she said cautiously.
“If it’s all the same to you, Mrs. Tanner, I think we can dispense with that fiction. I beg your pardon if I’m wrong, but I believe you knew my late father, Sir Humphrey Easterbrook. I’m under no illusions about what kind of man he was, or what kind of misdeeds he must have committed in any place he spent time. I can assure you Daisy would be quite safe in my company—indeed any woman would be quite safe—but my assurance alone will do nothing to stop gossip. However, and I’m afraid there’s no delicate way to ask this, but if there is some other family connection between Daisy and myself . . .” He took a deep breath, as deep as he could, which only resulted in a coughing fit. When he steadied himself, he managed to smile at the older woman. He had to handle this well; he needed to make sure she didn’t think this was blackmail or extortion or even some kind of high-handed charity. “The fact is that I need to hire someone to look after me, and it would go better for everyone concerned if that person were a family connection. I could be grossly mistaken and it’s presumptuous for me even to have this conversation, but my understanding is that it’s commonly known that you weren’t married to Daisy’s father, and I’ve noticed that—” He stopped himself. He had blathered long enough and now needed to make his point. “Mrs. Tanner, is Daisy my sister?”
She continued to look at him unflinchingly, and he guessed that she was deciding whether to lie. “Well, yes, Sir Martin, but we thought you knew.”
Martin bristled at his title but there was nothing to be done about that. He couldn’t renounce it, and even if he could, it would look like he was trying to deny who he was, who he had been. It would feel like cowardice. “And so I did. I wasn’t certain whether you did, though.”
She shook her head. “As if I wouldn’t notice that you’re the very spit of him at that age. That morning I walked into your cottage and caught you in bed and you dressed me down, you sounded just like him as well.”
“I apologize. It can’t have been a pleasant surprise. I wish there were something I could say to assure you that I’m not like him, or at least that I’m trying not to be.”
Mrs. Tanner looked at him for a long minute. “If you’ll beg my pardon, once I got over the shock, I realized you were only worried about your young man’s privacy, which is a sight more than your father would have ever cared about.”
Martin opened his mouth to deny that there was anything requiring privacy, to insist that there was nothing untoward about two men sharing a bed. But Mrs. Tanner had seen him and Will together for months; if she had arrived at the truth, then making a show of denying it would do no good. Besides, he was trying to show her that he was trustworthy, and maybe he needed to trust her as well. So all he did was wave over the barmaid and ask for a pair of pints.
“I’m quite poor,” he said. “Otherwise I’d try to do something for Daisy, especially given that she constitutes a full half my blood family. As things stand, I realize that instead I’m asking Daisy to do me a favor for a sum of money that might not be worth her while and which might cause her parentage to become the source of a gossip for months to come.”
“People have been wondering about Daisy’s father for sixteen years, and the only reason I never set anyone straight was that I was afraid her da—your da—would come back and make trouble. But if he’s dead, and good riddance to the bastard, then it’s no skin off my back.” The door swung open, bringing in a gust of fresh air along with Daisy, who flung herself into the chair between her mother and Martin. “Daisy,” her mother said, “you’ll look after Mr.—Sir Martin—while he’s poorly, won’t you? Three shillings a week, more if you need to spend the night.”
“Right,” she said, casting a keen glance at the signet ring Martin wore and then raising her eyebrows at him with the clear message of It took you long enough.
“You can start by telling one of the lads in the stables that Sir Martin needs the