KATEY HAD NODDED that she would stay, but she quickly wished she hadn’t. Anthony didn’t get right to the point of whatever he wanted to talk to her about. He didn’t even stay at the table. He marched over to the captain’s desk, James’s desk, since he captained The Maiden George himself, and poured himself a drink from a decanter of spirits there. He even drank it straight down—then paced the floor between the desk and the dining table.
His nervousness was palpable, causing hers to escalate dramatically. She was just about to shoot to her feet and rudely run out of the room with merely a yelled “Good night” when Anthony pinned her with his eyes. Such beautiful eyes he had, purest cobalt blue, exotically slanted just enough to be noticeable, and riveting. She didn’t move.
“Tell me about the man who raised you, Katey,” Anthony began.
She blinked. What an odd way to refer to her father. “My father?”
“Yes.”
Oh, good grief, he just wanted to hear her family history? “What would you like to know?”
“What sort of man was he?”
“Kind, generous, cheerful, oh, and very gossipy.” She chuckled. “Of course he had to be. It kept his customers amused.”
“Were you close to him?”
She thought about that for a moment, but had to admit, “Not really. He died when I was only ten, so I don’t have many memories of him that stand out in my mind. And he was rarely home. He spent every day in his shop. He ran it himself. It was a small shop in a very small village. And it was the only place in Gardener for the villagers to gather, so he kept it open late each day. If I wanted to spend time with him other than on Sundays, then I had to go to the shop. Half the year I was usually in bed by the time he got home.”
“So you barely knew him?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I knew him as well as any child that age knows their parents. I loved him, he loved me. He always had a smile, or a hug, for me. But I was much closer to my mother. I spent hours with her every day, either helping her in her garden, or helping her in the kitchen, or with the house chores we did together.”
“She worked—in the kitchen?”
It sounded as if he’d had to spit out those words, that they wouldn’t come out on their own. How odd. What did it matter where she worked? Oh, wait, he was a lord. To him, only servants worked in kitchens.
She chuckled with understanding. “No one had servants in Gardener, Sir Anthony. While my family could have easily afforded them, my mother wanted us to be like everyone else, and besides, she enjoyed her chores and I enjoyed doing them with her. It wasn’t as if we had anything else to do to greatly occupy our time. She didn’t give in and hire Grace until I was much older. But mother took over running the store after my father died, so her time was much more limited after that, and more of the chores came to me, now that I think of it.”
Anthony made a sound that could easily have been likened to pain. He also marched straight out of the cabin without a by-your-leave. And had his complexion gone white? He’d turned too fast for her to be sure. Katey was frowning when James rose, too, and quickly followed his brother.
But he glanced back at her and ordered, “Stay put,” then slammed the door shut behind him.
Katey humphed to herself. What the devil was that about? She didn’t budge, though, much as she wanted to. If anyone else had given her that order, she’d be marching off to her own cabin in high dudgeon at that very moment. But from that particular man, well, she stayed put. Even when something banged against the wall outside and her immediate impulse was to investigate, she stayed put.
* * *
Outside, James had Anthony pinned against the wall he’d just slammed him into. “Don’t even think about abandoning ship,” James snarled.
“I wasn’t jumping.”
“I’m talking about Katey in there and leaving her clueless. Have you flipped your bloody gourd, Tony? What the deuce got into you?”
“You heard her. Good God, she grew up in absolute drudgery and it’s my fault!”
“So you have flipped your gourd. It was Adeline’s choice to leave England. You didn’t put her on the ship that took her to America. And you certainly didn’t keep her there. She could have come home at any time.”
“But she never would have got on that ship in the first place if I hadn’t been dragging my feet about proposing, so bloody nervous that she wouldn’t give me the answer I wanted. If she had been more sure about me, she would have come to me and we would have married. Then she would have continued living in the style she was accustomed to, and Katey, God, Katey wouldn’t have been raised like a servant!”
“What are you suggesting? That no one except the upper crust can live happy lives? Don’t be such a bloody arse, Tony, and a snobbish one at that.”
“No,” Anthony growled back, “but we’re talking about my daughter. She shouldn’t have had to live like that. She should have been pampered just like Judy and—”
“Stop and think about that before my fist helps you,” James interrupted. “You do realize that had any of that played out differently, you never would have met and married Roslynn. Then you wouldn’t have two other daughters to be comparing this one to, would you? Judith and Jaime would never have been born, would they?”
Anthony dropped his head back against the wall with a sigh. “I might have overreacted.”
“Might?” James snorted.
“It’s just—why would she even want me for a father at this late date? She’s a young woman of means. There is nothing that I can give her that she can’t give herself.”
“Yes, there is. A family. It would take her an entire lifetime to produce a family the size of the one you’re going to hand her due to a quirk of fate.”