He knew I spoke truth, which was why his lips tightened and his nod again was curt.
“Can I ask you something?” I requested.
“Anything, love,” he answered.
“What did you mean when you told Mum she dropped all pretense yesterday?”
With both of his, he gave my hands a squeeze, let me go and sat back.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this as a preamble.
“I sense there’s no love lost for either of us with your mother, which upsets me in your case, but nevertheless, it’s true.”
I stretched out my lips.
He watched and his twitched.
“Even so,” he continued, “it makes me uncomfortable to speak ill of her directly to you. However, I very much understand why you’d wish to understand.”
It was my turn to nod.
And that was when Dad told me the story.
A story I’d always wanted to know and buried that desire, but that wasn’t the reason why I never asked.
“Your grandfather, your mother’s father, who we were all very fortunate lived an ocean away so that he could not interfere with our lives very much before he passed…” Dad paused and assured, “I’m not being unkind. He was truly a callous, autocratic man, and there would come a time when I would realize I should have paid much closer attention to him.”
This preamble was even worse.
Dad continued sharing.
“However, he was also both a very modern man and a very old-fashioned one. He understood that American money was what it was. Money. That bloodlines need to be diversified. That the world was getting smaller and smaller. As such, he decided who your mother would marry, and that would be me. She was given her directive, and she set her sights. She was immensely beautiful, had wonderful manners, and although I’d traveled quite a bit, and an English rose isn’t exactly mysterious, she seemed that to me. I was hoodwinked. However, I wouldn’t know this until she was carrying Blake. It wouldn’t do for me to discover it before the stake was thoroughly claimed. Although the woman I married was well-traveled, cultured, stylish, all the things she still is today, she was also affectionate and adventurous. She was a good listener, or so I thought. She had a sense of humor.”
He sighed.
I waited, entirely unable to try such things as affectionate, a good listener, and having a sense of humor on my mother.
None of them fit.
He carried on.
“It was all a ruse. She was as she is now. Cold. And back then, calculating. She did her duty to her family. She carried on the line. And then, frankly, she wanted nothing to do with any of us. Sadly, I was impossibly in love with her by this time and felt in my heart she couldn’t be so thoroughly the woman I married without that woman being somewhere in her. I thought marriage counseling would help, she flatly refused. I suggested therapy to her, she laughed at the thought. I worried something horrible had happened to her that she hadn’t shared, like she’d been assaulted, and that was why her personality changed so completely. But it eventually proved that fortunately, that hadn’t happened, but the rest would be no help. She is who she is. There will be another Marchioness of Norton, and through Blake, or you, the title will sit directly in the bloodline. Her duty was done, and her life was her own.”
“So in the end, for you, all the fighting was because you loved her,” I guessed.
Another nod from Dad, but he said, “Though, not only. My pride was stung. I lost my wife, but in truth, I never had her to begin with. I’d been played. I fancy myself an intelligent man, Alexandra. That was a blow to my ego that was difficult to sustain.” He leaned toward me. “But I should have let it go long ago. Not just for myself, but for you girls.” He tipped his head to the side and his voice was gentler when he asked, “Do you suffer?”
I knew what he was asking.
“Not really,” I replied.
“A girl needs her mother.”
“Dad, I found coping mechanisms ages ago. And I had Grandmother Brooke.” I smiled at him. “I had a father who made it so he could work close to where I escaped, and I figure somehow, that penetrated for me. I made my own life, and I love my life.”
I leaned deeper into him and curled the fingers of both hands on his forearm on the arm of the chair.
Then I finished, “I’m happy.”
“Good,” he whispered.
“Do you have a sense why she fights with you?” I asked.
Unlike the rest of our conversation, he didn’t readily answer.
“Dad?”
“As I said, I don’t like to speak ill of her directly at you.”
My tone was lower when I prompted, “Dad.”
His chest expanded with the heave of this sigh.
Then he said, “It pains me. I’ve considered it quite a bit, especially recently, dealing with your mother and your sister and this wedding. And yesterday, for reasons I’m sure you understand, thoughts of it consumed me. My mind tried other avenues, but I was always directed back to the fact that the truth of it is, your mother is not a nice woman. She is wholly selfish. She is wholly surface. And she isn’t very intelligent. How I was deceived by her for so long I’m afraid has quite a bit to do with my manhood and ego.”
I started chuckling.
He smiled at me.
But he finished, “And my greatest worry is that your sister is quite like her.”
“Yeah,” I agreed and scrunched my nose.
He in turn smiled at me giving him that look, before he chided, “Though, they will always be your mother and sister.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And I will warn you now that she will wish to interfere in whatever festivities you and Rix are thinking about for your wedding.”
Oh no.
I hadn’t thought of that.
“This current affair went well because Blake enjoyed the attention, and Helena enjoyed spending my money. However, we’ll both need to firmly put our foot down so you’ll have what you want.”
“Rix will put his foot down too,” I reminded him.
“That might actually work.”
That was when I started laughing.
When I was getting control of it, I saw Dad was doing it with me.
Really, truly…
That felt so good.
“And that doesn’t even count Mags drawing the line,” I shared.
“Mags?”
“Mags, Rix’s mom. His dad is named Garrison. He’s called Gare.”
“Ah.”
From there, we talked.
We kept doing it even though, eventually, Dad took my hand and pulled me up from my chair.
We continued to do it as he walked me to the door of Rix and my room.
We only stopped doing it when he kissed my cheek and said, “We’ll ride together to the rehearsal, yes?”
“Yes, Dad.”
He pressed his four fingers flat on my cheek in a gesture of affection he’d never made with me before.
And that didn’t feel good.
It felt beautiful.
Then he said, “Enjoy your day, my darling,” and walked away.
I walked into a room that had a boyfriend that was unofficially a fiancé in it who had his hair still wet from his shower and was wearing a sweater over a T-shirt and faded jeans.
Oh, and his eyes were sharp on me, and his bearing was almost primal. Like, if he saw I’d sustained a single wound from my conversation with Dad, he was going to chase him down and tackle him.