"No, my dear, I do not. Your father has made his mistakes, and he hurt your mother terribly. For that reason I supported her decision to flee with you and make a new life for herself. However, he is your father and he has a right to know that you are his daughter. His sin was not against you, and he has paid for the sin he committed against your mother by losing that which he held most dear, his wife."
Thea wanted to argue with her aunt. She wanted to tell her that if Langley had held her mother dear, he could not have done the things he did, but she was not a child any longer. Life was not made up of easily distinguished colors, but more a rainbow of shades, one melting into the other. The motivations and actions of others were not so easily judged.
"He also lost you. The daughter he never knew."
"Pierson said something to that effect to me once." Thea's voice came out softer than she had intended. She took a deep breath and attempted to speak more normally. "I didn't want to admit it, but perhaps you both have a point. I still don't know if I am capable of having any sort of relationship with him. If I want to."
Lady Upworth squeezed Thea's hand. "It will be up to him to prove to you that he is worthy of your affection."
Thea's heart constricted. "Are you sure he wants to?"
The old woman looked troubled. "I know he wants to know you, but he's afraid of the scandal from his past. Of Irisa and Jared being hurt by the truth."
"If he has a right to the truth, then so do they."
Smiling, albeit mistily, her aunt agreed, "You are right, of course, and Langley will come to realize that. We are dining en famille tonight at his town house. Will you come?"
Thea felt herself tense.
The thought of sitting through dinner with virtual strangers, one of them a man who was both her father and the bogeyman of her childhood, made her wince. "I do not think I am ready for such an occasion."
Her aunt sighed, but nodded her lovely white head. "You have a point, my dear. Perhaps you will see your way clear to coming for a visit after dinner. Both your sister and your brother will be there."
Thea bit her lip, her desire to meet her twin and her trepidation at the thought of spending time with Langley at war within her. "I don't know."
She needed time to think, and there was still the embezzler to consider, Uncle Ashby's well-being to worry about. Any relationship she might develop with Langley could not overshadow the responsibility she had to the man who had helped her mother raise her.
Drake returned home to find his wife staring broodingly into the unlit fireplace in the drawing room. She looked up as he entered, and some strong, unnamed emotion slammed through his chest. She was so beautiful, so courageous, more intelligent than most men and more determined, too.
She had risked the unknown, her own emotional comfort, and even her life to prevent harm to her adopted uncle. She stubbornly insisted on finding the embezzler to her company, having refused Drake's offer to continue the investigation alone. She was beyond anything he had ever imagined finding in a wife. He vowed he would be what she needed in a husband.
"What are you thinking when you look at me like that?" she asked.
"That I have an uncommon wife and I want to be worthy of her."
Her eyes widened and then misted over. Jumping up from her chair, she flew across the room to land with a thud against him. He closed his arms around her, shocked by her reaction.
She returned the embrace and spoke against his waistcoat. "How can you think that after everything?"
"Everything?" What idea had taken root in her active imagination now?
She nodded against his chest. "Yes, everything. I seduced you. Spurned you. Mistrusted you. And even now you are busy with my investigation while your business suffers."
He forced her to move away enough for him to look into her tear-drenched blue eyes. "You may not have noticed, but I was hardly an unwilling participant the first time we made love. For you to believe otherwise is not only an insult to my manhood, but absurd."
She blinked the moisture away from her eyes and stared at him in wonder.
"Furthermore, had you accepted my proposal immediately, I would not be so certain now that our marriage is what you truly desired. Yesterday was a difficult day for you and you allowed your emotions to rule your head, saying some things you did not mean, but in your heart of hearts, you did not doubt me." He said it not merely because he wanted it to be true, but because he believed it.
She trusted him far more than she realized, or she would never have married him.
She looked so vulnerable that he could not stop himself from leaning down to offer her a soft kiss of reassurance. Her lips were pliable and willing under his, and the mating of their mouths turned into something hot and out of control before he remembered that he had brought visitors back with him.
The sound of a throat clearing behind him told him that they had been shown into the drawing room.
He lifted his head from Thea's intent on making one final point. "I will have you know that I am quite capable of supervising an investigation and overseeing my business. I would not have you think that I am an inferior businessman."
Her smile was like walking from a fog-shrouded London night into a ballroom lit with hundreds of candles. "I am glad to hear that, since I hold your business acumen in such high esteem."