Captain Jones's Temptation - Audrey Harrison Page 0,61
more regarding a parent she knew absolutely nothing about.
“Yes. He was a young fool who thought he could do whatever he wanted without consequences.”
“What happened to him?”
“He went and died when he was needed the most to earn some money and keep us all.”
“I do not understand.” Esther had a pounding headache. It seemed the more she asked, the more confused she became.
“You can be especially tiresome sometimes, Esther. Have you made no connections at all? Your father was my son.”
Esther felt spots gathering at the end of her vision. She tried to blink them away. Now was not the time to faint, although the blackness would offer some respite from the nightmare she was in the middle of. “You are my grandmother?”
“Of course I am. Although your parents never actually married. Your mother believed my son’s promises and lies and turned her back on her family. They arrived on my doorstep – of course by that time she was already increasing. The fool that she was, she was devastated when Tom disappeared after a few weeks. It’s what he did. He usually returned at some point, apart from the time when he was really needed. I received a letter that he had been drowned. Fallen off a ship, drunk, when he should have been loading a cargo. It was a fitting end for a disappointment of a son,” Sophie said.
“He was your flesh and blood. How can you be so cold?”
“He always had his head in the clouds. Expected the world and yet didn’t want to work for it. He would have made a fine gentleman, with the air of entitlement that always surrounded him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t born to be one. He managed to lumber me in death as he had in life, for he left me with your mother and then you. Two extra mouths to care for and feed.”
Esther’s mind was reeling, not helped by the coldness she was feeling from Sophie. Why had she never noticed this callousness? It was as if she were dealing with someone she had never met before, although she had already started to suspect the memories of a young girl had been wrong.
“So it is true that you ran a gaming hell?”
“You are like your father in many ways. Head in the clouds, not noticing what is under your nose. Of course I did. It was the only thing I could earn enough of a living out of. A pity things started to go awry when two other, larger establishments opened within a few streets of the docks. It was the death knell for us.”
Esther tried to remember. She had only gone downstairs when the business was closed. She could remember the tables and the smell of stale alcohol and smoke. She had been fourteen when her mother had died, old enough to have noticed more, and yet she had not. Had she been as innocent and foolish as her father appeared to have been? “Mother tried to protect me from it.”
“Yes. She had ideas above her station, laughable really. She lost the chance to continue being the gentleman’s daughter the moment she ran off with my son, but she couldn’t quite leave her past behind. Always acting the lady,” Sophie sneered. “She insisted that you were brought up like a lady too, even though she had turned her back on her position. Funny that your schooling was paid for with money earned over the gaming tables.”
“Why then was I to be offered to Mr. Boyd?”
“Your mother wailed about that, but Boyd was the closest thing to a gentleman you were ever going to meet. With your upbringing, no decent man would accept you as his wife. Boyd was prepared to overlook your start in life.”
“He wanted a child as a bride. Did that not suggest that there was something amiss?” Esther asked. There did not seem an end to what she was discovering. If she’d had bad dreams prior to this, they would be nothing to what would occur from now on.
“He was willing to pay well and look after you in the process. I even had the hope he would eventually agree to taking your mother with you to his home. That way I could get rid of you both.”
“I feel sickened that you can be so matter-of-fact about the whole thing.”
“I don’t know why,” Sophie said. “Look at how it all turned out. Better for the both of us.”