Which wouldn’t do, for he had a debt to repay.
She was the first to speak. “Peter? Dear God, is it you, Peter?”
His nostrils flared as he gave a shallow bow. “Lady Tesh.”
In a move he suspected was as foreign to her as dancing a jig in her stockinged feet, she slumped back against the settee, her embroidery falling to the floor in a colorful heap. “It is you,” she breathed, staring at him with wide brown eyes. Her gaze swept his face, disbelief and wonder and a strange relief flashing and tangling like threads in her eyes. Beside her a pile of cream-colored fur stirred, two small black eyes peering suspiciously at him.
Unnerved by her lengthy perusal—and by the strangely human glare the ridiculously small dog was giving him—Peter cleared his throat. “You may wonder why I’m here.”
At the sound of his voice, her spine snapped straighter, her confusion clearing. “Oh, but what you must think of me.” She motioned with one gnarled hand to the seat before her. “Please sit.”
He eyed the dainty piece of furniture with trepidation. He was taller than most, and his years of fighting and clawing his way up in life had lent a bulk to his frame that made the chair seem as if it were fashioned from mere twigs. But Lady Tesh was looking at him in expectation, apparently not at all concerned that her furniture might be reduced to kindling. Slowly, carefully, he lowered himself to the embroidered cushion. The chair gave a low moan of protest under his weight but held firm. He exhaled and turned to the woman.
She stared at him as if seeing a ghost. “I did not think to ever see you again. When I learned that you had gone to America and made your fortune there in real estate, I was so very pleased for you.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. She made it sound so simple, as if it had been the natural progression of events. When in reality it had been years of fear and determination and fighting for every cent. He supposed he and Quincy could have abandoned Captain Adams and his family when the Embargo Act had destroyed their livelihood. But he had owed them his very life. And he did not turn away from a debt to be paid.
Thus his reason for being here, in the last place he ever wished to be.
“You’ve made so much of yourself,” the viscountess continued. “As I always knew you would. I did try to write, once we located you. But my letters came back unopened, and I thought for certain you would never return.”
“I had always planned to return.”
“Had you?” Her gnarled fingers wove about themselves, an agitated tell. “I looked high and low for you after your mother’s death, tracked you as far as London. But you disappeared without a trace. I worried so, Peter.”
There was a faint note of rebuke in her voice. It dug at him, loosening the guilt he’d buried deep, bringing it to the surface again. Without her, his mother would have spent her last days in unimaginable pain. Instead she had been made as comfortable as possible. For that, Peter owed the woman before him much more than the paltry sum she had paid to ensure a dying woman’s peace.
“There was nothing for me here after she died,” he explained gruffly.
Lady Tesh’s eyes filled with a deep sadness. “You had me, Peter. I would have cared for you, had you let me.”
His heart lurched, letting him know it was not as dead as he had thought it. But no, he wouldn’t allow her to get under his skin. He had learned long ago how disposable family was. And that caring only led to misery and heartache.
Even so, it took considerable effort to keep his hard-earned defenses in place. “I did not come here to reminisce, or to think of what might have been. I came today because there is something I had to know.”
Her brows drew together, further deepening the lines of her face. “What might that be?”
“All those years ago, when I went to the Duke of Dane for help and he turned me away, why did you come find me?”
Understanding dawned, her expression softening. “You are my brother’s grandson. How could I not?”
He slashed a hand through the air. “That’s not what I meant. The duke, your nephew, my cousin, turned me from his home after I had come to him begging for help to save my mother’s life. He told me in no uncertain terms that if I were to approach another member of the family for money, he would have me arrested. Why, then, did you come find me, to help where he would not?”
Something flared in her eyes, frustration and anger and affection all coalescing. In a moment, it was gone and she sighed, her gaze turned inward to some haunting memory. “No matter what your grandfather and father did, you’re still family.”
Again that damnable word: family. His lip curled. “And so you did it out of some blood duty. How quaint.”
She surprised him by letting loose a sharp laugh. “Quaint? Now that is not a word often ascribed to me. Prickly, yes. Meddlesome, surely. But never something so mild as quaint. But is that truly all you wanted, to ask me a question that could have easily been answered via letter?” She narrowed her eyes. “I do believe there is another reason you’re on the Isle, Peter.”
Two reasons, actually. But she need not know that. “You’re right. There is another reason I’ve come to seek you out.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a bag of coins, gold sovereigns every one. It was a fortune, so much more than what she had paid for the morphine and the physician all those years ago. There was the faint sound of clinking metal as he held the sack out to her. Yet the relief he’d expected to feel didn’t come, only a hollow kind of sadness that the worth of his mother’s life had been reduced to this.
Her gaze transferred to the leather bag. “What are you about, Peter?”
“Take it,” he ordered. “It’s owed you.”
There was censure in her eyes. “Did you think I wanted payment for what I did for your poor mother?”
“I know it’s more than is owed,” he gritted out as his hand began to tremble. “But there is the matter of thirteen years’ interest, after all.”
A cloud of understanding fell over her. “And what will you do once I take it, Peter? Will you disappear again?”
“There is nothing to hold me here,” he growled, letting the bag drop to his lap before the shaking in his hand drew her notice.
“Isn’t there? I am your family—”
A harsh laugh broke free from his throat. “That means less than nothing to me, madam. I owe you for providing my mother with peace in her final days, but there is nothing more between us than that.”
She arched one thin white brow. “Very well.”
He held out the sack again. Her eyes did not leave his face, and her hands did not leave her dog.
“I never intended for you to repay me, Peter.”
Again he dropped the sack to his lap. Anger worked its way through him, into the very marrow of his bones, that she would refuse his attempt to close the door on this chapter of his life for good. It made his voice sharp when he said, “I never asked for your help.”
“No, you didn’t. Yet you asked for Dane’s.”
He had. God help him, he had. He’d put aside his pride, had thrown himself on his cousin’s mercy. For nothing had been more important than his mother.
And his begging had been thrown back in his face.