Page 71 of Hunted By the Guardian
Jonathan couldn’t even answer that. The idea that he would have abandoned a child…it was beyond foolishness. He would never have made that decision. Even though he had never wanted a child before knowing Noah…no, it wasn’t something he ever could have done. It would have been far too difficult. And it pleased him to realize that.
In spite of how ill-prepared I was, I can’t deny that I am a good father to that boy. Certainly better than any parent he’s ever had.
He wondered whether Violet might come to see the same thing.
And for that matter, he wondered why he so badly wanted her to.
CHAPTER 37
There was a lull. A pause in the conversation, during which the intensity seemed to diminish. And in that time, Violet couldn’t help thinking that perhaps this would all just resolve in some simple, easy way. Maybe things would work themselves out in a way she hadn’t foreseen. Someone would come up with the perfect thing to say—the thing that would make Laura’s crimes forgivable, the thing that would allow her to forget all the ways her father had wronged her. Maybe it would happen in that way, and they would all move on.
They made their way into the sitting room, as if this were nothing more than an ordinary social call. It was odd to take those seats, knowing the nature of the conversation they were currently in the middle of. It was pretending, and Violet didn’t like it. She wanted them to keep yelling at one another, to keep pointing out all the many things that everyone had done wrong.
Laura took her usual chair beside the fire—Violet had forgotten that Laura liked that chair. It had been her own favorite seat in the room once upon a time, but the thought that anyone cared about that now was frankly laughable. She moved to the chaise, which was too shallow and uncomfortable to sit on. She would do her best to make herself at ease here for the remainder of the conversation.
Jonathan, meanwhile, did not sit. He stood beside the fireplace, arms crossed, looking around the room from one person to the next as if he was waiting for something.
But it was Violet’s father who spoke first. “I take it, Your Grace, that you hope to bring Laura back with you?”
Jonathan shook his head brusquely. “I don’t care what she does,” he said. “But that, as it happens, is the one thing I will not have. She is going nowhere with me.”
“You say she’s the mother of this boy you have in your keeping, and yet…you don’t want to bring her back?” Laura’s father asked. “I assumed you would want her to care for the child.”
“I wouldn’t trust her to care for a goldfish,” Jonathan said. “You hear the way she speaks about it. As if she is proud of what she’s done. If I were to entrust my feelings to a goldfish, I’m sure they would be ignored. And that’s the same way I feel about this boy. I won’t put him in the hands of someone I have every reason to believe will let him down.”
“Besides,” Laura spoke up, “you and I are to be married, Andrew.” There was a simpering tone in her voice. “You may not be happy with the choice I made, but you must at least understand my reason for making it. I’m sure you know that there was no hope of a bond between you and me, no hope of a future, if I had a little boy on my hip. You must admit that we wouldn’t have gotten this far, if I hadn’t set him aside.”
“No,” Laura’s father agreed. “Perhaps you’re right. Maybe we wouldn’t have.”
Violet’s stomach dropped slightly. Would it be that easy for Laura? Would he admit to the fact that he wouldn’t be here with her if she hadn’t gotten rid of Noah? If he did, Laura would insist for the rest of her life that she had done the right thing. There would be no convincing her, ever, that abandoning Noah had been wrong—because she would have been rewarded for it.
I can’t stand it. I can’t stay here and watch these two live happily ever after, she realized. They had both paid too high a price for the happiness they’d found, and she couldn’t stand it. That her father might not let her stay here had been a matter of concern, but the question suddenly turned for Violet. She couldn’t bear to stay here—she would have to leave voluntarily. Because how would she bring herself to look across the breakfast table every morning into the eyes of the person who had abandoned Noah?
But her father wasn’t done speaking. He cleared his throat and addressed Laura. “It seems to me,” he said slowly, “that you secured our engagement under false pretenses.”
“Andrew, you’ve just finished agreeing that I did what I had to do,” Laura protested, sitting upright. She looked as though she was frightened of being attacked, hyper alert like a prey animal that knows it’s being stalked, and Violet thought, she thinks she’s about to lose everything.
Was she? Was that where this was going? She watched her father. She had never seen him look quite this dark and angry before. When he expressed anger toward her, it was the way he might have been angry at an insect for being in the house when that wasn’t where insects belonged. This was different. This was a brutal, more personal anger. He had been wronged. That was what he was reacting to.
“You didn’t do what you had to do at all,” Violet’s father said. “You had a child. What you had to do was to care for that child. It was that simple. And you failed to do that. You failed even to make the attempt. Frankly, I’m shocked by it.”
“And I’m shocked that you care,” Laura said, her tone growing sharper. She sat forward. “This was what you always said to me, Andrew. You told me I was beautiful, that there was no other woman in the world like me, but that I would have to leave my past behind me for us to have a future. You were talking about my time on the stage, but I understood the weight of what you told me. You didn’t want me to shame you with the life I’d had before you and I met one another. I did things to survive that you didn’t want to be a part of our story. And you might act noble about it now, but I imagine that if you had known about my son, you would have made exactly the same choice for the two of us. You would have chosen to leave him behind so that we could start anew. It’s that simple.”
Violet’s father was shaking his head. “It’s not simple at all,” he said. “I know that’s the man you believe I am. Sometimes that’s the man I believe I am. But in my heart, I can say that I know differently. I am better than the picture you are painting of me. I’m not a great man, I know that. Maybe I’m not even a very good one. But my daughter is still in this house, despite all the pressure you have placed upon me to turn her out, because I won’t abandon a child of mine to an uncertain fate. I don’t know what would happen to her if I put her out of the house, and I will never do it. As her father, I owe her better.”
Violet stared at her father. This was the first time he had spoken of owing her anything at all, and his tone was not even resentful. It sounded almost as if he was proud of the fact that he had provided for her. Could that be true?
Jonathan shifted uneasily by the wall. She had the feeling he didn’t like the way this conversation was going.
Violet wasn’t sure she liked it either. The way he talked about himself was as if he saw himself as a good father. It was as if he was saying there was a level of quality to his relationship with Violet that had been absent in Laura’s relationship with Noah. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to give him credit for that.
Violet’s father continued. “I can’t be married to someone as irresponsible as you have shown yourself to be, Laura,” he said. “I can’t be married to someone who has so little care for the things that ought to matter to her in life. And I won’t. I’m not going to marry you. I’m not going to see this through now that I know who you really are. You’re going to have to find something else to do with yourself. Return to your life on the stage, if you’d like.”
She rose to her feet, glaring at him. “Then there was never any chance for us,” she said darkly. “I won’t sit here and listen to you say that you would have married me if I had kept the boy. I don’t believe you would.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “Maybe you’re right, and there was never a chance.”
Violet stared at her father in disbelief. “You aren’t even going to give her a real answer?”
