Touch Me

Her cheeks heated in embarrassment, but she could not deny the truth. "I remember. The moments I spent with you were the most wonderful of my life. I am not likely to forget them."

He swore savagely. "Then why refuse to marry me? No. Don't answer that. I know why. You think I'll turn into a cruel monster like your father. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps he wasn't such a monster? That your mother's view of events was skewed by her own feelings and perceptions?"

"You don't understand."

He flicked the reins until the horses were going much faster than the rest of traffic. "No, I don't. If your sainted mother, as Melly is so fond of calling her, were alive, I would have a few things to say to her."

His sudden anger confused her. "You don't mean that. You're angry for some reason, but don't take it out on my mother. She lost more than you could possibly know, and my father is the cause. He deserves my disgust, not your championship."

Drake came within inches of another carriage. She should say something about his neck or nothing driving, but one look at his set features changed her mind.

"How do you know?" he demanded. "Don't you think he at least has the right to tell you his side of the story? Maybe you don't want to hear that your perfect mother might not have been so perfect after all."

Moisture burned Thea's eyes. "You don't know what you are saying."

Drake was forced to slow the horses as they entered the thicker traffic of London proper. "Thea, you have an entire family here in England. People who would love you if you gave them the chance. Are you content to deny them all for the sake of your mother's memory?"

He knew his arguments had as much to do with convincing her to stay in England with him as they did with believing she should reconcile with her family. He would use any means to convince Thea that she belonged in England, with him.

"I don't have to deny them all, just my father."

He sighed at her insistence on that particular point. If she were going to make her permanent residence in England, she had to come to some sort of understanding with her father.

"Don't you think that will make life a trifle awkward for them and for you? What are you going to do? Have Lady Upworth introduce you as her niece, but refuse to tell anyone who your father is? They'll figure it out, you know. I doubt that many of her nephews had their wives abandon them."

"My mother didn't abandon my father. He abandoned her." Thea's outrage fueled his frustration.

There was no doubt that her father had misused her mother, but that didn't mean that the man was a complete ogre. For all she knew, he had mellowed with age—stranger things had happened. He didn't like to see Thea's generous heart torn in pieces by bitterness toward a father she'd never met.

He tried reason one more time. "She took you to the West Indies and hid from him. What do you call that?"

"Survival."

The one word said a great deal. Dread snaked in his gut. Had the man been violent? If so, he certainly understood Thea's certainty that her father was a monster. Drake would not allow her father to threaten her. He would protect her from everything and everyone—excepting himself, of course.

"Thea, was your mother afraid for her life?"

"No." Thea swiped at her eyes and he felt helpless in the face of her distress. "She was afraid he would discover me and take me away. Then she would be left with nothing."

"What do you mean, discover you? You said that she spirited you away after he threatened never to let her see you again."

"No, I said she took me away after he threatened to never let her see her child again."

He wished for the second time that day that they weren't publicly exposed in a carriage. She had more secrets than the War Department.

"Tell me what you mean."

He didn't expect her to acquiesce to his demand, but then when had she ever done what he expected?

"Very well." She sucked on her bottom lip, and he could almost see her mind working on the problem of how much to tell him.

Finally, her words came out in a rush like steam escaping through the safety valve on the Golden Dragon's boile

r.

"My brother was born first. Father stormed into the room and took him away right after my mother gave birth. She pleaded with him, but he ignored her. He didn't care how much he hurt her. I was born a few minutes after he and the wet nurse left Langley Hall. The midwife and Melly agreed to help my mother hide me. She was desperate to keep at least one of her children."

"If she loved your brother so much, how could she leave England and never see him again?" He hated asking the question after everything else he had already said, but he had to know the whole.