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“That is not how society works, Pen.” He looked back to the painting. “It may have been how it worked in Belize with even the finest homes, but England is half a world away from that life.”
“Polite is not polite here?”
He looked at her, his eyebrows drawing together. “Half a world away.”
She nodded, her brow slightly wrinkled. He was judging her. Judging her naivety.
Before she could reply, footsteps on the fine marble in the hallway echoed into the room. Both of them turned around.
Her hands immediately lifted to curl her fingers together, but Strider grabbed her right wrist, pulling it back down to her side. He released it only a second before two women and one man appeared in the wide doorway.
Pen’s breath caught in her throat—one of the women was elderly, shorter than her with gray hair that had been artfully pulled back. Green eyes that had yellowed with time. Her shoulders were straight—not hunched as afflicted so many her age.
But it was the other woman that startled her. That woman was younger—somewhere marking the middle between Pen’s age and the elderly woman’s age. She also looked so akin to the person Pen saw in the mirror every day of her life. She had the same green eyes and dark lashes. Light blond hair. Round face that held defined cheekbones.
But wrinkles had taken root. What she would look like herself in thirty years.
The three of them paused at the threshold of the room, studying both her and Strider up and down. The elderly man was the first to step into the space, the women following him.
Four strides into the spacious drawing room he stopped, facing Pen and Strider. The women flanked either side of him. If any of them saw the resemblance between Pen and the younger woman, they didn’t show it.
“Mr. Hoppler, you requested an audience with me and my wife?” The man—she could only presume was her grandfather—pursed his lips in annoyance.
“I did, and this is?” Strider made a motion to the younger woman.
“My daughter, Anne.” He said the words without looking at her. “What is your business here, sir?”
Both of the women stayed silent, staring at Pen and Strider, their staid, drawn faces not giving any hints as to what was going on in their minds.
“Thank you for meeting with us.” Strider smiled—as affable as Pen had ever seen him. “We won’t take much of your time. We are investigating a possible family connection with my friend—this is Penelope Willington.” He set his hand on the small of her back as he introduced her. “We have reason to believe she may be related to your family and we were hoping for your assistance in investigating the matter.”
Baron Jacobson’s grey eyebrows stretched impossibly high. “This is what this meeting is about?” He refused to look at Pen, his ire-filled dull blue eyes set on Strider. “You waste our time. We don’t know anyone by the name Willington.” He spun on his heel, grabbing the elbow of his wife as he did so. “You will excuse us.” He started toward the door.
The younger woman, Anne, looked at Pen for a long moment. Nothing changed in the countenance of her face, but in her green eyes—the tiniest flash. A flash of hatred, if Pen were to guess. But it disappeared so quickly Pen had no time to analyze it. Anne turned about and followed her parents.
“But wait, please,” Pen blurted out, running around the settee to cut them off before they could escape the room. “You don’t understand. My mother—my mother’s name was Margot.”
She planted herself in front of them, her palms up to them. “Margot—I do not know what her maiden surname was. She died in childbirth and I never knew her but people told me—us,” her hand waved maniacally toward Strider, “about her when she was alive. She arrived in Belize alone and with child after her husband died. She was from this area, we believe. Maybe you know—”
Lord Jacobson threw a hand out and pushed Pen to the side, ushering his wife past her. “We don’t know anyone by that name. We never have, child. We cannot help you. Please see yourselves out.”
Pen stumbled a step to the side and by the time she regained her balance, she was watching the backs of all three of them exit the drawing room. Her hand went out to the tall back of the settee to steady herself before her legs that were now jelly collapsed. Her head dropped, her eyes closing.
How could they not see it?
The obvious resemblance between her and Anne? How could they not know anything? They had the same face. The same hair. The same eyes.The same damn eyes.
Her head lifted and she looked to where Strider was—except he wasn’t there any longer.
Her head swiveled and she found him next to her, his hand lifted with his fingers splayed wide in the air behind her back, ready to catch her if she fell over backward.
The second she saw him, tears flooded her eyes, turning him into a blurry outline. “How could they not…” She jabbed at her eyes with the butt of her palm, wiping away tears, the satin of the glove not absorbing, only smearing the wetness about her cheeks. Tears. She hadn’t cried in seventeen years—not one tear had fallen—and now this? “How could they not see… How…”
His hand landed on her spine between her shoulder blades. “I know. I saw it, Pen. I saw it too.”
A sob shot upward through her throat and she could only half stifle the sound.
The force of his hand on her back pulled her toward him and he collapsed his other arm around her, locking her onto his chest, his lips on the top of her head.
