“He told me he would protect them,” Evelyn continued, pointing a trembling finger toward Lily.

“He said he would make sure Maria and the baby were always taken care of, no matter what happened to him.”

“Why?” Ethan asked.

His voice was flat, stripped of the authority he usually carried.

“Why would my father care about a maid’s child?”

Evelyn looked at me, her eyes filled with a quiet, sorrowful pity.

“Because she is not just Maria’s daughter, Ethan,” she said softly.

The rain began to tap harder against the tall library windows, a steady, rhythmic drumming.

“She is his daughter, too.”

The words seemed to drop like stones into the quiet room.

Ethan looked down at Lily, who had picked up another wooden block and was tapping it against her knee.

She had the same deep-set, dark eyes as the portrait of Arthur Cole that hung in the grand hallway.

I watched Ethan’s chest rise and fall beneath his gray wool sweater.

He looked as though he had been struck in the chest.

“My father,” Ethan whispered, his thumb lightly tracing the silver edge of the frame.