so the other guests won’t talk.”
“Please,” I said sarcastically, walking past him. “It’s a little late to worry about my reputation. If you’ll excuse me, I have business to take care of.”
Chapter 7
1904
Ben
After doing everything short of making Abigail take a blood oath to stay in her room, I finally left her with her book and a cup of water—and a pastry from the dessert table—and went back downstairs. I couldn’t have her wandering around down there with strangers. Call me overprotective, but I didn’t know most of the people in my house.
And she was all I had.
She was my miracle baby who survived a premature birth that Winifred had not. As horrible as the woman I was forced to marry could sometimes be, the memory of her huge, terrified eyes as she screamed through her contractions that something was wrong haunted me.
Of course something had been wrong; the baby was too early. The doctor had been summoned, and yes, there was concern, but Winifred was a professional at being melodramatic. Crying wolf was her forte for just about anything. And my mind was distracted with thoughts of betrayal. Being almost a month early—what if my wife had lied to me? What if it had all been a ruse to trick me?
Anger had blinded me to the pain in her eyes. The baby was positioned wrong, and when Winifred went stiff and then limp in the middle of pushing Abigail out, I thought she’d just fainted from the exertion. It wasn’t until the doctor cut the cord and tried to rouse her to meet the tiny person needing her attention that we realized her heart had stopped.
No amount of lifesaving measures worked.
I’d finally stared down at Winifred’s lifeless eyes as I held our child and realized it was all on me. This was the reason my life had turned inside out. Why I’d had to lose everything. It was because this moment was coming. I had to figure things out, and take care of our daughter. Keep her safe. Keep her happy. Be her father.
Abigail Winifred Mason wasn’t full-term; she truly was early and needed to be transported to Houston for care for the first few weeks. It was terrifying, and out of my control, and humbling.
And the reason I went to Winifred’s grave every week with Abigail, and sometimes without her, was to silently apologize for my doubt and for not being the husband she needed in her most frightening moment. To tell her about the child she never got to see. I might not have loved my wife, but she gave me an incredible gift that I never knew I wanted. I could swallow my resentment to give her at least that.
Abigail had had a rough start, but my little firecracker was tougher than her petite little frame showed. At just under four and a half years old, she never met a stranger, and had her mother’s strong confidence, albeit rooted in grace and sweetness instead of greed. That’s why I worried for her. She didn’t care for crowds, but she’d talk to anyone, and trusted everyone.
And had already made a friend in Josie Bancroft.
Damn it.
I even doubted that Josie had wanted to be her friend. Hell, she’d probably tried to leave the library fifty times once she realized who was in there, but Abigail had that way.
My eyes drifted to where I knew Josie was talking to an older gentleman, a permanent smile affixed to her face as she tilted her head, pretending fascination in whatever he was saying. I knew it was pretending because she wouldn’t smile like that, unmoving, not speaking her mind. Josie was animated when she spoke, her whole body coming alive in mesmerizing motion. Or she had been, five years ago.
She didn’t even show repulsion when the man—who at second glance I realized was someone I once knew and was a lecherous cad even back then—unabashedly appreciated the view of her perfect cleavage to the point that I thought he might just dive in.
What was she doing? He was the second old asshole I’d watched her corner since she left me in the library. Again.
I’d mostly given Josie a wide berth since that fateful night. I understood her ire and sense of betrayal that I’d kept the truth from her, but what I never understood was her inability to forgive. I’d attempted twice to see her afterward, wanting to apologize, but her father had turned me away. I didn’t know what she’d