Chapter 202: Suspicious
"You won’t be able to take care of whom anymore, Patrick?"
Making sure to keep his expression neutral, Patrick turned to look at his father and gave him a mild smile. " I was just talking to myself, father. You know how it is. Nostalgia in the air. I never thought I would return here and now that I have..."
Robert tilted his head. "That so?" He climbed a few more steps, and Patrick felt a chill in his heart. It seemed the man had heard more than he intended. HAd he said something that might reveal the truth? But as he quickly thought back, he was sure he had not, so he did not let his panic show as Sir Robert muttered, "Sounded to me like you were mourning a failure. Like you’d given up."
Patrick didn’t answer. Not yet. He had learned long ago that silence had power, too.
Robert narrowed his eyes and this time his tone was sharp, "Who is it, Patrick? Who were you trying to protect?"
"Let it go, father. I just said I was thinking of the past." Patrick said softly, turning halfway toward the portrait again. "It doesn’t matter anymore."
But Robert Collins wasn’t a man who let things go.
"Is it Adam?" The name came out like venom. "You came back for him, didn’t you? After all these years you came back not for your own father or your son! No! You came for an outsider."
Patrick didn’t flinch, but he did face him now. Straight on.
Sir Robert’s jaw tightened and he banged the stick in his hand against the floor, "Spencer told me you always went too soft when it came to that boy. Said you treated him like he was your own. That you undermined discipline. Undermined me, even. Is that true? Have you really returned for him? Answer me now! You punished us with your absence all these years because you wanted to be with Adam?"
There was a time when Patrick would have collapsed to his knees to explain himself in at this tone from his father. But this time, he only shook his head and answered calmly," They were both children, Father.. Yes, Spencer was mine. Adam wasn’t. And yes—yes, I shielded Adam sometimes. Because he needed it."
"So you did love him more," Robert snapped, his eyes flashing as he controlled the urge to take his stick and hit his errant son.