Page 21 of Buon Natale, My Wicked Rogue (Wicked Widows’ League #18)

A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she had to lean back against the frame of the window seat.

The shock of his answer had her mind spinning.

Her hand, like the rest of her body, had gone limp, and he took her wineglass.

Then she looked out the window, leaning forward.

The man seemed so nondescript. “How can you be so sure?”

“I know him well, Angela. He was once my superior at the Home Office before illness forced him to retire to the country.”

“Oh,” she said, absorbing this new and startling information as she squinted harder to examine this gentleman that Evan said was her father.

But the coachman had placed a scarf on the lower half of the duke’s face.

Her heart pounded rapidly, and that lightheadedness increased.

The servants continued to fuss with the blankets, and then the gentleman waved his hands to stop them before yanking the scarf off his face.

He had a hard, rugged appearance to his face and jaw. Sunken cheeks made his cheekbones appear sharp. “He looks quite stern.”

“He is an exacting man but fair, and he can be kind at times.” Evan was still holding her hand.

A heaviness entered her heart. She had never known her father. Evan, who had been nothing to this man but an underling at the Home Office, had known him well. But she, his own flesh and blood, had never been allowed to even meet him, much less to know him.

“Why do you think he’s come here? Why now?” she asked, panic welling inside of her.

“Perhaps he’s heard of our wedding.” Evan ran his hand through his already mussed hair with his eyes closed, then was quiet for a moment.

He opened his eyes. “Yes, that must be it. Radstock told him.” But he still looked troubled.

“What is it, Evan? What are you thinking?”

“Radstock wouldn’t know you are Amesbury’s daughter. Unless Mr. Abney told him, which he might have, at least I think.”

She hugged herself. “Your tone makes me uncomfortable. There’s more to this, isn’t there? Something you haven’t told me?”

“Yes, there is something.” The dread in his voice made her mouth go dry.

“Oh, Evan, what is it now? You didn’t tell me that I was under suspicion of being a spy. You didn’t own up to having deceived me for so long. You didn’t even tell me that you knew my father well and had worked for him at the Home Office. Now you say there is more?”

“Yes, my love, I am sorry that deceived you and that there were also other details that I either thought were insignificant, or I wanted to shield you from. “

“Shield me from?” Her heart pounded hard at his words.

“Your father’s family were the ones who asked the Home Office to investigate you as a potential spy.

They appeared to have done so while he was sick and incapacitated.

I have strong reasons to suspect that they paid Mr. Abney to have you investigated and thus to intimidate you into returning to Boston.

They may have even hired the man who shot me. ”

The edges of her vision grew dim, a sort of reddish-black misty dimness.

Her head felt lighter than air, and she sagged into the seat.

She was going to faint. How utterly ridiculous.

She wasn’t like this normally. But she was weak and sick all the time now.

Hitting her head might explain the lightheadedness.

Natalia was awake now and came padding over to her and put her head on Angela’s stocking-clad foot, and gazed up at her with liquid, soft eyes. “Angela!”

The sharpness of his voice made her flinch. “What?” she asked dumbly, with her hand on her head.

“I asked you if you were all right, and you didn’t answer me. You just sat there with this terrible dazed look in your eyes. Are you well?”

“I am fairly well, I think.” No, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want to alarm him further.

“Did you understand what I told you about the danger your father’s family poses to you?”

“Yes,” she said. She understood it intellectually, but she wasn’t so sure she could accept it emotionally.

“Your father might be here because of this family trouble.” Evan looked disturbed at this possibility.

She frowned. “How can my father be here? Should he be here? I was told he was too ill to leave his bed. Too ill to have a visitor, even his own daughter?” She shook her head. “How can he be here?”

“I don’t know love. The only way to find out is to meet with him.”

Evan rubbed his cheeks again, then turned wide eyes to hers. “I am not shaved or dressed to meet him as my former superior. However, he’s not just your father now; he is my father-in-law.” He exaggerated the width of his eyes.

“I am not dressed for a grand visitor either.” She pointed to herself, dressed as she was in a plain pale green day dress. She couldn’t stand wearing her nightgown all day, even being in bed. “Much less meeting my own father for the first time.”

“You are as beautiful as ever, my love. And you don’t obsess about such matters as I do, remember?

She laughed despite the warring feelings of fear and excitement within her.

And she was grateful for his attempt to use humor to distract her.

She’d just realized that he was not being incredibly self-centered at this moment but was trying his best to help her.

She stood, though she felt wobbly once on her feet.

“Oh well,” he said, coming closer and linking his arm with hers. “If he wanted a grand ceremony, he ought to have sent word ahead that he was coming here. And in any case, it looks as though the old boy is in his nightclothes, too.”

She smiled at his assessment of the situation and allowed their arms to link.

“Shall we go face him together?”

“Yes,” she said, though inside part of her wanted to run and hide, never to know if this meeting would disappoint her or not.

To keep the mystery of who her father was as a person.

It seemed safer than facing all the questions she’d ever asked herself, such as What had been wrong with her that her father had not wanted her?

Had not missed knowing her. Had not loved her.

“Are you all right?” Evan asked.

“I think I am,” she said with a shaky laugh.

“You’re very pale.”

“I am just tired.” What an answer. They had been resting all day.

His gaze searched hers. “Are you ready for this?”

