Chapter 23
“It has been nearly fifteen years since I’ve been called the name of my birth. I must confess, it feels good to be known.”
The impossible collapsed down on Jake as irrefutable fact.
“I am now called Kanō Jironobu. Jiro, if you will.”
Jake now recognized what he’d refused to see earlier: Mina in this man . . . Kanō Jironobu . . . Kai. Pain borne of fear and desperation spiked through him. Mina was his daughter, not this man’s. No matter what biology might argue to the contrary.
“After a few months, I recovered and came to your household by the back door, selling cheap watercolors. I saw that Minako had a good home with you, a better one than I could giver her as a fugitive with no friends or family left in this world. I was cured of my romantic notions.”
Kai flipped to a fresh blank sheet and began sketching again. “I also knew that I could not stay in Singapore. My Japanese features stood out too distinctly, and it was only a matter of time before my father’s spies found me, living as I was with several other boarders. People had taken notice and were asking questions. I’d heard that there was a community of us from Asia in London, so I boarded the first ship bound for England. Of course, my features stood out here, too, but the English tend to lump all Orientals into one group, which would keep my secret safe. I knew you would arrive here with Minako someday. I set up a studio and waited.”
“Have you seen her?” Jake ground out. “In London?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” Jake asked, his equilibrium beginning to return, as if he’d been knocked down in the ring and was regaining his footing. In such moments, a determination came over him to see the fight to the end and to win it. This moment was no different.
“In Hyde Park.”
“Did she see you?”
“Yes,” Kai hesitated, “and there was something in her eyes when she saw me.”
Jake assessed his opponent. For all his refined appearance, Kai could throw a punch. “And what was that?”
“Hunger.”
There it was: the truth. A truth Jake had known on an elemental level for some time. A truth he hadn’t the means to satisfy.
“I want time with her.”
“Impossible,” came Jake’s gut response.
“She must know her heritage.”
“She’s the daughter of a viscount. What other heritage does she need?”
Kai knew nothing about Jake if he thought he wouldn’t fight. A deeper and more important truth lay at the heart of this matter. Mina was his daughter. She was as much of him as any biological daughter ever could be. This man wouldn’t come between them. He wouldn’t destroy them.
“I am Mina’s father,” Jake all but growled.
“By blood,” Kai countered, scrappy and persistent.
“Blood doesn’t matter.”
“In London?” Kai scoffed. “It matters.”
“London knows what it needs to know.”
“But does Mina?”
Sudden anger burst to the surface, an anger Jake could barely restrain. “You think you know what’s best for her? You think you’re her father? You understand nothing about being her father.”
Kai shifted forward, his eyes ablaze and intense. “But I want to. She needs a place where she can be Japanese, too, a place where she fits with ease,” he finished, delivering his knock-out punch with a swift assuredness that floored Jake.
As suddenly as the anger had flared, it faded. Jake’s next words fell from his lips like a burden that had become too heavy to bear. “Like a puzzle piece just the right shape.”
A glimmer of hope lit within Kai’s gaze. “Let her meet me. Is she aware of her true parentage?”
Jake nodded. “Society cannot discover the truth of her birth.”
Finally, he’d said the words he’d come here to say, and they felt empty and odd now that he’d spoken them aloud. Kai was no threat to Mina. He never had been.
“It won’t,” Kai said.
“You have dealings with Society,” Jake began.
“Society such as Lady Olivia Montfort?”
Every muscle in Jake’s body tensed. “Yes, such as Lady Olivia Montfort.”
Kai inclined his head. “Her knowledge of the situation is at your discretion.”
Like that, it was done. “I shall speak to Mina,” Jake said. “She makes the decision, not you or I.”
Kai nodded and gestured toward the door. “May I show you out?”
Jake followed Kai through a tight maze of hallways, simultaneously worn down and strangely relieved. Already, he could predict Mina’s decision, and it would be the right one. A part of her unreachable by him craved what Kai offered. He wouldn’t stand in the way of his daughter’s fulfillment and happiness. She wasn’t his possession to keep for himself.
Yet it was another part of the conversation, one not as tidily concluded, that nagged at him. He’d detected a specific knowledge within Kai’s eyes when the man had spoken of Olivia. It was clear that he’d intuited the true nature of their relationship.
A few days ago, such insight might have concerned Jake, but not now. Now he wanted it out in the open. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Another opportunity he’d missed last night.
Of course, he had only himself to blame. The moment he’d allowed Olivia to step through that rooftop door and out of his life without fighting for her, he’d made a mistake.
Ahead, Kai reached the front door and hesitated, his hand resting slack on the handle. His back to Jake, he asked, “I can trust you to tell her?”
“I’ve given my word.”
Kai hesitated for a quick beat before nodding. He turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open. Jake had already taken a step forward when he noticed. There, just beyond Kai’s shoulder stood Olivia, hand raised as if she’d been about to tap the knocker.
An easy smile on her lips, she said, “Oh, good, you’re in. Yesterday, I forgot—”
“Lady Olivia,” Kai interrupted as he stood aside, “I believe you are acquainted with Lord St. Alban?”
The smile froze on her face, and her eyes went wide. Her mouth snapped shut.
Clear as the ting of a bell, Mina’s words came to Jake. I think it’s best to let the heart have a say in the matter. Now that Mina was safe, at last, he could hear them. He wouldn’t be marrying Miss Fox.
