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He was almost grateful when his father went on with, “I am referring to your other bodily needs, of course.” He stepped over to the chair where Giles had left his shabby, borrowed clothes. “I have become quite wealthy in your absence, boy. I could have adorned you with silks and brocades and made you into the very picture of a gentleman of leisure.”
Giles perked up a bit. His father had been a determined but plodding businessman when he’d fled. The fact that he was bragging about riches now only seemed to prove he was the conspirator Theo was after.
Theo. The sudden though of his beloved bear had Giles’s insides clenching with longing, as though he’d been parted from Theo for years instead of a little more than an hour. But if he wanted the happy reunion he envisioned with his lover, he would have to continue on with the scheme before him.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, shifting around the narrow brass tub, fishing for information. “You’re lying when you say you’re wealthy now.”
“Hold your tongue, boy,” his father snapped, turning back to the tub. “How dare you call me a liar.” A wicked grin spread across his face. “You have earned yourself a whipping for those comments. I wonder if that soft arse of yours still bears the marks I left there before.”
Giles fought the urge to stand up and fight his father. The plan would only work if his father still believed him to be the helpless, hopeless boy he’d once been. All he could do was remain silent and hug his knees in the chilled water.
“I think it’s time you rose from that bath,” his father said, watching Giles with eager eyes, as though he would feast his eyes on the sight of Giles’s nakedness.
There didn’t seem to be any way around the humiliation, but Giles stalled by saying, “I still don’t believe you have any more money than you had when I left here. The house hasn’t changed one bit. If you’ve acquired so much, why can I not see it? Where is the proof of your riches?”
He prayed his father would take the bait, but instead the man said, “A wise man keeps his wealth in the bank and in commercial shares. He does not display it in his home, where it will be squandered onfemales.” His mouth twisted into a sneer with the word. “Now hurry along, boy. The hour is growing late.”
There was nothing for it. Giles would have to rise from his bath and let his father see him. He’d never minded being naked around others before. In fact, there were times when he preferred it. He was vain enough to admit that he enjoyed the patrons of Perdition gawping at his nakedness and growing hard at the sight of him. He certainly liked the way Theo ogled every part of him when they were together.
But his father was a different story entirely.
Giles braced himself, grabbed the edges of the tub, and was about to rise when there was a knock at the door. A moment later, the door opened, and his oldest sister, Rebecca, poked her head into the room.
“If you please, Father, Cook needs to know about supper,” Rebecca said. Her eyes slipped fleetingly to Giles, as though she were seeing a specter.
Their father huffed impatiently, then turned to leave the room. “What does that oaf want?” he asked as he left.
Rebecca stuck her head back into the room for a moment and gave Giles a look as though he was safe now. That startled Giles, not only because of Rebecca’s bravery and forethought, but because it implied she knew the sordid history he had with their father.
Rebecca shut the door, and Giles pushed aside the embarrassment of knowing that his sister was aware of the past to scramble out of the tub. He dried himself and dressed in the cast-off clothes as quickly as possible, then fled the bath to join the rest of his family downstairs. As long as he kept his sisters around him and did not end up alone with his father, he could stave off the man’s horrid intentions.
Supper was a strange, stilted affair, and bittersweet in many ways. The table was laid out precisely as it had been years before, when Giles was still in residence with his family. They all sat at the same places, his father at the head of the table, and his mother’s empty seat at the end. His father spoke to no one as he ate the simple meal Cook had prepared. The same servants were employed in the house as had been there before Giles had left, but none of them made any sort of acknowledgement that Giles had ever been gone.
“Were you living in Hyde Park?” Eliza, Giles’s youngest sister, asked him halfway through the meal.
“I—”
“You will not answer,” their father snapped before Giles could form a reply.
When he resumed eating, Giles sent a smile across the table to Eliza. All three of his sisters, Rebecca, Constance, and Eliza, smiled covertly back at him. All three girls had made it known in the only way they’d been able to thus far that they were happy to see him again. Their wan, pale appearance had alarmed Giles, though.
He’d told Theo that if he’d had a younger brother, he would have stayed to spare that boy the torture his father had inflicted on him. Now he was beginning to question whether he was right to have left his sisters alone. They all seemed to have been well-fed in his absence, but none of them were happy. Rebecca should have been out in the world, engaging in society and perhaps finding herself a husband by now, but she was still dressed and wore her hair as a girl.
“How are your lessons these days?” Giles asked when the silence at the table wore on his last nerve.
“Education is wasted on girls,” his father snapped.
He didn’t elaborate. Giles’s sisters sent him mournful looks, as though they would very much have enjoyed any sort of education. Giles wondered what they did all day and whether their father ever let them out of the house.
The moment of truth came after supper, when their father rose and said, “It is time for bed.” He sent Giles a particular look.
Giles drew in a steadying breath as he stood in concert with his sisters. He needed to play his cards right to get what he needed in the end.
“I have not seen my sisters for many years now,” he said carefully. “Why do I not help them into bed, perhaps read them a story, before retiring to my own room.”
Their father grunted. “Your room has been made into a sitting room,” he said. “You will share my bed until that can be changed.”
All three of his sisters turned wide, horrified eyes to Giles. So all three of them knew, not just Rebecca. Considering how young Eliza was, that pained Giles in a way he couldn’t have anticipated.
