He could never express his gratitude to Harper for her silence. She didn’t make little of what his father had said, nor did she give it more worth than it deserved. He offered her a side glance and a smile.
“You can stop following me,” he muttered, striding to his rooms.
“It’s my duty to be at your side,” she reminded him, striving to keep up.
He turned to look at her and stopped as a question popped into his mind that he’d foolishly never considered. “Who gave you this duty? Surely not my father. If it was my grandmother, why didn’t she ever introduce me to you? And who is she that you’ve kept your word and did your duty for fifteen years?”
“Why are you suddenly asking these cryptic questions?”
“Harper.”
She nodded, swallowing.
“Why am I so important to you that you gave up the best part of your life?”
Her gray eyes misted with tears, and she reached out her hand to his cheek. Her touch was as light as a feather and as brief as a summer breeze. He moved his head back enough for her to understand. That was enough touching.
“You are the best part of my life, Grayson,” she told him, unaffected by his cool demeanor.
He remembered the way Miss Darling questioned him. She was relentless. He tried it on Harper. “Why? What makes me the best part of your life? When you barely knew me and I did nothing to help that, was I worth missing events with your friends, dates with your suitors?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Harper?”
“Grayson, now look—”
“What am I to you?”
She said nothing for a moment and then gritted her teeth. “Alright, let’s go to your rooms. I can’t speak of these things in the open.”
Ah, finally some answers—and was he really surprised Harper had them? No. What else had his only friend, whom he trusted, kept from him? He brought her to his rooms and sat with her in his parlor, though he was aching to stand and keep moving.
“Your mother was an Ashmore,” she began, taking him by surprise. What did this have to do with his mother?
“Ashley,” he corrected with pout plumping his lips. “Her name was Emma Ashley.”
“Yes, daughter of Adam Ashley and Claire Hawke. Claire was the daughter of Sarah, granddaughter of Thoren Ashmore, first and only son born of Josiah Ashmore and Mercy Blagden—”
“Grandmother Blagden,” he said softly. He almost didn’t hear himself over his thrashing heartbeat.
Harper nodded. “Mercy was her great granddaughter give or take a few generations.”
Gray quickly did the math in his head. One good thing that had come from his academic studies. He was very good at mathematics. “That’s impossible. Your dates are incorrect.”
She shook her head giving him a pitying look.
Then it dawned on him. He scoffed at first, but he remembered what Miss Darling had told him.Summer, New York City 2024.“Is it possible?” he whispered more to his own unbelieving mind. “Harper,” he said, giving her a serious look, “what is this about?”
“Grayson—”
He looked up at the ceiling with frustration.
“This is quite a lot to take in,” she explained in a calming tone.
He knew she was protecting him from whatever it was. But he wanted answers. What did this have to do with his mother? Who was Thoren Ashmore and why was it notable that he was the only son of Josiah Ashmore and Mercy Blagden? “What does my mother have to do with Miss Darling?”
He could pirouette a total of nine times, sometimes ten, and he’d never felt as dizzy as he did now.