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curiously. "I take it you and your father parted on bad terms?"
    Nick eyed her closely. She blinked back at him, eyes wide and guileless. She posed the question sincerely, without the faintest amount of censure in her voice.
    "No gossip has reached your ears?" Nick lifted a brow. "How surprising. I thought you would surely be apprised of all the sordid details. Edmund never spoke of me, then?"
    Her gaze dropped and she plucked at the spine of her book, making him feel as though he'd asked a tactless question.
    "No, he never mentioned you."
    Was she so grieved by her loss that the mention of Edmund gave her such discomfort? Had she loved him that much? A sour taste filled his mouth. He looked her over again. The flyaway tendrils of hair haloing her face made her look young, fresh. Undeniably pretty. His blood stirred with both desire and envy. What had Edmund done to deserve her devotion? The brother he remembered hardly seemed the type to evoke loyalty.
    "Yes, well, I don't suppose I mattered overmuch to him. But you've heard nothing of me from others?"
    "No, and I certainly made my inquiries, my lord." She lifted her eyes, as if daring him to disapprove. "I learned that your mother was a performer of some kind before she married your father—that she took you and left years ago."
    Nick smiled at her intrepid mien, so at odds with the solemn little girl she appeared in her prim robe. "There's a little more to it than that. The truth is my father cast both of us aside. Divorce. That ugly little word that is only whispered about in drawing rooms. I was eight years old, but he divorced himself from me just as much as from my mother." Bitterness washed over him, belying the calm tone of his voice.
    Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully and she pursed her lips, evidently considering his words. The lighted sconces on the wall lent shadows that obscured the exact emotion of her eyes, but he sensed her reproach—or perhaps expected it.
    "I suppose you're wondering what we did to deserve it?"
    "Not at all. I don't think a father is ever justified in banishing his own child. It is reprehensible."
    "Is it only reprehensible to banish one's child? What of wives?" Nick challenged.
    At this, she stammered, "I—I cannot presume to know the circumstances—"
    "Very politic of you. However, I wonder if you would say the same thing had my mother not been an opera singer. Tell me, do you really think that my mother was on equal footing with my father? Did he not possess the wealth and status? Does the law not grant a man more rights than a woman? Are you not right now beholden to me just as you were to Edmund?"
    Her body noticeably stiffened, and he knew he had made his point. A point she clearly did not like but nonetheless recognized.
    "What's wrong? Do you find it difficult to hear the truth, my lady?"
    "I don't like it," she admitted. "I don't like to think of myself as subject to anyone."
    "Your circumstances are not so different from my mother's. You've both been left with nothing." Nick shrugged and injected a measure of calm he didn't feel. "He accused my mother of infidelity. If the allegation was true, perhaps she deserved the miserable end she suffered."
    "But what of you?" she asked. "You could not have done anything to deserve such treatment. You were a helpless child. It must have been frightening to lose everything safe and familiar. I can understand that." Her last words were uttered with such feeling, as if she truly knew how it felt to lose one's sense of security. Perhaps she experienced a bit of that right now, with her future still so much unsettled. That her future rested on the outcome of her child's gender was indeed a vagary of fate. A vicar's daughter would more than likely subscribe it to God's will, he thought wryly. Not him. If God existed, He had abandoned him long ago. Whether she gave birth to a boy or girl, it was just a roll of the die.
    "I survived."
    "Your father lost too, even if he did not realize it. He died a