say that what you’re accusing me of is wrong, but I would... I would ask you to reconsider your punishment. I’m very sorry for what I did, I shall return the books immediately, and your money will all be returned to you. Is there not some way that we could …”
“No,” Lord Graham barked at his son. “You’ve been nothing but a disappointment from the day you were born, and so I intend to make you understand the full extent of the grief that you have caused me. There will be no more discussion on this topic, and if you do not follow my orders... there will be even more severe punishment.”
Lord Graham waved his hand at Robert, signalling that he was to leave now. Robert did his very best to summon his courage to say something in response to his father, but then he remembered all the times that he had tried to do that as a child. On his eighth birthday, on the day of his brother’s first riding lesson... and on the day his mother died.
All his attempts had been met with such cruelty that he didn’t dare disobey his father, even now, and even though he knew he had done nothing wrong. He knew who the real culprit behind this missing money was, and so he was going to go and give her a piece of his mind.
That person was his half-sister, Louisa.
