“Get out of the lake!”
Eloise whirled around, so surprised by the furious roar that she slipped and fell in the water. Drat and blast, there went her dry intentions and her dress. “Sir Phillip,” she gasped, thankful that she’d broken her fall with her hands and had not landed on her bottom. Still, the front of her dress was completely soaked.
“Get out of the water,” Phillip growled, striding into the lake with astonishing force and speed.
“Sir Phillip,” Eloise said, her voice cracking with surprise as she staggered to her feet, “what—”
But he had already grabbed both of his children, his arms wrapped around each of their rib cages, and was hauling them to shore. Eloise watched with fascinated horror as he set them none-too-gently down on the grass.
“I told you never, ever to go near the lake,” he yelled, shaking each by a shoulder. “You know you’re supposed to stay away. You—”
He stopped, clearly shaken by something, and by the need to catch his breath.
“But that was last year,” Oliver whimpered.
“Did you hear me rescind the order?”
“No, but I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” Phillip snapped. “Now get back to the house. Both of you.”
The two children recognized the deadly serious intent in their father’s eyes and quickly fled up the hill. Phillip did nothing as they left, just watched them run, and then, as soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to Eloise with an expression that caused her to take a step back and said, “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
For a moment she could say nothing; his question seemed too ludicrous for a reply. “Having a spot of fun,” she finally said, probably with a bit more insolence than she ought.
“I do not want my children near the lake,” he bit off. “I have made those wishes clear—”
“Not to me.”
“Well, you should have—”
“How was I meant to know that you wanted them to stay away from the water?” she asked, interrupting him before he could accuse her of irresponsibility or whatever it was he was going to say. “I told their nurse where we intended to go, and what we intended to do, and she gave no indication that it was forbidden.”
She could see from his face that he knew he had no valid argument, and it was making him all the more furious. Men. The day they learned to admit to a mistake was the day they became women.
“It’s a hot day,” she continued, her voice clipping along in the way it always did when she was determined not to lose an argument.
Which, for Eloise, generally meant any argument.
“I was trying to mend the breach,” she added, “since I don’t particularly relish the thought of another blackened eye.”
She said it to make it him feel guilty, and it must have worked, since his cheeks turned ruddy and he muttered something that might have been an assurance under his breath.
Eloise paused for a few seconds to see if he would say more, or, even better, say something with a tone that approached intelligible speech, but when he did nothing but glare at her, she continued with, “I thought that doing something fun might go a long way. Heaven knows,” she muttered, “the children could use a spot of fun.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, his voice angry and low.
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Just that I didn’t see any harm in going swimming.”
“You put them in danger.”
“Danger?” she sputtered. “From swimming?”
Phillip said nothing, just glared at her.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said dismissively. “It would only have been dangerous if I couldn’t swim.”
“I don’t care if you can swim,” he bit off. “I only care that my children can’t.”
She blinked. Several times. “Yes, they can,” she said. “In fact, they’re both quite proficient. I’d assumed you’d taught them.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her head tilted slightly, perhaps out of concern, perhaps out of curiosity. “Didn’t you know they could swim?”
For a moment, Phillip felt as if he couldn’t breathe. His lungs tightened and his skin prickled, and his body seemed to freeze into a hard, cold statue.
It was awful.
He was awful.
Somehow this moment seemed to crystallize all of his failings. It wasn’t that his children could swim, it was that he hadn’t known they could swim. How could a father not know such a thing about his own children?
A father ought to know if his children could ride a horse. He ought to know if they could read and count to one hundred.
And for the love of God, he ought to know if they could swim.
“I—” he said, his voice giving out after a single word. “I—”
She took a step forward, whispering, “Are you all right?”
He nodded, or at least he thought he nodded. Her voice was ringing in his head—Yes they can yes they can they can they can—and it didn’t even matter what she was saying. It had been the tone. Surprise, and maybe even a hint of disdain.
And he hadn’t known.
His children were growing and changing and he didn’t know them. He saw them, he recognized them, but he didn’t know who they were.
He felt himself take a gasp of air. He didn’t know what their favorite colors were.
Pink? Blue? Green?
Did it matter, or did it only matter that he didn’t know?
He was, in his own way, every bit as awful a father as his own had been. Thomas Crane may have beaten his children to within an inch of their lives, but at least he knew what they were up to. Phillip ignored and avoided and pretended—anything to keep his distance and avoid losing his temper. Anything to stop him from becoming his father all over again.