SHE KNEW.
Jonas could tell from the way she no longer met his eyes, the way she wouldn’t take his arm this afternoon. He could tell by the way she scarcely answered him when he spoke to her on the way to their final destination. And he could most particularly tell because when he guided her into the house far down Fosse Street, when he brought her close to him and led her through the labyrinth of rubbish that made up the front room, she drew away from him as soon as they reached the hob in back.
“You should go on ahead of me,” he said.
“But—”
“He’s expecting you,” Jonas told her. “I told him the other night that you would be here, and you can rest assured that he was delighted by the prospect of a visit from a pretty girl. He wouldn’t hurt you, even if he could.”
He looked around the room at the chaos that always reigned here, and felt a full-blown body itch settle into his skin. “I have a few things to do down here first.” Such as washing his hands and wrapping that end of cheese in wax paper. Such as avoiding the fact that he’d intended to introduce Lydia to his father.
When she hesitated, he said, “You’re welcome to stay down here. Alone with me.”
And of course, on that, she went up without him. He washed the teapot and found a bucket for water.
“Call me Lucas,” he could hear his father saying, as Jonas slipped out the door and headed to the pump.
By the time he got back and put some water on the hob to boil, they were chattering like old friends. He couldn’t quite make out their conversation over the clank of the dishes as he scrubbed them out. Trust Lydia to charm his father in a quarter of an hour.
He snorted.
Trust his father to charm Lydia as well. He gathered up tea things on a tray—all clean now, the silver shining and the teapot whiter than it had been in years—and started up the stairs.
“I do want some explanation,” Lydia was saying. “What is all of this?”
Jonas could hear the note of distaste in her voice, could imagine her gesturing to the piles of rubbish alongside his bed.
“This is my independence.” Just as easily, he could hear the pride in his father’s voice. “I don’t mean to be a burden on my son in my old age,” his father said. Pride. Overwhelming pride.
Granthams don’t cry, he remembered his father telling him when he was eleven. So you’re going back to school, and I won’t hear any more complaints from you. No matter what they do to you.
“Does your son think of you as a burden?”
“He’s just starting out in life,” his father said earnestly. “About to get married, he is. He doesn’t want an old man leaning on him. When I’m back on my feet, I’ll be able to cut this all up for the scrap metal.” Jonas came up the last few stairs, just in time to see his father lean in. “You see this? Everyone thinks it’s junk. But what you can see right now may well be worth ninety-five pounds. You hear that? Ninety-five pounds, if you know what to do with it.”
That last was delivered in the kind of voice that an elderly man believed to be a whisper, but which could have been heard three counties over.
To her credit, Lydia didn’t guffaw. “Ninety-five pounds,” she said quietly. “My, that’s clever of you.”
“Clever. Ha. I’m not the clever one. You know my son. Now, there’s a clever boy. When he was three, I said to his mother—this boy is going to be something, if only we don’t get in his way. The local grammar school wasn’t good enough for him, no. We knew we had to get him into Rugby. Not easy for a scrap-metal dealer, do you think?”
She made an appropriately appreciative noise. Neither of them had seen him, standing in the shadows of the stairwell, simply drinking in the sight of them together.
“If there was a penny to be squeaked, my wife squeaked it,” his father announced proudly. “And what she didn’t save, I found. And after she…well, never mind that. My son, he went from Rugby to King’s College. Worked with them over on Portugal Street for a few years, he did.”
“You must be very proud,” Lydia said.
“Well, that’s as might be. Right now, I just want to know, where the devil is the—” He turned toward the stairwell and caught sight of Jonas standing there. All that proud boasting closed in on itself. He folded his skinny arms and looked down. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled.
It had ever been like that between them. For years, Jonas had thought that his father was gruff, that he could never please him. It had taken him until early adulthood to understand that his father was proud—so proud that his pride shamed him.
Jonas set the stacked cup and saucers on the bedside table, distributed them, and poured the tea.