She let him help her down. Through the long ride home, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about one fact: her father had directly caused Alec’s disgrace and estrangement. He hadn’t hesitated to destroy an innocent man’s name, all in the interest of blackmailing the family of the man he helped ruin. As she huddled in Alec’s arms, her life with Papa had played across her memory’s eye, his cheery winks and booming laughter, his quick temper and generous nature. The time he had brought home a baby bunny for her and Callie to see. The way his face would darken when she argued with him, and the cold way he had maneuvered Callie into marriage with Mr. Phillips. She thought of him making sport of Tom, and of how he carried her grandmother tenderly up the stairs when Granny had broken her ankle. It was a bittersweet jumble of happiness and horror, that he could support them with money gained so shamefully. And now Papa was lying in the ground behind Mr. Lacey’s privy, if Morris could be believed, and she was sad and angry and relieved all at once.
She looked up into Alec’s face. He had borne the disgrace, sacrificing five years—and almost his very life—trying to disprove what Papa had so carelessly cast on him. It was a cruel irony that he had been sent to find Papa when all along Papa had been the one responsible for Alec’s condemnation. Cressida couldn’t help thinking that her father had brought his fate upon himself; he had played with fire and it had consumed him in the end. And not only had it cost her her father and her affection for him, it might cost her a lifetime of happiness with the man she loved.
“What you must think of me,” she began brokenly. “Of him, and everyone connected with him.”
Alec’s jaw tightened, then eased. “I am sorry you were there. Angelique should never have brought you with her.”
“Oh!” She waved one hand impatiently. “At least now I know the truth, not some fairy tale of ‘expectations’ and other rubbish Papa used to tell us. He was a liar and a thief who lived on other people’s sins.”
“He was your father.”
“And I loved him!” she said hysterically. “I did, and he was so—so—so unworthy.”
“I loved Will,” he reminded her. “He was my brother in spirit, closer than Frederick.”
“I know. And Papa ruined his life, too,” she said sadly.
He shook his head. “Will was not weak-willed. What he did was unpardonable, and I don’t for one moment hold your father blameless. But Will could have refused. I don’t know why he didn’t, but he was not likely to be swayed by a lowly sergeant to do something so heinous if his inclination had been fixed against it. French gold, I expect, won him over more than anything else.
“What your father did to me…” He paused. A gentle rain had begun, wetting the shoulders of his coat. “It was the coward’s way,” he said quietly. “Did he know me and despise me for some reason, or was I just a conveniently dead officer? He might not have even known whose belongings he hid those letters in, and it was mischance he found a man not truly dead.”
“But Mr. Lacey—”
“I doubt he had any thought of Mr. Lacey when he undertook the plan, except perhaps contempt. If he’d had any respect at all for Mr. Lacey, he never would have tried to extort money from him.”
Yes, she could believe that. But what contempt must Alec have, then, for her father—or for her?
“You told me once you cared only for the truth,” she said. Rain ran down her cheeks and dripped from her nose.
“The truth,” Alec repeated. “Yes. I do.” Cressida wrapped her arms around herself, bracing for the coming blow. Her heart would never recover from this one. “The truth is that I love you. The truth is that nothing your father did, or said, or thought or felt or wrote, could change that.”
“The truth is my father cast blame for another man’s crime on you!”
“He did.”
She laughed a little wildly in despair. “How horrified you must have been when you realized the man you had been sent to help was the very man who betrayed you.”
“It was odd,” he agreed.
“And—”
“And the truth is that my own actions contributed to my situation,” he said over her protest. “I was rash and quick-tempered. I was well-known in the army for being as bold as brass and daring to a fault. Had I been more restrained, people might not have believed the charges so quickly. Had I been more logical and dispassionate, I might have chosen a different course of action. Disappearing for five years doesn’t have the same effect as standing up and shouting my innocence for all to hear, even if in a criminal dock.”
“You should not have needed to!” she cried. “Papa—”
He put his fingertip on her lips. “It is not the adversity you suffer, it is how you react to it that determines one’s worth. What your father did does not reflect on you any more than Will’s actions reflect on me. And in the end, it does not change where we have ended up.”
The rain pattered harder around them, refreshingly cool after the suffocating heat. He touched her cheek, and she leaned into it. “How can you bear to look at me,” she whispered, “and not think of him? Of all he cost you?”
“When I look at you,” he murmured against her temple, “it’s not your father I think of.”
“I am so sorry,” she said, her voice cracking.
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m not.”
Cressida pulled back to look at him in astonishment. He was dripping wet, as was she, but he was grinning at her with that endearing dimple just visible in his cheek. “If you wish to make reparation, though,” he added, “I could be persuaded to
