"She has been what?!" Cassius demanded with a voice bordering on a snarl. When he had received an urgent missive from Honoria's school, he had been afraid she was hurt, or ill. He had ridden North like the devil had been on his heels, only to find this. "She did what?"

The woman in front of him, to her credit, remained entirely unimpressed with his snapping.

"Suspended," Miss Heartwood, one of Honoria's teachers, replied with an infuriating matter-of-factness that made his hackles rise. "I was able to talk Mrs. Pinehurst down from an expulsion, sir, on the grounds that she is still mourning her mother. But I must warn you that Lady Honoria has quite exhausted our principal's goodwill. Sneaking off the premises is a severe offense, and Lady Honoria is lucky that she was not hurt. Or worse."

Cassius wanted to rip into the teacher, the headmistress, anyone for their astonishing lack of security regarding their students. How did one even lose an eleven-year-old?

He wanted to tussle and yell. If only Honoria's English teacher would stop being so damned calm. He wished she would give him reason to snap and thunder, but instead, she had defended his daughter and saved her from expulsion. He raked a hand through his hair in an impatient, frustrated gesture.

He needed an outlet for the surfeit of pent-up emotions of the last few days, the fear, the exhaustion, the frustration. But the poor teacher would not bear the brunt of his displeasure when all she had done was do him a favor.

"If I may be so bold, My Lord?"

"You haven't yet held back, Miss Heartwood," he replied through grit teeth.

"She is waiting for you in the next chamber, through this door," she nodded toward the direction of the second chamber. "I would ask that you recall that losing a parent for one as young as she, even though she acts so mature for her age, is a difficult time."

He nodded tightly in thanks, even though he bristled at yet another woman who thought she could dictate how he ought to treat his daughter. He wanted to do what was best for her, he wanted for her to feel safe and cared for and yet it seemed everyone he met doubted he could ever measure up.

It rankled, it hurt.

He took a fortifying sigh and stepped through the connecting doorway. His daughter sat, facing away from him.

He waited for her to get up and greet him. He wondered if she would mind if he hugged her. He so dearly wanted to.

When she refused to acknowledge him, he decided to take the first step.

"Hello, Honoria."

Silence.

No loving hugs, then, he presumed. He took a step toward her but she sidled even further away from him. He was not going to pretend that it did not sting.

"I am glad you are unhurt."

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

"I have come to take you home. But we must talk about your behavior. And you must apologize to Mrs. Pinehurst."

She scoffed, but made no other reply.

"So," Cassius' grip on his walking stick tightened as his daughter refused to make eye contact with him. She stared pointedly out of the window refusing to speak to him, "nothing to say for yourself, then?"

More silence.

"You ran off with village boys to the fair, reducing your matron to a fainting spell. Your headmistress and your teachers spent hours looking for you. And this is only the latest stunt in just this term. You threw paint at another class fellow, you threw food at your teacher, you purposefully stepped on your dance master's toes, and you have intentionally not filled in your tests and assignments. What has possessed you?"

She muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like annoying old man and turned as far away from him as possible.

"Honoria Beatrice Millicent Godwin!" Cassius snapped, and she finally gave him a long suffering, loathing look. "I am speaking to you!"

"I don't care!" she snapped back, glaring in his direction. Cassius had to struggle to hide his own shock. What the devil had happened to his mild mannered, unemotional, dispassionate offspring?

"Honoria, I cannot fathom what has come over you. This kind of behavior will not be tolerated, young lady! You are the representative of a legacy that can be traced back centuries, you have been raised better than this. Yelling, throwing things, disrespecting your elders. This behavior is most unbecoming of you, what's more...it is entirely unlike you. You could have been kidnapped."

"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care! I wish I was kidnapped! That way I wouldn't have to be with you!"

"Honoria! Have you lost your senses?! What an awful thing to say! I rode here, half afraid that you were ill or hurt, and here you are making light of something so serious?  What would your mother think if she were to see you behave this way?! She would be so disappointed in you!" Cassius demanded in frustration, all the emotion he had been struggling to keep under control breaking free. His voice rose in volume, the words clipped and severe....and he regretted it instantly as he watched his daughter's face crumple. Tears welled up in her eyes- those eyes that had the same shape and color as his own- and he was as unaccustomed to them as he was to outbursts of temper from his offspring.

"Don't act like you care about me," she said swiping furiously at her eyes.

Yet another reminder of his inadequacy, his impotency.

"Honoria, of course, I care about you. You are my daughter, " he said hoarsely, "forgive me that was thoughtless of me-"

"I hate you," she hissed at him, tears spilling over her cheeks, breaking off Cassius' heart piece by piece. "I hate you and I wish you had died instead of Mama. I wouldn't miss you. I wouldn't care about you. I wish she was here and you were gone."

Cassius rocked back on his heels, the verbal blow striking harder than a physical one ever could. The wounds in his heart that still had not healed, wounds that may never heal at all, started to bleed once more.