“As ready as a person can be in such a situation.”

He smoothed her hair back and looked deeply into her eyes.

“You don’t have to meet with him now. Damn the old imperious tyrant.

This is so like him. Sometimes, he just doesn’t think about how his actions will affect others.

But you do not have to allow him to rush you into anything. I can go and speak with him.”

“No, I want to meet him. I don’t know the state of his health. I don’t even know if he really should be here. This could be my last opportunity to meet him ever.”

“I am so sorry, Angela, but I did not know that my wife kept you from seeing me,” her father said as his brows, a fading shade of reddish blond, drew together. Sadness and regret showed clearly in his piercingly gray eyes.

Angela stared at her father, with a huge growing lump in her throat. Up close, he seemed so frail. She had always imagined him as a tall, elegant gentleman. But he was no less imposing than she had pictured. Maybe more so with his piercing gaze. When not ill, he must be absolutely formidable.

Earlier, they had not simply gone downstairs and greeted her father in the drawing room as they had thought they would. Instead, Lady Wyndam stopped them at the head of the stairs and ordered them back to their bed.

Lady Wyndam had greeted the Duke of Amesbury and had seen him sent up to a guest chamber and given him hot tea and chicken stew and allowed him to rest. Angela was so grateful for Lady Wyndam’s wisdom and guidance.

There was much she could learn from the older woman in the ways of graciousness and caring for others, body and soul.

And when she thought of all the kindness she’d been shown by the lady, she knew it was a debt she’d spend years repaying.

In the evening, her father called for them all to come to his rooms.

“I had marked the days on my calendar since my last letter from you when you told me you were leaving Boston for England. And I knew you should have been here by then. I worried that some mishap might have befallen you. My wife and son assured me that they were trying to find out where you were. Finally, my wife told me that you’d sent a letter saying that you had second thoughts and had not boarded the ship but stayed in America.

” His gray gaze seemed troubled yet sincere.

She gasped and placed her hand to her throat.

“I was there, in your house. They told me that you were too ill to have a visitor. When I said that I was not just any visitor but your own daughter, they had the doctor speak with me. He said that the strain of meeting me for the first time would cause you to ...” She caught herself and swallowed several times against a lump in her throat, then continued, “He said it would be too much for you.”

She couldn’t help but stare at her father and search his face for something familiar.

Something that reminded her of herself. Yet, she saw nothing except a stranger who bore a hardness to his features that was frankly intimidating.

Maybe he had given her the reddish highlights in her dark brown hair, but she couldn’t see anything else.

Her father closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, my child. I did not know.”

“I had come so far and then to be rebuked by your family. My spirit was crushed. I didn’t know what to do.

I reached out to my husband’s cousin, only to find that his wife was a widow like me.

And she welcomed me to come and stay with her and her family.

” And she’d thought that she had made a dear friend.

Now that friendship was dead, killed by Susan’s betrayal.

Was she destined to find betrayal each time she gambled on friendship or love? No, she had Evan now.

“Your mother wrote to me all those years ago and told me that you had run away to America to marry some wet-behind-the-ears boy, as she had called him,” her father said.

“She said that you had eschewed the dowry I had bestowed upon you, and you had taken such a chance on this unknown boy and his family.” His voice broke.

“I admired your daring spirit. Not many have the courage to gamble on love like you did.”

She skipped a breath. Her father was proud of her. Really? She had never expected to hear anything like this from him, especially not about having rejected his generous dowry. But he gazed at her with respect. Warmth blossomed in her chest and radiated outwards through her whole being.

Her father was proud of her. He respected her.

She turned to Evan. He was gazing at her, his eyes soft and adoring.

“She has a fine heart and a daring spirit, indeed,” he said.

“Now you are a countess, and someday you will be a duchess,” her father said. “And I will have the chance to rectify the mistakes of my youth, and we can come to know each other if you desire that too.”

“I do, Father.” She was not yet ready to call him Papa. But maybe someday she would.

“I am sorry, Angela,” her father said. “So very sorry that I had thought it best to allow your mother sole custody of you. I felt it was for your good that you should live in either her world or mine. And she begged me that you, being a girl, needed a mother. And I knew that life could be harder for a girl who was born out of wedlock. The way our world is constructed, one cannot just educate an illegitimate daughter and give her seed money to build a livelihood and a life. But look at what you did without any help from my title or my money. You became a woman of wealth and power in America.”

That power had died the day that her father-in-law had died. She learned how fast a woman could be pushed out of a home and life that she had worked to build.

Her father cleared his throat and continued, “Sometimes I think with my head when I ought to think more with my heart, as you have so often done. Maybe you can teach me how to do that.” He reached out his hand.

“Will you teach me, Angela? I am so old now. I have not always made the best decisions, and now I regret so many things. Maybe you, of all people, can redeem me.”

Moved by his words, Angela went to him and took his hand.

“We can teach each other many new things. We can learn how to relate to each other. We can build a new relationship together.” She smiled at him, though his image had grown a little blurry.

“It’s exciting to look forward to knowing you, Father. ”

He squeezed her hand. “Yes, I agree. It is something exciting to look forward to. I am glad that I came here, and I am grateful that I am able to say, ‘Buon Natale , my daughter.’”

“ Buon Natale, Father. I am grateful to be able to say that to you as well.”