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“I'm in love with her, father. Perhaps that's not an emotion you can get in touch with, so I don’t have any expectation that you’ll understand. In addition to that, your judgment of her means less than nothing to me. I don't know what you've come here to do, but what you will not do is slander the baroness in my presence.”
He looked like he was going to hit me. I wanted him to so that I could hit him back. He was so angry I could feel it radiating off of him. There was something else there too, anxiety. He was worried about something. My mind went back to Lisbeth and her family. The reason that he wanted us to get married was to pay off some sort of debt. What was it? It had to be something huge. My father had tracked me down like a microchipped hound in order to try and force me into wedding. Something big was eating at him.
“What did you do to the Lane family?” I asked him.
“Excuse me?”
“Why are you so intent on Lisbeth and me getting married?”
“Your duty is to get married, not to ask questions.”
“If you expect me to get married, I expect to be told why. Why her? Tell me or accept that it will never happen.”
He retreated, taking a couple of steps back and looking down. “It's true. Something happened between me and the Lanes. My feeling was that it happened so long ago, it shouldn't matter anymore, but that isn't how things like this blow over. I made a grave mistake.”
“What?”
“I had an affair.”
The admission both did and didn't surprise me. Men like him were always having affairs. The stories were a dime a dozen. Plenty of the wealthy socialites running around London were currently or had formerly been mistresses to men like my father. What angered me was the fact that he cheated on my mother.
“Well done. Was it worth it?”
“It was with your nanny.”
Not only was he a cheater, he was also a cliché. Perfect. “Did Mother know?”
“I ended things when she found out. I hoped that we would have a clean break, but that wasn't the case. Of course, we let the woman go and replaced her, but I ended up learning shortly after, that she took her own life. She had a child however who had been left orphaned after she died. A daughter.”
“Lisbeth,” I said finishing the story on my own. “How did you find all of this out? Who told you? Did you maintain a relationship with the woman even after breaking it off?”
“No. Her family found a suicide note and she revealed everything in it. They threatened to make it public unless I can offer them something in return.”
By something in return, he meant me. He meant my life in return for the one that he had seemingly played a part in ending prematurely. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was just getting worse and worse. He cheated on my mother, being sloppy enough to get caught, then the woman in question had taken her own life. He had wronged the Lane family and they were right to ask for retribution but only someone as selfish as my father could come up with a solution like this. Force his only child into a marriage that he did not want in order to protect his reputation, so it didn't become public knowledge that he was a disgusting lout who pressured his staff into sex.
“So, this is the mess you've dragged me into.”
He shrugged, trying to look dignified even though he had just humiliated himself. “You wanted to know the truth. Now that you do, we can expedite the wedding.”
I shook my head. “Oh no. That won't be necessary. I will not be marrying into a family that is trying to blackmail you.”
“Niall, without the marriage they will expose me.”
“I don't know why you believe that is my problem father. I don't know why you expect me to sympathize with you when you coerced a member of your staff into sleeping with you while you were married and then now that there are going to be consequences for your actions, you're not man enough to face them.”
He scowled at me. “You've never made me proud,” he said.
“Good. I never intended to.”
He left. Now that his secret was out and he was at the end of his rope, there was nothing more he could do. I wasn’t marrying Lisbeth and I felt nothing. I had no intention of falling on that sword for my father. If the news did get out about what he did to Lisbeth's mother, and I hoped that it did, he deserved every bit of public shame that came his way. It was morally repugnant to sleep with somebody who worked for you. For all I knew, he could have given her an ultimatum, submit to him or lose her job. Even if he didn't say it or make the threat verbally, it was definitely implied. I felt a shiver run over my skin. I couldn't believe my father was that man, but at the same time, I was glad that I was very little like him.
After taking a shower and eating, I remembered that I was making plans to leave the village. It didn't feel like the time to do that yet. Something very powerful was telling me to stay even though Eddy's words were still ringing in my head from last night. I decided to take a walk. It was a clear day and the fresh air would do me good as far as coming to a decision. Walking down the street I saw a familiar flash of red. It was a woman walking towards the shops with a little boy at her side. Riley and Eddy’s housekeeper, Prue. I waved hello to get her attention. We had only met once, but she seemed to recognize me.
“Is that you, Arden?” she asked.
“Just call me Niall. How are you this afternoon?”