Free A Kiss for Midwinter (The Brothers Sinister) by Courtney Milan

that they deserve.”
    He had. His father had taught him to respect the old. If Jonas did that, though, he’d be prescribing prussic acid and traipsing merrily from autopsy to examination of infants. The elderly were as much a repository of hoary myths as they were keepers of wisdom. They’d just learned to voice their superstitions with greater authority.
    And what did respect for his father even mean under these circumstances? Did it mean doing as he was told, keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, no matter what the consequences?
    “You also taught me to do what I believe to be right.” He laid out a spoon. “I’m having a crew in tomorrow,” he bit out. “And they are going to clean this place out.”
    His father almost choked. “I’ll—I’ll have the constable in again, I will. Thief—that’s what you are, no better than a thief!” His face turned florid and blotchy, and he raised a fist in the air, shaking it. “You just want me to be dependent on you, to have nothing of my own. What kind of son are you?”
    “Calm yourself.” Jonas took hold of his father’s wrist in some alarm. The pulse was hard and irregular, racing at a worrisome rate. He’d had one heart attack once, and that had left him in his current weakened condition. Another one…
    “Calm myself! How can I calm myself when my only son is threatening to remove my livelihood?”
    Once, Lucas Grantham would have shouted those words. Now, he could scarcely draw breath to speak them loudly. But his face reflected his fury, red and mottled.
    He reacted this way any time Jonas suggested taking anything away. It was beyond rational explanation. He’d simply become fixed upon his scrap metal. The person he had been in his life was still there, but he’d hardened and solidified around this irrational core. Even if Jonas did hire a work crew—even if the constables allowed it to happen—he suspected that his father would work himself into an injury just watching. How could he do that to him?
    But the alternatives—to let it go undone, or worse, to rob his father of all his dignity and to actually etherize him, as if cleaning his house were an act of mental surgery—were equally unpalatable. There was no good way out of this situation.
    “No, no,” he said soothingly. “You misunderstand me. I won’t be removing anything from the premises.” It wasn’t lying, what he said. Just a change of mind, a change of tactics. “I just…”
    He sighed, and thought of Lydia. He wasn’t sure how his project was going. She’d talked to him today. He didn’t think he’d shocked her too badly.
    “There is a young lady I would like to bring to see you,” he finally said. “Her name is Miss Lydia Charingford, and she is very dear to me.”
    His father lowered his fist. His breathing slowed. “A young lady?” he echoed. “That’s good, Jonas. Is she pretty?”
    “Very pretty.”
    Pretty didn’t even begin to describe Lydia.
    “I want you to meet her. All I want is to have some people in, to…rearrange things.” He winced at the thought. “To put some of the loose items up in boxes. You know ladies these days, Father, with their wide skirts. After Henry’s accident, I’d hate for anything to happen to her if she should brush up against the wrong pile.”
    “Just rearranging?” his father said in a querulous voice. “Not…not getting rid of anything, are they?”
    “Just rearranging. I promise. Perhaps some of the boxes might be put out back, to make a little room. And then we can find someone to come in and do for you until Henry is on his feet again.”
    His father’s pulse had returned to normal. His skin was no longer so dangerously flushed. For now, the crisis had been averted. He picked up his spoon and took a bite of soup. “That’s good,” he said. “So tell me about your Miss Charingford. How did you meet?”

    L YDIA SPENT THAT NIGHT IN A DAZE. She scarcely heard her father and mother speak over dinner.