Page 73 of Heiress Gone Wild

Taking a deep breath, praying for fortitude, Jonathan walked into the library.

Chapter 18

Her eyes, wide and dark, were like those of a wounded animal, and he approached her that way, moving slowly into the room and closing the doors behind him as softly as possible. He circled the trunk, then he pushed the billowy folds of her nightgown out of his way to avoid sitting on them and eased down cross-legged on the floor beside her.

“Marjorie,” he began, but she gave him no chance to say more.

“This is an appraisal of the Rose of Shoshone necklace,” she said. “It’s dated July 21, 1888, three years after he left me. Did you see it? Of course you did. You packed his things, you had charge of his affairs.”

He glanced at the letter, then back at her. “Yes, I saw it.”

“So, you knew.” Her eyes narrowed in accusation, and he felt it like an arrow through his chest. “You knew my father had come to New York while I was there, and you didn’t tell me.”

“No. I mean, not exactly,” he amended as he saw the disbelief in her face. “Yes, I knew he’d gone to New York to have the sapphires cut and set, but that trip was five years before we met, and I didn’t learn about you until two months ago. You know that. And yes, I saw the appraisal when I packed his things after he died, but because I had thought you were a child, I took it for granted that his trip to New York was before you were born. After I met you, I didn’t connect your age with the date of Tiffany’s appraisal.”

He stared at her, unhappily aware he’d had other things on his mind since they met. “Call me thick, but I didn’t put the pieces together until this very moment. If I had, I’d have told you. I’m sorry, Marjorie.”

“Why?” she asked, all her earlier bewilderment back in her voice. “Why didn’t he come see me? You knew him. Tell me why.”

He wished he could. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If I were to guess, I’d say he meant to, and then... well... he funked it at the last minute.”

“He was a coward. That’s what you mean.”

“It’s hard for me to think of him that way.” Jonathan considered, trying to be objective about the man who’d been like a brother to him, but it was impossible. “We braved many things together, and he never shirked. He had plenty of physical courage, but...”

“But he was afraid of a little girl?” She made a sound of contempt, one he was forced to admit her father richly deserved.

“I’m only guessing,” he said.

“And you called him a friend?” She shook her head. “A poor friend, who abandons his own daughter, makes promises to her that he doesn’t keep, and strings her along with hope for something that he knows won’t ever happen.”

He couldn’t argue that, and he realized that ever since meeting Marjorie, his opinion of his friend had been steadily eroding, though his own grief and sense of loyalty had prevented him from seeing it. “Yes,” he agreed simply. “I’m sorry.”

Her face twisted, and it took everything he had not to move. She needed a shoulder to cry on, a comforting embrace, but he could not provide that sort of solace. He didn’t dare. God help him, he wasn’t strong enough.

Instead, he did the safe thing, the proper thing. He pulled out his handkerchief.

“I hate him,” she choked, her words a seething rush of pain and anger as she snatched the handkerchief. “I hate him,” she repeated, but with less venom. Her head lowered, her shoulders sagged. “Hate him,” she whispered, crumpling Jonathan’s handkerchief into a ball.

“No,” he said gently. “You don’t.”

She looked up, the tears making her brown eyes glisten in the lamplight, and he felt as if he were sliding precariously close to the edge of a cliff. “I should hate him.”

“Undoubtedly. But you don’t.”

She gave a sob, acknowledging the truth of that, and more than ever, he wanted to wrap his arms around her, comfort her—no, he corrected at once, shredding any pretenses of that sort. Chivalry would just be an excuse.

Desperate for a distraction from the dangerous direction his thoughts were taking, he turned to the trunk, rising on his knees. “If it’s any comfort,” he said as he began rummaging through the trunk, “I know how it feels to have a rotten father. And what it’s like to want to hate him. But you can say one thing about your parent that I cannot say about mine.”

“What’s that?”

Instead of answering, he pulled out what he’d been looking for—a good-sized wooden box that looked rather like a pirate’s treasure chest and a ring of keys. He moved back a bit to set the chest on the floor, unlocked it with one of the keys, and lifted the lid, revealing folds of yellowed silk that he pulled back so that she could see the fat bundles of letters beneath, each one tied with a ribbon.

Tossing the keys back in the trunk, he pulled the top bundle of letters out of the chest and held them out to her. “Yours, I think?”

“Yes,” she whispered in astonishment, dropping his handkerchief and rising on her knees to take the bundle from his hand. “But...” She paused and looked up, frowning in perplexity. “Did you read them?”

“Certainly not,” he answered, affronted. “A gentleman does not read another man’s letters, even if the man’s dead.”

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