Perhaps this was to be his fate, to forever be rejected by the women of his family, always to be an outsider looking in, wondering what was so wrong with him that he was not worthy of any connection.

It was hardly Honoria's fault, he admitted with a dejected sigh, shrugging on his coat. It was he who had let Jemma whittle him down until he doubted everything about himself. It was he who had let her undermine his role in Honoria's life. She had made him feel awful and inadequate and dirty...but ultimately it was he who had lost the will to fight. It was he who had accepted the position with the embassy in Belgium.

It was he who had fled.

And for that, he supposed he deserved his daughter's hatred. No matter that he loved her with everything in his heart.

"What that child needs is a woman's influence," his mother-in-law's voice startled him out his vigil by the window. The house across the street, visible from his office, was being cleaned out and there was a flurry of servants running about. The activity was hard to miss. "You are clearly out of your depth."

There was one thing he hadn't considered when he had moved to England permanently- he would be living right across the street from her. And she was almost certainly returning from her latest globetrotting adventure for the London Season.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Crenshaw?" He almost had difficulty turning away from the window, as if his eyes were hoping to catch a glimpse of the last woman he should be thinking of.

"It is bad enough that my poor granddaughter was left in the care of Lady Whittaker," she practically spat the words out, "before you or I could return to England. Now she's been expelled from her school, that woman's influence no doubt."

Jemma's death has been the result of a tragic accident, she had fallen from her horse and landed on her neck. He was told that it had been instantaneous. He'd been in Italy for diplomatic reasons at the time and hadn't gotten word until nearly three weeks after the incident, his mother-in-law had been in rural France, visiting a relative and thus they both reached home more than a month after Jemma's passing. They'd assumed Miss Sherrill would take over the care of Honoria, but the woman fell very ill in the weeks following Jemma's death. Lady Daphne, who had been in England by some stroke of serendipity, had housed Honoria until Mrs. Crenshaw reached London and took custody of the child.

"She's not been expelled, she's been suspended," he said through grit teeth. He had had just about enough of other women telling him what to do with his own daughter. Jemma's former paid companion-Miss Sherrill, Honoria's English teacher- Miss Heartwood, and now his mother-in-law. And he could not believe she would reduce him to defending Daphne Whitmore. If there was anyone who had cause for disapproving of that woman it was he. "It was very kind of Lady Whittaker to take Honoria in when Miss Sherrill fell ill. We owe her some gratitude because of it."

"I think Honoria should come stay with me in Cumbria for the remainder of the term. Perhaps even permanently."

"Absolutely not," he snapped, his temper suddenly running high. "I have spent long enough away from my daughter, I will not be parted from her for a second longer than I must. I will send her for a visit when her spirits have improved but her permanent residence will be with me. As it stands, I see now that it was a mistake to send her back to Mrs. Pinehurst's. She isn't ready."

Was Honoria the one not ready or was it him?

"Think of what I am saying, Pembroke. She needs a firm, guiding hand. Men lack the tact and delicacy needed to deal with young women, and she's at a very volatile age too. She turns twelve in a few months, it is a time for many confusing emotions in young girls."

"My daughter's place is with me," he said with a finality that showed his mother-in-law that he would broker no further argument.

And while it was true that Honoria would eventually need a woman's guiding hand, he was not going to give her up to Mrs. Crenshaw so that she could make another Jemma out of her.

How funny it was that he had married Jemma because he so admired her restrained nature, how he had wished that his children would be like Jemma and nothing like him and his soiled bloodline, only to find that he would sooner die than let his daughter become....that.

His gaze flittered to the portrait of his family that hung in his study, made when Honoria had been three years old. The painter had captured Jemma's frosty aloofness almost to a frighteningly accurate degree. Cassius would happily consign it to the fire if it weren't for how adorable Honoria looked in the picture.

He would have to remarry eventually, even though the thought sickened him from the inside out. He needed an heir, Honoria would need someone to present her to society. Someone who would understand the plight of a young woman and guide her to behave as a lady would.

But he had a few years before that.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, forcing himself to see logic. His fortieth year was fast approaching, he was without an heir and he was not getting any younger. Marriage was a necessity, no matter that he had been thoroughly disillusioned from his youthful romantic notions. The thought of yet another society marriage turned his stomach, but what was he to do? At least now he'd know what to expect.

Unbidden, his gaze traveled yet again to the house across the street.

Had her marriage been the same way? Unsatisfying, devoid of any affection, or intimacy?

Was that why she had taken a lover?

Was that the result of the chain of events he had involuntarily set in motion? For all that he had been angry with her at the time, when both of them had been young and immature, he wouldn't have wished such a cold union upon his worst enemy.

He shook his head, dispelling the strange tumult of thoughts.

What did it matter? Lady Whittaker was far too happy as a merry widow to ever marry again, and he....he was willing to bear any number of humiliations in his marriage but infidelity was not one of them.