“I’m not sure it’s possible for Helene Cosima d’Tierrza to reflect badly on anyone. Did you know you revert to impeccable manners when you’re tired? That’s how I know you need to rest, when you don’t have the energy to be outrageous.”
She laughed, as he’d hoped she would, before inclining her head. “Thank you for the pep talk, I think.”
“Thanks for going on a date with me,” he said, and winked. “So tell me about your friends? If you refer to your family by their titles and haven’t gone out to dinner in over a decade?”
“No, you go first. Tell me about growing up in Sidra.”
He looked away, breaking their eye contact. “You don’t want to hear that story. It’s long and not very interesting. Your turn.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a little chuckle that sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “I’m only letting you get away with that. And I eat dinner with my best friends almost every day, thank you very much. When I have free time, I like to spend it alone.”
“Chatting with statues of your father?” he teased, not buying the image at all.
She snorted but conceded, “Chatting with statues of my father. There’s only one, you know.”
He shuddered theatrically. “That there is even one...”
She cringed. “You’re right. My mother and I always say we’ll have it removed.”
“What’s stopping you?” he asked, curious how a woman who could hate her father so much could keep such a substantial reminder of his presence around. Particularly when she had all the money and resources she could want.
She looked thoughtful for a long moment before answering. “I think it reminds us both of what we survived.”
Dark words to come from a daughter.
Drake wondered, if the child they would have together turned out to be a daughter, what she would say about him when she grew up. Nothing that Helene had to say about her own father, he vowed.
“I never thought I’d have to ask this, but why did you hate your father?” he asked.
Dominic d’Tierrza had been a hateful man, every new bit of information Drake unearthed about him that much more damning, and yet he still wondered at the kind of thing that made a daughter despise her father.
Helene smiled and Drake immediately recognized it for the clever and beautiful deflection it was.
Waving her hand airily, she said, “Pick any ten possible reasons off the list and it’d be enough, wouldn’t it?”
Leaning back in his chair, he took her in, the blue dress bringing out the color of her eyes, a wonderful fit for her willowy frame, and yet somehow hanging awkwardly on her. “But I think it’s more specific than that.”
Shaking her head, she looked out over the dark river and said, “Sadly, no. Just a lifetime of monstrosity the likes of which you unfortunately know.”
Again, he saw the deflection. By drawing the focus to his grievance with her father she hoped to refocus the conversation away from her own.
But he was more interested in what she was hiding.
“That I do,” he said gravely. “But perhaps mine is not the most egregious?” He spoke casually, as if they were considering the future of a sports team.
Something sharpened in her eye, the look dangerous if used as a weapon. She hedged. “The game of comparing egregiousness never goes anywhere. Suffice to say, there were many reasons to hate my father.”
“Agreed. And what was yours?”
She smiled, but if anything, the glint in her eye had sharpened further. “Like a dog with a bone. Is that where the name ‘Sea Wolf’ comes from?”
He shook his head. “No. Why did you hate your father, Helene?”
Snorting, she said, “Do you really want to know?”
He nodded, though he knew she wouldn’t tell him now.
“He murdered my uncle and tried to murder my cousin because he was in love with my aunt and wanted me to quit my job.” She kept her inflection the same, almost bored, as if none of it was important to her and, while he knew it wasn’t truly the reason she hated her father, it was true, and it hurt her.