a lineup, I’m afraid. Much less determine whether or not I cared for her one way or another.”
“Miss Andrews.”
Geraldine sounded testy, but definitive. And that was the trouble. Hugo liked Miss Andrews, too. Definitively.
Even now.
He’d told Eleanor things he’d never told anyone. He’d expected her to understand him when no one else had, ever. And then sure enough, she had. Meanwhile, she’d held on to her innocence far, far longer than most women her age, and she’d gifted it to him. Him. As if it had never occurred to her that Hugo the Horrible wasn’t a suitable recipient for such a gift.
As if she’d felt completely safe with him, which should have been impossible.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Hugo wasn’t entirely sure that she was the one who had been rendered fragile by what had happened that night. There were parts of him that no longer fit the way they had before. Parts of him that scraped at all the walls he’d built inside, as if he didn’t fit anymore.
He had been perfectly content here. Happy enough to live out the consequences of Isobel’s decisions far away from prying eyes and telescopic lenses. Perfectly willing to let the country shake in horror at the notion of what he might be doing to their lost saint’s precious little girl. No small part of him had thrilled to the idea that he was literally some people’s nightmare. Every single night.
He’d taken pleasure in that. They deserved it.
Hugo couldn’t understand where all that had gone. How it had disappeared in the course of one very long, very thorough exploration of a prim governess’s astonishingly curvy body.
What was it in him that couldn’t shrug her off the way he had all the others? Why was it so impossible to draw a line under the latest tabloid scandal and move on? When his past mistakes had aired out his laundry in front of whole nations, Hugo had been unbothered.
He had the sinking, lowering notion that all this time, he’d never known real ruin at all.
“You didn’t fire her, did you?” Geraldine demanded, reminding him he was not alone with his brooding.
Hugo eyed her. The little girl had moved further into the room. Now she stood near the fireplace, her hands on her little hips, glaring at her guardian without a seeming care in the world. As if she thought, should there be an altercation, she could take him.
He had tried so hard these past three years, since the accident that had taken Isobel and Torquil. He’d kept his distance from this child. He had tended to Geraldine’s needs, but not in a way that could ever hurt her. Or compromise her. He’d been certain—as certain as his critics, if not more so—that left to his own devices, he could only do harm.
That was what he did, he knew. Harm.
He certainly hadn’t allowed himself to like Gerladine. Or anyone.
But all he could see was Eleanor, then. Her face, so lovely and so fierce, as she’d stood up for Geraldine. It’s not her fault, she’d told him.
And Hugo knew that. He’d gone out of his way to make sure he never brought his feelings about Isobel into any interaction he had with Geraldine. But it hadn’t occurred to him until today—until Eleanor—that he hadn’t let his feelings enter into anything in a very long time.
Because the fact of the matter was, he rather liked this little girl. He liked how unafraid she was. He liked the fact that she was seven years old and yet had no apparent second thoughts about walking straight into her guardian’s library and confronting him. And the more he stared at her, the less she seemed to care. Her little chin tilted up. She even sniffed, as if impatient.
She was a fighter. How could he not adore her for it?
Especially when he’d stopped fighting so long ago.
“If I did fire her, that would be my decision as your guardian and would not require a consultation, Geraldine,” Hugo said reprovingly. But when her face looked stormy, he relented. “But I didn’t let her go.”
He crooked his finger and then pointed to the leather chair across from him. Geraldine made a huffing sound that did not bode well for her teen years, but she obeyed him. With perhaps a little too much stomping, and more attitude than he would have thought possible from a sweet little child, she moved from the fireplace to climb up into the big leather chair. The big piece of furniture seemed to swallow her whole, but that didn’t bother Geraldine. She slid back, stuck her feet out straight in front of her, and crossed her arms over her chest.
Mutinously.
“Where is she if you didn’t get rid of her?” Geraldine asked as if she’d caught Hugo out in a dirty lie.
“I feel certain Miss Andrews told you that she was taking a few days’ break. She does get one, you know. We can’t lock her away in a cage and force her to stay here all the time.”
Though the idea held some appeal.
The little girl’s chin jutted out. “Why not?”
“Excellent question.”
“We should go get her back, then,” Geraldine said, with a wide gesture of one hand, as if Hugo really was an idiot and she was leading him to the right answer because he was taking too long to get there himself.
And the damnedest thing was, Hugo admired that, too.
Geraldine was not yet ten and yet she was showing more fight than he had in the past fifteen years.
Why had he allowed Isobel to paint him the way she had? Of course there was no fighting a slanted story or a nasty rumor, but he hadn’t tried and he hadn’t done anything else, either. He hadn’t pointedly lived a life completely opposed to the one Isobel claimed he did. He’d never even defended himself. He’d told himself it was because he was too proud to dignify her claims with a response, but was that truly it? Or was it the same sort of martyrdom he’d always abhorred when Isobel faked it?
Had he been waiting all this time for someone to look at him and see him and believe that he wasn’t the things that had been said about him?
Maybe there was some virtue in that. Or there could have been—had his father not died believing the very worst of him.
The fact of the matter was, Hugo had never seen the point of fighting battles he’d decided in advance that he couldn’t win. He’d never righted a single wrong. He’d simply sat here and taken it. And to what end?
Whether the public loved him or hated him, he was the only parental influence in this child’s life. And despite that handicap, Geraldine appeared to be thriving. She was flushed with indignation, and if he wasn’t mistaken, love.
Love.
It thudded into him. Then again. Like another fight he was destined to lose. But this time, he didn’t intend to go down alone.
Was it virtue to act as if he was a punching bag for all these years or was it an especially noxious version of self-pity?
Hugo didn’t know. But he did know this. He was a creature of temper and mood, unable to control himself at any time,
