Vander cocked his head. “But you don’t mind putting yourself in deep?”
Ingrid looked away and opened the front door. Of course she wanted to protect Gabby: she was only sixteen, and she was dangerously eager to prove herself.
The moment Ingrid stepped into the small foyer, a familiar voice boomed from the sitting room. She went still, one of her gloves peeled halfway off. Vander had come in as well, and he passed her now, craning his neck to see inside the room. The peacock-blue drapes had been only partly closed.
“How could you?” the voice boomed again. It struck Ingrid and rattled her to her bones. She must have given a gasp, because Vander whipped his head toward her.
He was mouthing Who? when she raced past him and threw open the drapes, one glove on, one off.
The sitting room fell quiet as all heads swiveled to look at her. Her mother, Lady Charlotte Brickton, sat pale-faced on the sofa closest to the hearth. Gabby stood at the half-shuttered windows, her eyes red rimmed. And between them, standing in the center of the sitting room, his dark navy pinstriped suit perfectly pressed and starched, was Lord Philip Northcross Waverly III, Earl of Brickton.
Otherwise known as Father.
“Papa?” Ingrid said, stepping into the room. The surprised grin hadn’t yet formed fully on her lips when Lord Brickton stabbed a rigid finger at her.
“You!” he bellowed. Ingrid noticed his crimson cheeks, the pronounced vein down the center of his forehead. “You wrote that she had been injured, not that half of her face had been torn off!”
Ingrid froze, holding the ridiculous half-formed grin. Her father was shouting at her. She hadn’t seen him in nearly three months. Now here he was, a surprise arrival, and he was shouting at her. Ingrid felt as if she’d just tripped over something and gone sprawling face-first.
“I—” she started, quickly meeting Gabby’s wide eyes. She’d been crying.
“Where is your brother?” her father demanded.
Her mother was on the edge of the sofa cushion, her lips pursed as if in indecision: intercede, or let her husband have it out?
Their father was supposed to have been on his way to Paris when the hellhound attack had happened, when Ingrid and Grayson had been taken into the Underneath. But a few days later a telegram had arrived, announcing that an issue had arisen in the House of Lords. Their father would need to stay in London indefinitely. Ingrid’s letter to him had been brief, and yes, she’d played down the gravity of Gabby’s wounds, but only because she hadn’t wanted to worry him. And perhaps, if she was honest, Ingrid hadn’t been ready to have her father come to Paris just yet. He would be an outsider to the world she, Gabby, and Grayson had become a part of. How could they explain any of it to him?
“I believe your son was to meet with an architect this morning,” Vander said, entering the sitting room from behind Ingrid. “For abbey repairs.”
Lord Brickton’s scowl deepened. “And you are?”
“Vander Burke, my lord,” he answered, and Ingrid was impressed at just how unruffled he sounded. This was not an ideal first meeting. “I’m a friend of your—”
“Mr. Burke, this is a family affair. If you don’t mind.”
Ingrid held her breath. She had never witnessed her father being so rude before. Lady Brickton flushed violently, and Gabby’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. Vander, however, bowed deeply.
“Of course,” he said. He straightened and took Ingrid’s hand. He pressed his lips to the leather. “I’ll call on you soon.”
He had made a point to take her gloved hand, not the bared one. Pressing his lips to her skin in front of her father would have been scandalously wrong.
Vander was already trying to gain her father’s favor, she realized. Though at the moment, she couldn’t understand why. Her father was being an absolute beast.
“You’re protecting him,” he said as soon as the front door had closed behind Vander.
Ingrid turned back to her father. “Protecting whom?”
Brickton swiped an arm out. “Your brother! Don’t lie to me, Ingrid. You didn’t relate the severity of your sister’s injuries because it was he who caused them!”
They all stared at him, momentarily shocked silent. Gabby recovered first.
“Grayson caused nothing!”
“He did this to you—don’t lie to protect him. He doesn’t deserve it,” their father quickly retorted.
Gabby and Ingrid shook their heads, their eyes meeting quickly. What was their father saying?
“He would never,” Ingrid said. What would make their father even suggest something so awful?
“Philip, it was that crazed man,” their mother said, finding her voice at last. “Ingrid wrote you. She told you about Nora and the other girls he kidnapped and killed. Gabriella was lucky. She got away—”