Page 65 of Barely a Woman
“In the flesh.”
“My son.” His pronouncement proved far more hopeful than the situation demanded. Steadman returned his father’s stare in silence, his words having failed him. What had he planned to say? Dunwoody rescued him, even if maliciously.
“So, it was you who stole our wheat. I should have known.”
He turned his iron glare on the portly man. “Yourwheat?Yourwheat, you say?” He growled low in his throat. Primal. “No. Not yours, but rather the wheat you extorted from poor farmers barely clinging to their land. Livelihoods wrenched from the hands of good men by hired bandits in hopes of making you a fortune when you leverage the market with prices unaffordable to the poor. Futures stolen from decent families when you scoop up their bankrupt farms with the profits earned by taking bread from the mouths of children.”
Dunwoody recoiled at the accusation and glanced furtively at Lord Atwood. Steadman watched with growing fascination as his father slowly rounded to face his lifelong friend and business partner. The baron’s surprise had grown a hard edge of indignation.
“Cecil, what’s this? Is it true?” He took a step toward Dunwoody. “You claimed the wheat was fairly purchased. What Steadman describes sounds decidedly criminal.”
“Please, John…”
“That is Lord Atwood to you.”
Dunwoody’s brows flared upward. “Yes, yes. I spared you the particulars given your situation. You have never been one to care about the details, anyway.”
Lord Atwood advanced another step and began raising his hands. “Dunwoody. You fool.”
Dunwoody stumbled backward while stabbing a finger at Steadman. “He is the real criminal, not I. He is the one who has brought shame to this house, and even now continues in his criminal pursuits.”
The baron looked sidelong at Steadman in question. In response, Steadman folded his arms. “What you say is mostly true. My past is quite checkered. But now I am a criminal whohappens to be in the service of the Bow Street magistrate and under the protection and favor of the Crown, and I have brought the constable to serve warrants of arrest.”
Dunwoody remained frozen for a three count before bolting toward the door as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. Steadman rolled his eyes and considered letting him go before leaping after the man. Moving remarkably fast for a man of his squat stature, Dunwoody blew past the surprised constable and darted out the manor door. When Steadman reached Jarvis, he stopped.
“Mr. Jarvis, I hereby deputize you as an associate officer of Bow Street for the day.”
The constable’s eyes went wider still. “Me? Bow Street?”
“Yes. And your mission is to pursue that man, clap him in irons, and return him to Broad Chalke for holding.”
A wide smile stretched across Jarvis’s face, and he gave an awkward salute. “Yes, sir!”
He was gone in a flash. Steadman’s brief smile faded when he turned to find his father approaching the atrium with haunted eyes.
“It is really you,” he said with whispered regret. “After all this time, it’s really you.”
Steadman squared on his father, eye to eye. The moment of truth had arrived. He had his father over the deepest of barrels—on the cusp of destruction and at the mercy of the son he had aggrieved so long ago. The words of his carefully crafted speech flowed back to sit on his lips, waiting to call down judgment. Of how his father was now ruined, never to recover. Of how his own son was the instrument of his downfall. Of how he was doing all of it in the name of Mary, the Atkinsons, and the many others his father had mistreated, discarded, andannihilated along the way. He only needed to speak the words, and the triumph would be his.
However.
Steadman’s tongue remained locked in place. His righteous speech began to slip beneath the rising tide of memory of other words from the woman he loved. Of the vast difference between justice and vengeance. Of how true justice can only be found through forgiveness and redemption. As Morgan’s wisdom rose to claim his thoughts, he continued to stare at the man before him. He looked older, frailer, less proud than the monster he remembered from his youth. A flash of astonishing insight seized Steadman, causing his fingers to spasm into a fist.
Morgan had changed him.
Somewhere along the road, she had remade him into a better man and freed him from the grievous burden of retribution. He just hadn’t noticed—until now. A wave of liberation crashed through the shoals and reefs of his soul, and he laughed. She had nudged aside his vengeance and imbued him with loftier sentiments. But where does one begin after such a rebirth? How does one honor the dead and the living while satisfying the need for justice that connected them? His father waited, the haunt of his expression growing deeper. Steadman closed his eyes, found the opening, and took it.
“Father, I came here on behalf of Mary Atkinson…”
Before he could explain, before he could seek a just resolution that did not result in his family’s ruin, Lord Atwood closed the gap between them and fell at Steadman’s feet.
“My son, oh, my son. I am sorry for what I did all those years ago to the Atkinsons, and to many others.” The baron kept his eyes pinned to the floor between Steadman’s boots, his words emerging in a ragged rush. “I tried to make amends where Icould. I bought Mrs. Atkinson a house and still help her when I can. But I cannot bring back your Mary no matter what I do. Any punishment you have in store for me is rightly deserved. I only ask that you spare your mother and sister your wrath and see that they do not suffer unduly for my many sins. I should have begged your forgiveness long ago.”
Steadman’s chest seized as the confession struck like a hammer blow to his beating heart. A torrent of tears welled in his eyes to begin descending his cheeks. He stooped to lift his father to his feet and gripped the man’s arms. Astonishing words gathered on his lips, placed there by a remarkable woman.
“I forgive you.”
His father’s chin quivered as matching tears wet his cheeks. “After what I did?”
