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Lottie cleared her throat. “The edition Uncle Alfred released of the collected poems sold out its entire first printing. The second went even faster.”
Alec vaguely remembered that his payments had increased for a time, but his focus had been on how the money would be spent.
“And I helped put it together.”
At that he faced her. “I didn’t realize you were such an acolyte.”
A faint blush stained her cheekbones. “I wasn’t. It was merely something to do at first. Something more interesting than making calls, anyway. But the way your father wrote about Italy with such passion, such love, as if he were writing about a person…” She paused and shook her head. “I had always wanted to visit the village, you know, because of my parents. But after I read his poems, I wanted to come here for the rest of the country as well.”
Spurred by her words, a memory suddenly surfaced: Alec traipsing over a bridge on a warm spring afternoon, his father’s large hand clutching his own. They were swinging their arms back and forth while Alec repeated lines of poetry back to him.It won’t stand up on the page if itcannot stand up to life, his father had explained. The conviction in his voice still rang out across the decades. They had spent so many days just like that: wandering around the city while his father worked out rhythms.
“And has Italy lived up to your expectations?” His voice had gone a bit thick.
Lottie gave him a soft, sad smile. “In a way.” Then she sighed. “But I hadn’t realized that he wasn’t writing about a country so much as the nature of love.”
Alec’s fingers gripped the railing even tighter. “Yes. My mother was quite a woman.”
She was immortalized in his father’s poems as a dazzlingly beautiful but humble laundress whose hazel eyes and silky, gold-spun curls had arrested him from across a canal. The pair had fallen deeply in love before they even spoke, and she was rescued from a life of hard labor.
A devastatingly romantic story. Not a word was true.
Lottie gave Alec a puzzled frown. “That was part of it, certainly,” she began slowly, as if she was choosing her words with the utmost care. “But I wasn’t speaking only of romance. He loved the both of you; the life you all had together. I found that most affecting.” She paused to take a breath. Or to gather her courage. Alec braced himself for what was coming. “And it helped me to understand later why he…he—”
“—drank himself to death.”
Lottie closed her eyes against the words. Only then did Alec realize he had practically shouted them. He heard Sir Alfred’s chiding voice, as he always did in moments like this:
A gentleman never breaks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” When she opened her eyes, they glistened like two emerald pools.
Alec wanted nothing more than to sink into them, to be swallowed whole by their fathomless depths until he was enveloped in suffocating, comforting numbness. An impossibility. “I’m not upset. It was ages ago. I barely remember either of them.” He didn’t bother trying to mask the flat, hollow tone in his voice. For Lottie wouldn’t dare challenge him.
It was widely accepted that his father had died from “heartbreak” after his wife’s passing. This fitting, understandable, and, most important, sympathetic explanation likely contributed to his posthumous reputation as a romantic hero. Alec would always be grateful to Sir Alfred for covering up the truth—that his mother had actually been married to another man, hadchosento leave, and had died years after Edward Gresham, a rather important revelation Alec had not known until it was far too late.
“He did love you, Alec,” she offered. “You mustn’t ever think he didn’t.”
Now he understood the wisdom of Lottie’s second condition. Hearing her say his name in such a sweet, gentle tone sent a thundering shiver of longing down his spine that would have brought a weaker man to his knees. Her eyes filled with tender sympathy as she slowly reached for his hand, on the verge of breaking her second condition. But Alec would not let her soothe him as if he were a little boy crying over a scraped knee. He simply couldn’t. If she touched him now, he would never let her go. He would pull her down into the murky depths with him, and she deserved so much more. Even a Florentine con man was preferable to what little he could offer.
Alec whipped his arm away with such force that Lottie jerked back. “Dammit. I’m sorry,” he burst out and pulled a hand roughly through his hair. It seemed he couldn’t talk about his parents without going a little bit mad himself. He began to say more but was interrupted by a sharp rap at the door.
Lottie immediately moved to answer it. “That must be your amenities,” she said lightly, as if his outburst had never happened.
Alec could only stare after her, frustrated and helpless. Her cool mask had descended once again. And he must bear it.
Chapter Eight
Lottie’s hand trembled as she gripped the doorknob. She shouldn’t have pushed Alec to talk about his father. He would never touch her in anger—that was the only thing she could say for certain—but the force of his outburst had still been a surprise. Alec wasn’t made of stone, after all, and she hadn’t seen him lose his temper like that in years. Not since he was much younger. But for a very brief moment, she caught a glimpse of the passionate creature he had once been, of the boy who had simplyblazedwith life.
Even he couldn’t have put on that kind of devastation. Blistering anguish like that came only from within. Built upon a foundation forged from extreme loss. Lottie had the same scaffolds inside, but her walls were erected to protect what few memories she had of her beloved parents.
Alec’s, though…Alec’s held back pain. And rage.
I’m not upset. It was ages ago. I barely remember either of them.
They were lies. Every one.
He had spoken of his mother a little when they first met, but never his father. Lottie had always assumed he hated the man. That he had been a brute. And so she hated him, too. It wasn’t until she worked with Uncle Alfred on the collected poems that she learned anything about the mysterious Edward Gresham and came to understand that Alec’s silence wasn’t born out of hate at all, but agony.
