"I suppose I will enjoy the time with my aunt. I like Lady Boyle as well, but I'm not particularly interested in gowns and fripperies and I am not at all interested in being presented to the ton."
"You heard your aunt. It's important to her."
"She wants me to take my rightful place in Society, but that won't work."
"Why not?"
"Because I haven't been raised to it, for one thing. The girl I might have been does not exist in the woman I am."
"You do not have to be anything different than you are to charm Society. Look how well you have charmed me."
She did not smile as he had expected.
Instead, her face took on a very serious expression. "I have not charmed you. I seduced you. There's a difference."
Following upon his earlier thoughts, her comment caused no small reaction in him. His body tightened while his mind grappled with the problem of a willful female who actually believed she had seduced him. It wouldn't be a problem if she didn't sound so chagrined by the fact. "You didn't seduce me."
"Of course I did. You did not want to make love to me, but I begged you."
The last place he wanted to engage in a discussion of this nature was sitting in an open curricle, his hands firmly engaged with the ribbons. "Perhaps we could discuss that afternoon another time."
She tapped the parasol his aunt had insisted she bring against her boot. She had argued that England didn't have enough sun for a woman to have to worry about her complexion. Understandably, the argument had gone nowhere with his aunt.
"We don't need to discuss it at all. I was merely pointing out that I didn't charm you per se and that I'm unlikely to charm the ton."
"Nevertheless, you will allow my aunt and Lady Upworth to present you."
"I don't want to." She sounded like a small child defying her parent.
But Thea was a mature and intelligent woman. There had to be more to this than her concern for Merewether or her fear of not fitting in with society. From what he could tell, Thea wasn't truly afraid of anything. "Why?"
She fidgeted with her parasol handle. "I don't want to meet my father. I don't want to claim him, but I will not spend my time in England lying to protect him either."
"Don't you think it may be time to meet him? To make your peace with him?"
"How can you ask that after what he did to my mother? To me?"
The outrage in her voice washed over him and he hesitated to argue the point further, but his wife would have to have her place in Society. It would be important to his mother and grandfather, and therefore to him.
"Well, didn't your mother do something similar? After all, she took you from your father and never allowed him the pleasure of seeing his daughter grow into womanhood. Perhaps you will find that he is not such a monster after all."
It wasn't that he thought her father justified in his actions, but perhaps the man was not as horrible as Thea's mother had painted him.
She gasped. "You are defending him. I thought you understood. You said yourself he lacked integrity."
"People are imperfect, Thea. Your father has his flaws, but that doesn't mean he does not love you."
And if the man didn't love his daughter, Drake would make sure they spent little or no time in one another's company. He wanted her to be happy. He wasn't convinced that her insistence on never meeting or acknowledging her father was the cou
rse that would bring her the most joy.
"What about your father? Don't you think him settling money on you when you reached your majority was his way of showing his love?"
It was not the same thing at all. His father had not wanted him, had never acknowledged his existence. Thea knew her father wanted her, at least as a child, even if he had no longer wanted her mother.
"You don't know what you are talking about."
"That is convenient." She snapped her parasol open and used it like a shield between them. She spoke from the other side of the umbrella membrane. "When you wish to harangue me about my family, you are omniscient, but when I point out a fairly obvious conclusion, I am completely ignorant. I thought you were different from those gentlemen who believe a woman cannot have a brain in her head."