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the small farm attached to it, was intended to keep us and shelter
    us." I take it that something extremely unfortunate happened to the house?"
    Emma dug her nails into her own arms. I sold the house, Mister Stokes. I took out the few pounds
    required to pay for a quarter's room and board at misses Osgood's School for Young Ladies, and I put
    all of the rest into a most unwise investment." An investment." Yes. Her jaw tightened. I followed a
    hunch. Usually my intuition is quite reliable. But with each day that passes, it becomes increasingly clear
    that I may have made a serious mistake." There was a short silence. In other words," Edison said
    eventually, you lost the lot." Not necessarily. I still have hopes She broke off. All I require is some time
    and a bit of luck." I have always found luck," he said with a chilling lack of inflection, to be an extremely
    unreliable foundation for any scheme." She scowled, already regretting the strange impulse that had
    induced her to confide so much information of a personal nature. I do not need any lectures from you, sir.
    It is very easy for a man of your wealth and power to make depressing pronouncements on the subject of
    luck, but some of us have little else with which to work." Your pride reminds me uncomfortably of my
    own," he said softly. Believe it or not, I know what it is like to find oneself alone and penniless in the
    world." She choked back a skeptical laugh. Are you saying that you were once poor, Mister Stokes? I
    find that extremely difficult to believe." Believe it, Miss Greyson. My mother was a governess who was
    turned off without a reference when a guest in the house where she worked seduced her and got her with
    child. The moment the rake hell who was my father discovered that she was pregnant, he abandoned
    her." Shock reverberated through her. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. I am
    sorry, sir. I had not realized" So you see, I do have some feeling for your situation. Fortunately, my
    mother was able to avoid the workhouse. She went to live with an aging aunt in Northumberland. The
    aunt died shortly thereafter, leav ing enough of an income to allow us to scrape along. My grandmother
    on my father's side occasionally sent some money to us."
    That was very kind of her." No one who knows her," he said very evenly, would ever make the colossal
    blunder of calling Lady Exbridge kind. She sent the money because she felt that it was her duty to do so.
    My mother and I were an embarrassment to her, but she is extremely conscious of what she likes to call
    family responsibility." Mister Stokes, I do not know what to say." There is nothing to be said." He made
    a dismissing gesture with one hand. My mother died of a lung infection when I was seventeen. I do not
    think that she ever gave up hoping that my father would one day decide that he really did love her after all
    and that he would want to claim his bastard son." The superficial cloak of casual unconcern in his voice
    could not en tirely conceal the ice beneath his words. His poor mother was not the only one who had
    hoped that the rake who had sired him would some day come to care for his illegitimate offspring, she
    thought. Somewhere, somehow, Emma realized, Edison had found a way to chill the rage that burned
    within him. But the old anger, while it might be controlled now, would never completely disappear. Your
    father, sir." She paused delicately. May I ask if you ever met him?" Edison gave her the sort of smile she
    might have expected from a large wolf. He visited me once or twice after his wife and heir died in
    childbirth. We never became what you would call close. He died when I was nineteen. I was abroad at
    the time." How sad." I think that is quite enough on that subject, Miss Greyson. The past is no longer
    important. I mention it only to reassure you that I do empathize with your plight. Tonight, all that matters
    is that you and I have made a pact to protect each other's