“I was nearby,” he insisted.
She shook her head. “That was almost worse. You spent years reminding me that you weren’t my father anymore. You offered no words of kindness or concern. No indication I was anything to you but the ward of the lady you worked for.”
“I could not risk being overheard. I wasn’t merely earning my keep, Gillian, I was a servant. Thetonis accepting of someprofessions, but not this one. The consequences of my situation and our connection being known would be catastrophic.”
In a quiet voice, she said, “I know. But I needed a father. I needed family. You told me, when you first accepted the job, the last time we had a conversation as father and daughter, that it would be a year or two at most. It was difficult, but I told myself in a year or two I would have my father back. Then I watched as you grew more and more comfortable, more and more pleased in the role you had taken on. And I felt my father slip further away. Eventually, I realized you didn’t intend to be my father again. Mr. Walker had entirely replaced him.”
His posture was still rigid, but there was a weariness to him in that moment that she wasn’t used to seeing. “I made a miscalculation, Gillian. All the servants at Houghton Manor knew me as Mr. Walker, as the butler. To then take on the role of your father again, to admit to our actual connection while you were still living here, would reveal everything to them. They are good people, but there are a lot of them. And they do like to talk. It is often said that there is nothing going on in the homes of the gentry that the servants don’t know about. We did manage to hide this. But the moment the servants know,everyonewould know.”
She hadn’t thought of it from quite that angle. “Why would that prevent you from ending your work as a servant on the timeframe you suggested originally?”
He sighed audibly. “I also misjudged financially. I’ve been trying to earn enough to purchase a home somewhere and save enough to live on. Though a butler’s pay is higher than most servants’, the income still is not substantial. Mrs. Brownlow suggested increasing mine, but I was already taking advantage of her generosity on your behalf. I could not ask more of her. And so I remained, telling myself that many years from now, if I am very fortunate, I will have saved enough.”
He wanted a home of his own. She couldn’t fault him for that, but who knew how long that would take? Was she expected to be an orphan for decades, perhaps the remainder of his life while he reached for something that might not be possible?
“Why not take a position somewhere else? If you lived away from here and worked away from here, then you could come visit once in a while, fully embracing your identity as Mr. Phelps and my father. The servants here would have no idea what you did elsewhere. The people you worked with wherever you did would have no reason to know of this other part of your life.”
“I did think about that. But in the end, I wanted to be here becauseyouwere here.” Under any other circumstances, it might’ve been a tender admission. Gillian, however, found it frustrating.
“But you being here means you have to be Mr. Walker and I don’t get to have a father. How could you choose that?”
“I couldn’t give you the life you wanted,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t bear the thought of missing that life entirely. I kept telling myself that I’d sort out some solution eventually, and while waiting on that, I would at least get to see you every day.”
She didn’t know what to say. In seven years, she had not once gotten the impression that her father cared for her at all. To hear he had chosen this life in this location and the consequences of it because he didn’t want to be separated from her was confusing—both frustrating and touching.
“You being here and seeing me every day might have comforted you,” she said, “but it hurt me more than I can even say. To see you every day that I have been here these past seven years and watch you pretend I was little more than a stranger . . . that was more painful than only seeing you sometimes but seeing youas my fathercould have ever been.”
The corners of his mouth pulled downward, not in a look of petulance but in an expression of defeat. “Do you want me to leave, resign my position?”
“What good would that do now? You could not come back to visit me as my father. I suspect you have not saved enough funds to live on. Finding work would be nearly impossible. If you took on work as a servant somewhere else, I still couldn’t come visit you.” She felt tired to her very bones. “This is an impossible situation seven years in the making.”
“I thought I was doing the best thing for us, Gillian. I was so certain I’d found a way of securing a future for us. But I got everything wrong.”
She had no words of comfort for herself or him. A feeling of defeat was washing over her in punishing waves. “I told Scott of your actual identity.”
He looked at her, alarm written in every line of his weary face.
“He won’t say anything. And he likely won’t be able to visit for years yet. His uncle left him a horrendous mess of an inheritance. I find myself waiting on the promise of yet another gentleman. The difference being that this time, we are kept apart by the actions of others. His uncle destroyed his inheritance, and the secret I’ve been charged with carrying on your behalf has created a barrier we don’t know how to surmount.”
Hesitantly, her father said, “Thereisan approach that I think would work.”
Artemis had said her father might know something she hadn’t thought of. “What is it?”
“Society assumes you are an orphan. You think of yourself that way. When the time comes and you and Mr. Sarvol are able to build a life together—and I have every faith that will happen—you can continue on as an orphan. If I continue to be Mr. Walker, your one-time guardian’s butler and nothing else, there would be no reason for Society to know about the familyconnection that would destroy the new life you two would be building together.”
She shook her head. “I know what it is to live without my father, and I don’t want to do that any longer. I can’t.”
“I do believe this is the choice you have to make, Gillian. You want to build a future with Mr. Sarvol, to build a family and home with him, to still be part of the lives of your friends who have, for all intents and purposes, become family to you. To do that, you need to let go of the family you once had.”
She blinked back hot, stinging tears. “That’s not a choice I want to make.”
“You shouldn’t have to. But you can’t have both. I created this problem, and I’m sorry that you’ve had to suffer so long because of it. I wish I could say that you could wait until Mr. Sarvol’s estate is flourishing to make your final decision. But I don’t think you can. You have to begin now as you mean to go on and lay a foundation strong enough to build that life on.”
“If I do,” she said, “could we still have moments like this sometimes in which you can be something other than Mr. Walker, even for just a moment, just the two of us?”
“It would be far too risky. I’ve known that from the beginning. I simply didn’t fully understand the consequences.” He looked at her for the first time since they’d begun this conversation. Gillian saw real regret in his eyes. “I know it’s not much comfort, but I have never stopped thinking of you as my daughter, and I’ve never stopped loving you as your father.”
They walked beside each other silently, making their way back in the direction of the house. Artemis had been right—horribly, painfully right. Father understood the situation even better than Gillian had. From that understanding had come this terrible realization: she had to choose between a future that included the Huntresses, the friendships she had made at Brier Hill, and herbeloved Scott or a life where her father could be her father again. She could not have both.