“I will show you. Here.” She took his hand to draw it to her side.
As she pulled on his hand, a glamour tore. It frayed into oily rainbows, obscuring Vincent’s face for a moment. He jerked free, turning in his chair so his back was to her before the last edge unravelled back into the ether.
He had been holding a masking glamour in front of his face. Small wonder he had looked uncomfortable. It was devilishly difficult to walk with a glamour in place. Doing so required holding all of the threads in correct relation to each other, to oneself, and to the ether, and none of them could be tied off to conserve strength. Which raised the question of why.
“Show me.”
He let out his breath in a long sigh. “I am sorry. I thought you would worry unnecessarily if you did not hear the explanation first, so I wanted to assure you that I was well—and I am—before you saw this.” Vincent turned in his chair to face her.
His left eye was swollen nearly shut, and deep purple bruises surrounded it. More contusions mottled his cheek. The skin over his brow had torn and been stitched neatly back together. All of this had clearly transpired much earlier in the day, and no one had told her.
Internally, she again railed about being confined to her bed. “Did Mr. Pridmore do that?”
He snorted. “I have not seen him since his visit with the admiral. With luck, he has taken his wife and left the island. I think word has gone round that he is not to be trusted, so he is unlikely to find work. No … this was an accident with my father.”
If Jane were allowed out of bed, she would have been halfway to Lord Verbury already. That hideous man. “Hideous, cankered, ill-hearted, splenial spit-poison.”
Vincent looked up, eye widening, and Jane realised that she had spoken aloud and with some vehemence. “You see why I wanted to tell you first, before you saw the bruises?” He spread his hands. “The fault resides largely with me.”
“I fail to see how you can possibly bear any blame for being so misused.”
“I had not been to see him since Pridmore’s visit. I had been too angry. But he does not like being kept in the dark any more than you do.”
“I do not ever have the urge to hit you.”
“Be that as it may, I know that he nurtures a grudge, and I had given him several reasons recently. He complained that he had to hear of Pridmore’s visit from Frank and not from ‘his son.’ I pointed out that Frank was also his son, which started an argument about legacy. He again raised the desire that we should name the child after him, and I, foolishly, said ‘No.’”
“You have refused before.”
“I have used polite evasions. This time, I was blunt.”
Jane waited, but Vincent seemed little inclined to continue the story. He did continue to drive his nail into the side of his thumb. “How did a man confined to a wheeled chair do that to you?”
“I would rather not … very well. He seemed to let the matter drop, which is an approach that I really should have recognised. Then his lap blanket slipped to the floor.” Vincent’s jaw clenched, and, when he continued, his voice was flat and unaffected. “I bent to pick it up, and he struck me with his cane.”
“He hit you with his cane?”
“Not in the face. Across the back. The blow shocked me enough that he had time to land a second before I took it from him. Then he—he seemed to lose his mind to fury. I have never seen him so … but then, I have never stopped him before. He tried to get out of the chair. I was afraid he would do injury to himself, so I restrained him, which was when … this happened. His head.” He waved his hand at the bruises. “But, as I said, it was my own fault.”
“That is not your fault.”
“If I had not taken his cane, he would not have had cause to become so angry.”
“He hit you with it.”
“Yes, but I—I know what things anger him, and I did not shy from any of them.” Vincent stopped and spread his hands helplessly. Slight tremors ran through them. “At any rate, it was a good reminder.”
“Did you really need a reminder that your father is a vindictive fiend?”
“No, that I have—” Again, he stopped himself, this time shaking his head. “So. How is your book coming along?”
“Changing the subject would work better if you at least made an effort to tie the two topics together.”