Chapter Eleven
THE FIRE IN HER FATHER’S STUDY WAS HOT, but Lydia could scarcely feel it against her skin. She wasn’t sure why she’d fled here—why she sat here fiddling with the holly on his desk. She felt empty and hollow, and she didn’t want to think. Not at all.
“So,” her father said, setting down his pen after she rearranged the ribbons for a fourth time, “am I going to have to have words with Grantham after all?”
She jumped back, stricken. “No! Why would you say that? I don’t want to talk about him.”
He smiled faintly. “I’ve made three errors in this last column, Lydia, and you haven’t caught a single one.”
“I have to get this holly right.” She didn’t look at him.
He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t the sort to say things, to cajole her into giving up her fears. He just…was.
“Why didn’t you put me away?” she asked.
His eyes widened.
“You should have. Parwine told you to do it. Anyone would have done it in your place. But you act as if nothing happened, as if I were the same person I would be if I’d never met Paggett.”
Her father took his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where the frame of his spectacles had left a pink indentation. But he didn’t say anything in response.
“Don’t you understand that I’m not your little girl anymore?” she demanded.
“No. You’ve grown older,” he said quietly.
“Grown older? Is that what you think I’ve done? That’s all you think happened to me? That I just grew older?”
He gave her a helpless shrug. “Well, yes. I do wish it hadn’t happened all at once, the way it did, but…” Another shrug. “I never really thought about putting you away. I suppose almost anyone else would say that was a mistake. But I didn’t want to.”
“You didn’t even give me new rules, no new strictures. You let me walk out with Grantham, knowing that I was the sort of woman who might…”
She didn’t finish the answer. She was the sort of woman who might fall prey to a man like that. A darkly handsome man, possessed of a particularly blunt style of speaking. She might let him touch her, kiss her. She might thrill when he did it and want more.
His eyebrows rose. “I ask again, am I going to have to have words with the man?”
“No!”
He gestured with his hand to his desk drawer. “Because if necessary, I could fetch my pistol and—”
“No!” she exclaimed, horrified. “No. But do you remember who he is?”
Her father frowned. “He’s a doctor. Is there something else I should know?”
“He was with Parwine. When…”
Her father’s face went white. He hadn’t known. Her parents had been so focused on her on that day that she didn’t think they had been aware of anyone else. Lydia had been the one staring across the room, glaring at that strange young man who watched her so silently.
Her father’s hand drifted towards his drawer once again. “Is Grantham using what he knows to cause you harm?” His voice was a whisper.
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t hurt me.” In fact, she was fairly certain she’d hurt him. “He only made me realize—”
He’d only made her realize how much she hurt.
“I don’t want to realize anything,” she finally said.
Those words sounded awful spoken aloud. They rang out in the quiet of her father’s study. Lydia put her fingers to her lips, tentatively, testing to see if they’d come from her.
They had.
“Well, now,” her father said. “I guess you know why I didn’t put you away. Once you’re old enough to punish yourself, there’s no point in my doing it, too. And since I wasn’t so inclined, I didn’t.”
THE NEXT FEW DAYS SEEMED TO PASS IN A BLUR. Lydia smiled; she laughed. But she knew it all for lies.
A week before Christmas, she went out for a walk. She wrapped herself heavily, but no scarf, however thick, could keep her memories from her. And with the holiday so close, there was no avoiding those old memories.
Christmas bells reminded her of that long-ago time, the one she tried not to think about. She’d spent years telling herself that it was as if nothing had happened. That she was strong, because she could set aside those months when she’d been so casually used by a man who cared nothing for her. That she had suffered once on that Christmas Eve when everything had gone wrong, but that she’d overcome it. That she’d learned to laugh and smile, and that she had gone on, unharmed by those events.