Page 61 of Somewhere I'll Find You
As she watched the scene, Julia was troubled by her own lack of emotion. Her heart was blank and numb, unmarked by grief or even anger. She couldn't seem to summon any feeling for her father, and it bothered her profoundly.
Eva looked up and gestured for Julia to enter. Slowly she crossed the threshold and approached the bed, where her father lay shadowed beneath the chintz canopy. All at once a rush of feeling came, a tide of remorse and sympathy that overwhelmed her. Edward had always been a powerful figure, but he seemed small and solitary as he lay in bed with the covers pulled to his shoulders. The robust quality he had possessed in abundance had fled, leaving him immeasurably older. There was a waxen look about his skin, the result of having recently been bled by the physician.
Carefully Julia sat on the edge of the mattress. She took his hand, feeling the skin move too easily over the long bones. He had lost weight. She pressed his hand as hard as she dared, wishing she could impart some of her vitality to him.
“Father,” she said softly. “It's Julia.”
A long time passed, and his pale lashes lifted His eyes were as bright and acute as always as they took measure of her. Julia had never known her father to experience a single moment of awkwardness—he was always in command of any situation. Strangely, however, he seemed to share her uncertainty, searching in vain for words.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice alarmingly thready. His hand twitched, and for a split second Julia thought he meant to draw it away. Instead his fingers closed more firmly over hers. It was the most affection he had shown to her in years.
“I thought you might have me ejected from the house,” Julia said with a self-conscious smile.
“I thought you might not come.” Edward sighed, his chest moving in a shallow rise and fall. “I wouldn't have blamed you.”
“Mama told me how ill you've been,” Julia murmured, retaining his hand. “I could have told her and the doctor that you were too stubborn to let a mere fever get the best of you.”
Laboriously her father tried to prop himself up in bed. Eva moved forward to assist him, but Julia was already pushing a nearby pillow behind him. Edward gave his wife an enigmatic glance. “My dear…I would like to speak to Julia alone.”
Eva smiled faintly. “I understand.” She disappeared from the room with wraithlike grace, leaving father and daughter to confront each other.
Withdrawing to a nearby chair, Julia stared at Edward with a perplexed frown. She couldn't imagine what he wanted to tell her, after all the arguments and bitter feelings between them. “What is it?” she asked quietly. “Do you wish to talk about my professional life or my personal one?”
“Neither,” her father said with an effort. “It's about me.” He reached for a glass, and Julia filled it with fresh water from a small porcelain pitcher. Carefully he sipped the cool liquid. “I've never told you about my past. There were…details about the Hargates that I failed to mention.”
“Details,” Julia repeated, her fine brows quirking. The history of the Hargates was basic and uncomplicated. It was a family of moderate prestige and considerable wealth, ambitious to gain the high social status that could only be gained by intermarriage with blood even bluer than their own.
“I told myself it was necessary to protect you from the truth,” Edward said, “but that was pure cowardice on my part.”
“No. There are many qualities I would ascribe to you, Father, but cowardice is not one of them.”
Edward continued resolutely. “There are things I've never been able to talk about because I find them painful…and I've punished you because of them.” His rusty voice contained a poignant regret that astonished Julia. It was a revelation, albeit a discomforting one, to see that her father was capable of such emotion.
“What things?” she asked softly. “What is it you want to tell me?”
“You've never known about…Anna.” The name seemed to leave a bittersweet taste on his lips.
“Who is she, Father?”
“She was your aunt…my sister.”
Julia was amazed. She had never known anyone in her father's family except a pair of uncles who had each married and chosen to live quietly in the country. “Why has no one ever mentioned her? Where is she now, and what—”
Edward lifted his hand to stop the flow of questions. Slowly he began to explain. “Anna was my older sister. She was the most beautiful creature on earth. If not for Anna, I would have had the most barren childhood imaginable. She made up games and stories to entertain me…she was a mother, a sister, a friend…she was…” Failing to find an appropriate word, he paused helplessly.
Julia listened intently. Her father had never spoken to her like this before, his face softening in reflection, his steely eyes turning hazy with memories.
“Neither of our parents was fond of children,” he said. “Not even their own. They had little to do with us until we had reached maturity, and even then we held little interest for them. Their only concern was that they had fostered a sense of discipline and duty in us. I can't say I had a fondness for them either. But I loved Anna…and I knew she was the only person in the world who truly loved me.”
“What was she like?” Julia asked in the silent interlude that followed. It seemed that Edward found it difficult to continue the narrative, memories entangling him in their fragile threads.
His gaze was unfocused, as if he were staring across a great distance. “She was wild and fanciful, very different from my brothers and I. Anna didn't care about rules or responsibilities. She was a creature of emotion, completely unpredictable. Our parents never understood her—she drove them mad at times.”
“What happened to her?”
“When Anna was eighteen, she made the acquaintance of a foreign diplomat who held a position at an embassy in London. He must have seemed the embodiment of all Anna's dreams. My father disapproved of the man and forbade Anna to see him. Naturally she rebelled and took every opportunity to sneak away and be with him. She fell in love as she did everything else…wholeheartedly, committing herself to him body and soul. But she had chosen unwisely. She…” A shadow came over Edward's face, and it seemed that he wanted to stop. He had said too much, however. Having come this far, he would follow the narrative to its painful conclusion.
“Anna conceived a child,” he said, strangling briefly on the words. “Her lover abandoned her after explaining that he was already married and had nothing to offer. My family abhorred any kind of scandal, and cast her out of our midst. It was as if she had suddenly ceased to exist. My father disinherited Anna, leaving her nearly destitute. She decided to leave for Europe to bear the consequences of her shame alone.