“If you will excuse me, I have a matter to attend to,” Kai said, and vacated the tidy foyer.
But Jake hardly noticed. Only Olivia mattered. She blinked and seemed to remember herself. He wished she wouldn’t.
“Lord St. Alban, how . . . unexpected.”
~ ~ ~
Uneasy, unbearable silence stretched between them, and all Olivia wanted to do was shift on her feet. Any sort of movement to disperse the nervous energy rioting through her body.
But she wouldn’t. He would know his effect on her, that she’d gone anxious and twitchy over him, which must be avoided at any cost. She should slip past, and forget she ever saw him. But her curiosity wouldn’t allow it. “Are you here about Mina?”
Intense, inscrutable emotion flared within his eyes, but was gone in a flash. “Yes.”
“I thought she wasn’t interested in an art master.”
“Mina has many interests.”
“Undoubtedly,” Olivia said, at once certain he wasn’t going to tell her how or why he’d come to be in Jiro’s studio. But since she had him here, there was something she might as well ask him. “Have you seen the latest haiku today?”
His head cocked to the side. “There’s another?”
“Oh, yes, and it’s a delight,” she said, hard notes of sarcasm inflecting every word. “I suspect it will be the talk of the Duke’s ball tonight.”
“The Duke’s ball,” Jake repeated softly as his gaze narrowed upon her. “You will be there.”
The foyer walls drew close, and Olivia found it difficult to drag in her next breath. “Of course. I live there. At least, for the present.”
“For the present?”
“I sent notice to your solicitors this morning that I shall take the house on Queen Street.” She attempted to swallow the lump in her throat. “I believe that severs the connection between us.”
He took a step forward, and all that remained between them was a tiny patch of air that would become insignificant in an instant, if they chose. No longer inscrutable, fire snapped in his eyes. “It will take more than that to sever the connection between us,” he spoke in the velvet rumble that made her insides go molten.
“Jake,” she whispered, her pounding heart suddenly in her throat, making her voice go weak and breathless, “nothing has—”
“Changed?” he cut in. “You do keep saying that.”
She glanced away, unwilling, unable, to hold his gaze any longer. Yet when his fingertips reached beneath her chin and gently tipped her head back, her eyes had no choice but to meet his. “You and I have more to say to each other. Much more.”
“I seriously doubt that, my lord,” she said without a dram of conviction in her voice. Still, she must try. “I do believe we are finished.”
“We are far from finished, Olivia. In fact, we’ve only scraped the surface of our beginning.” His gaze held hers for one, two fraught heartbeats, and again her breath suspended in her chest. “Don’t forget to save a dance for me tonight.”
With that, he let go of her chin and stepped past her. It wasn’t until he’d rounded the corner at the end of the block that her breath could release. A shiver, warm and delicious, purled down her spine at the promise in his voice, at the promise in his eyes.
Her feelings were wrong, utterly, utterly wrong. But there was no help for them. That man affected her at a level, deep and true and elemental, over which she had no control.
She would have to do a better job of steeling herself against him in the future.
Her brows creased together. Why had he said that last bit? Wasn’t he on the hunt for a proper wife? Then why would he dance with her at a ball in front of the entire ton?
Added to that, she’d found him here of all the places in London . . . None of these factors added up to an explanation that made sense to her.
A soft harrumph ushered her back into the present. She turned to find Jiro, waiting for her to enter. A few seconds later, she stepped inside his studio and realized that she’d always seen it in the afternoon, never seen in full morning light. It was a glorious distraction from the strange interlude of minutes ago.
Well, almost. The idea that Jake was so recently here called out to her. As if an essence of him lingered in the air and, with every breath, she inhaled him instead of oxygen.
What romantic rot.
She may be many things to many people, but romantic wasn’t one of them. No longer was she a romantic, green girl. Marriage, widowhood, and a set-aside marriage had put an end to the girl she once was.
Jiro stepped forward, an object in hand. “Is this the item you seek?”
She looked down to find her set of charcoals. “Ah, yes, thank you. Although I’m not sure why I bothered, other than to get away from the frenzy of ball preparations. My pencil hasn’t produced anything worthwhile these past few days.”
“One cannot predict such things,” he stated, his fingers busily organizing his own tray of charcoals. “Your pencil will find its way again.”
“Jiro,” she began without thinking, “about Lord St. Alban—” She paused, hoping he would complete her sentence. He didn’t. “May I ask—?”
“No, Lady Olivia, you may not,” he replied softly, firmly.
Those last three words were so simple. You may not.
Monosyllabic, light words. Neither heavy nor complex. You may not.
Yet they landed in the room with a solid thud.
She averted her gaze, stung. A confirmation lay within those simple words that wasn’t at all simple, confirmation that something didn’t add up. Jake was withholding information from her.
Her pulse jumped as a swirl of emotion threatened to catch her up in its whirlwind. Hurt, yes, but another emotion as substantial, too. Pique and . . . curiosity . . . A righteous sort of hurt, pique, and curiosity. Feelings to which she had no right.
Tiny, invisible splinters, they burrowed deep beneath her skin.
“Is that all you need?” Jiro asked.
Olivia nodded, already on her way out. A spark of vitality flared inside her. “I believe my pencil has found its way.”
We’ve only scraped the surface of our beginning.
What on earth could the dratted man mean by speaking such words to her?