Page 25 of Complete Me

This time I raised an eyebrow. “You’re sounding more British everyday, poppet.”

“God, I hope so. I’m the Queen of England,” she shot back. Her eyes followed me as I made another loop around the room. “Will you sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m making you nervous.” I laughed at the absurdity of that idea. “I’ve spent the last week going crazy wondering if you still love me.”

“It’s not a light switch, X. I can’t just turn it off.” She paused to glare at me before adding, “Even when I wish I could.”

I deserved it, but it stung all the same. I never wanted to stop loving Clara. I could no sooner give her up than I could cut out my own heart. I had driven her to this point, and I had to atone for that. I thought of Norris’s words of wisdom. I had to start at the beginning and hope that she would hear me through to the end. I cleared by throat and began. “Sometimes I think I keep secrets from you because I don’t want to admit that some things are true.”

“Do you hear how stupid that sounds?”

Trust my wife to not make this easy on me.

“I’ve been looking into my father’s death.” I had told her otherwise, but I’d never believed she was foolish enough to accept that. Judging from her non-reaction to this bit of news, I hadn’t managed to convince her. “I told myself I wasn’t lying or keeping secrets, but I was.”

A smile twitched at her lips. I imagined she was enjoying my admission. I didn’t often confess to being wrong. “Continue.”

“I felt it was my duty. To him. To our family. I suppose I have a bit of an obsessive personality.”

This time the smile broke fully. I could have fallen at her feet. Instead, I took the chair across from hers. “I have a brother.”

A weight lifted from me as soon as I said it, but it remained to be seen whether I’d simply handed my burden over to her.

“I’ve met him,” she said suspiciously. It was an understandable reaction. “Are you feeling well?”

“Not Edward,” I said quietly, silencing her clever retorts. “My father had another son. He hid it from us.”

“Who is he?” She shook her head as if rattling loose cobwebs. I knew exactly what she was feeling. It was one of the reasons I’d kept it from her in the first place.

“I don’t know. I asked Brexton to look into it.”

There were a million questions she could ask. Why did my father hide it? What would I do when I found him? Did he want to be found? Did he know about me? They were all the questions I asked myself when I found out. Instead Clara asked the one question that hadn’t occurred to me. “Does it matter?”

“Of course, it does.”

“Why?” she pressed. Elizabeth began to squirm in her arms and Clara released her to the ground. She crawled off, and I couldn’t help but note the vacancy in my wife’s arms. I didn’t dare try my luck though.

“He could be behind everything.”

Clara sighed. It was heavy sound as if she’d been carrying it for a long time. “I know the world hasn’t given you a lot of reason to have faith in people. But you have to stop expecting the worst.”

“I don’t expect the worst.” It was a ludicrous idea.

“You wouldn’t tell me about this because you didn’t think I could handle it. How am I doing?” she asked pointedly.

I didn’t want to admit that she had a point. Brex had made a similar observation.

“If,” she continued, “you wanted to find him because you were curious or because he’s your brother, I could understand that. But you don’t have to seek out conspiracies everywhere.”

“I nearly lost you to a conspiracy,” I reminded her. I would never take that chance again. There was good reason for me to be unsatisfied by the findings of the inquest into my father’s murder. It had revealed that whoever helped Daniel was still at-large, and he had no problem sacrificing his puppets to keep his identity unknown. I’d thought it would end with Hammond. His untimely death proved otherwise. “I can’t chance it.”

“Life is too short to chase sorrow.” Clara’s eyes pleaded with me. “Be here with us. With me.”

“I’m trying to,” I promised her.

“Why aren’t you coming to Scotland?” she asked in a small voice.

“I need to see this through. Maybe you’re right, and it doesn’t matter. Maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective, but I know I’m close.” She turned away from me, and I tried to see the situation through her eyes. “Clara, I am not choosing this over you.”