Filed To Story: Alessia Mistaken as Mistress Book PDF Free
A male servant opened it and greeted him. “Mr. Halliday?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Thornton is expecting you. This way.”
Nicholas followed the man across a foyer and into a masculinely furnished library. A stout man with steel-gray hair stood and shook his hand. His eyes were as blue as Alessia’s, but lacked the warmth. “You didn’t state your business in your message,” he said, immediately coming to the point.
“No. It’s a delicate matter, and I thought it best to speak in person.”
“And you’ve come all the way from Ohio to speak to me in person?”
“Yes.”
“Must be important. Have anything to do with your foundry?”
Nicholas wasn’t surprised the man had checked him out.
He’d have done the same. “No. It has to do with your daughter.”
The man stiffened. “I have no daughter.”
“Yes,” he corrected. “You do.”
Morris Thornton’s expression hardened and he cocked his head. “If you’re not here about investments, I have no wish to speak with you.”
“I’m here about Alessia.”
“If you’ve come to claim responsibility for her indiscretion, I’m afraid it’s too late.”
His words took Nicholas aback. Was he accusing Nicholas of seducing and then abandoning her? Nicholas’s ire had been awakened, but he spoke with practiced composure. “I’ve come with some shocking news,” he said without preamble.
“Oh, what? You weren’t the first?”
Nicholas held himself in check. “Alessia is still alive.”
The man seated himself without offering Nicholas a chair, opened a humidor and selected a cigar. “Alessia and her bastard are dead.”
His cruelty shocked Nicholas. “No. You buried my sister-in-law and my brother’s child in that grave. You didn’t identify the body, did you?”
Alessia’s father stared about the room before turning his gaze to Nicholas. “No.”
“Did anyone identify the body?”
“It had been weeks since the train accident I was notified, sent the body and her trunk. I knew it was the stupid girl. I had her buried next to her mother.”
“I can understand why you wouldn’t have been able to identify her. And I know you had Alessia’s trunk as evidence that the body belonged to your daughter. But that young woman was not Alessia.”
He gave Morris the details, sparing any mention of his feelings for her. “So you see, she’s very much alive.”
The man leaned back in his chair for a long minute, then heaved himself forward and stood. “No. My daughter is dead. She will not destroy my reputation in this business community. I have important clients-clients who have invested with me since I began my business more than thirty years ago, and I will not allow her poor choices to harm my associations with them. My daughter died the day she defied me and defiled my good name.”
Nicholas studied the hard-eyed, hard-hearted man. “You would choose appearances-money-over your daughter?”
Morris Thornton met his stare without flinching. “I have no daughter. As far as I am concerned-as far as this city is concerned, Alessia Thornton is dead.”
In that split second, though he’d never seen it before, Nicholas recognized her father’s face. He recognized the drive and the power and the all-consuming ambition.
He recognized the man he had almost become.
And he saw something else, too. He saw the reason a young woman who’d made a mistake had been forced out of her home and onto a train bound for catastrophe. And he understood why Stephen’s kindness had been something she clung to like a last hope. For someone who’d received so little kindness from her own father, a stranger’s benevolence must have seemed a godsend.
And perhaps it had been.
“You’re right,” he said, his tone low and controlled. “You don’t have a daughter. A man like you doesn’t deserve a daughter. And especially not one like Alessia.”
The man’s hard expression did not change. “Get your body,” he said. “But do it quietly.”
“I will see to it before I leave town. And I’ll arrange to have the rest of Alessia’s things picked up, too.”
“There is nothing of hers left here.”
Nicholas stepped to the door. “I believe that’s where you’re wrong. Her spirit is here. Her memory. Live with that.”
He let himself out of the house.
* * *
A few nights later, Milos joined him in his study after dinner. “I spoke with Morris Thornton,” Nicholas said, leaning back and lighting a cigar.
Milos clipped the tip from his and accepted the burning match from Nicholas. He puffed and tossed the match into the empty fireplace. “What did you learn?”
In deference to the sultry evening, both had abandoned their jackets and rolled back their sleeves.
“Why Alessia left,” he replied dryly. “He had the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. The man isn’t human.”
“And now you’re joining your mother in sympathizing with her?”
“I simply understand her a little better.”
“What is it you understand?”
“She felt guilty. That’s why she had Pinkerton’s find Claire’s body.”
“You’ve had Claire’s body brought here?”
Nicholas nodded. “All these months the man believed his daughter was killed in a train accident. I went to him, revealed that she wasn’t dead after all, and-it was as though the truth would have inconvenienced him. He preferred his daughter to be dead.”
Nicholas still couldn’t comprehend the man’s denial and hostility.
“But Alessia found the real Claire for you and your mother.”
“And for Stephen.”
“She’s not the woman you wanted to believe she was, is she?”
“What do you mean?”
“It was easier to have her run away when you believed she was only out for your money. Now that you know differently, it’s more difficult to accept.”