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“All my life I’ve been trying to please my father. This is the only thing I’ve ever been able to do that will make him look favorably upon me. If I were to betray him, well, he’s not a forgiving man. It would be the end of everything I’ve known.”
“You’ll have Addie. And us. The whole lot of us.” One corner of his mouth twitched into a half smile.
“I’d have no work. No way to support Addie or help her with her writing aspirations.”
“She can find her own way if that’s necessary,” Alexander said. “Your contacts in New York won’t completely dry up, I assume?”
“No, sir. However, Mr. Masters will make sure I never work again. What about Addie’s book? If she were associated with me, we could never find a publisher for it.”
“There are ways around it,” Alexander said. “Pen names and such. Isn’t that right?”
Strangely enough, I’d not thought of that before now. He was right. No one would need to know it was her. “Yes, that’s correct.”
“I can’t tell you what to do, but I can assure you that there is work here in Emerson Pass. Perhaps not the kind you assumed you’d have, but good work. You could teach at our school or work for me. Anything you want, here, is yours. Your mother and sister are welcome here, too. They could live here with us.”
“Live here at the house?”
“Why not? We have room for them. Soon we’ll have an empty nest of a home. What’s two more when we have so much?”
I stared at him, stunned by his generosity and the absolute love he felt for his daughter. Inviting strangers into his home, purely for the sake of Addie. What would it feel like to have a father like that? I would never know, regardless of my decision.
“We could use a good English teacher,” Alexander said. “Especially for the older children. They need to know how to write.”
Could I really teach school here? Would I enjoy it as much as I did editing? Perhaps. I could make a difference in a community. Would that be more relevant than editing books? I couldn’t know for sure. But I would have Addie and the rest of the Barnes family. My mother and sister would have a place to come to.
“How do I do it?” I asked. “Tell him, that is. My father will not make this easy. I don’t know if my mother would come here.” She would send my sister, though. That I felt certain of. My mother would never want my sister to suffer because of her pride.
“Tell your father the truth,” Alexander said. “You love someone else, and it’s his mess to clean up anyway.”
I stared back at him. “It makes me feel sick to my stomach.”
“Think about walking out of here without Addie. How does that make you feel?”
“Like death.”
“There’s your answer.” He was quiet for a moment, getting up to pour us both another small whiskey. When he returned to his seat, Alexander took a good look at me before setting my glass on the table between us. “One other thought. It occurred to me in the middle of the night that we should question the motives of Mr. Masters.”
“Sir?”
“What’s Masters getting out of this? Have you ever asked yourself that?”
“He wants my pedigree,” I said.
“It has to be more than that for him to force his daughter to marry a man she doesn’t love.”
“Like what?”
“Scandal of some kind,” Alexander said. “Has it occurred to you that you may be a decoy?”
“A decoy?”
“Ask Lena to tell you the truth about why they’re rushing all this. There’s more to it than you know, I can guarantee it.”
For the second time, I stared at him. What did he mean exactly?
“Son, it’s helpful to look at this from all angles. What, truly, are Masters and Lena getting from this?”
“Does it matter?”
