Page 44 of Buon Natale, My Wicked Rogue
“She has a fine heart and a daring spirit, indeed,” he said.
“Now you are a countess, and someday you will be a duchess,” her father said. “And I will have the chance to rectifythe mistakes of my youth, and we can come to know each other if you desire that too.”
“I do, Father.” She was not yet ready to call him Papa. But maybe someday she would.
“I am sorry, Angela,” her father said. “So very sorry that I had thought it best to allow your mother sole custody of you. I felt it was for your good that you should live in either her world or mine. And she begged me that you, being a girl, needed a mother. And I knew that life could be harder for a girl who was born out of wedlock. The way our world is constructed, one cannot just educate an illegitimate daughter and give her seed money to build a livelihood and a life. But look at what you did without any help from my title or my money. You became a woman of wealth and power in America.”
That power had died the day that her father-in-law had died. She learned how fast a woman could be pushed out of a home and life that she had worked to build.
Her father cleared his throat and continued, “Sometimes I think with my head when I ought to think more with my heart, as you have so often done. Maybe you can teach me how to do that.” He reached out his hand. “Will you teach me, Angela? I am so old now. I have not always made the best decisions, and now I regret so many things. Maybe you, of all people, can redeem me.”
Moved by his words, Angela went to him and took his hand. “We can teach each other many new things. We can learn how to relate to each other. We can build a new relationship together.” She smiled at him, though his image had grown a little blurry. “It’s exciting to look forward to knowing you, Father.”
He squeezed her hand. “Yes, I agree. It is something exciting to look forward to. I am glad that I came here, and I am grateful that I am able to say,‘Buon Natale, my daughter.’”
“Buon Natale,Father. I am grateful to be able to say that to you as well.”
Chapter Seventeen
Later that evening, Angela sat and stroked Natalia’s soft fur as the puppy sat on her lap. They both watched the dancing flames of the fire in the hearth of the drawing room. When the servant came to bank the flames, she had asked them to leave the hearth as it was. Now, she held a cup of steaming tea with cloves and cinnamon and enjoyed the rich, spicy scent. It had just turned Christmas Eve. Evan and her father had already gone to their beds. But she couldn't sleep.
After she and her father had exchanged Christmas wishes, the talk had turned to more serious, dangerous matters. She had held her breath as he related a tale of horror to her:
“I overheard my wife telling my son that you had married Ashington. She was so frantically worried that you were going to enact some sort of revenge for something that she’d done that had caused injury to Ashington. My mind spun. They had said that you had declined to come to England. And now all of this talk.
“I waited for them to go to bed that night and for my wife to fall asleep. I went to her desk and read her letters and her diary. What I found shocked me. We married each other to please our families. After she gave birth to Edmund, the doctors advised against any further pregnancies, and so we didn’t even share a marriage bed after that. We lived as strangers for a long time. We had our own interests. But I never dreamed that she could hold such evil in her heart. I never dreamed she could betrayme in that way. The worst conceivable way, attempting to deny a child of mine a visit with me, was bad enough. But to actually hire someone to murder a child of mine? Unfathomable!
“She will pay, I promise you that. I am going to send her to my cousin’s modest estate in Ireland. There, she will be kept as a prisoner in her rooms, without any independence or agency, for the remainder of her life. My cousin will see to her clothes, food, and other basic needs. We will tell others that she became mentally unwell and unable to care for herself or to be active in society any longer. This necessary stretching of the truth is so there will be no scandal to touch you or my son or your children in the fullness of time. My son is young, only sixteen, and he was misled by his strong-willed mother.”
And when he had finished, his pale blue eyes were cold as ice. This was her father, a spymaster, a man used to exerting his power of authority over those around him. Evan had warned her that her father was a commanding, often overbearing type of man. But for the sake of her safety and Evan’s, as well as any children they might have, maybe it was a very good idea that he would take care of his wife’s crimes. Angela wasn’t too sure the English law would truly give her justice against an English-born duchess.
And then her father had told them of Mr. Abney, who had taken the money to intimidate Angela. He would be prosecuted for his crime.
But the most shocking news of all had been that Susan had betrayed Angela in one final, heartbreaking way; she had been contacted by Mr. Abney and given money to suggest someone local and dependable to do a task for the Duchess of Amesbury. Susan had suggested her own cousin, Tom, to be the man who would have shot Angela if Evan had not stepped in front of her and taken the bullet himself.
That was why Susan had acted so strangely that day. She had confessed to playing a part in Evan’s plot the night of the masquerade. And now Angela knew why Susan had confessed at all. She intended to place a wedge between Evan and Angela. She had intended to send Angela running away from Evan.
But she hadn’t counted on Evan being wise to the dangers that lurked in the shadows. He had wanted Angela to stay with Lady Wyndam, where she would be safe. Susan hadn’t counted on Evan working hard to make sure that Angela felt emotionally safe and understood. So, Angela had not had the emotion-fueled reaction that Susan had counted on.
Despite the way that things had started between them, since his declaration of love, Evan not only said words of love, but he also tried hard to love her the way she needed to be loved.
No one had ever done that for her before. Not in her whole life.
“You can’t sleep?”
She was startled and turned to see Evan wrapped in his dressing gown.
“You should be in bed,” she chided. “Today was a most straining day for you.”
“It was straining for us all,” he countered as he touched her arm and caressed her. “You should be in bed as well.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Besides, I missed you, and then I couldn't sleep either.”
That little admission warmed her inside and made her suddenly long to be back in bed with him. And yet, there was something that nagged at her.
“Do you know the thing that disturbs me the most? I cannot see any of me in him?” She frowned. “Did that sentence makesense? I see where I got the reddish lights in my hair but nothing else.”
“You don’t see it, in truth?”
“See what?”
