Page 85 of Corrupt

Charles Hale-Fitzroy did not do fragile.

Until now, it would seem.

“Tristan.” His voice wasn’t weak, but it was tired enough to unsettle me. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I switched with Milly,” I said too quickly. Far too defensively. “Thought I should come.”

“Hm.” He watched me as if trying to solve a puzzle. “Marcus didn’t need to involve you in this.”

“Clearly he did, because it was looking as though you weren’t going to.”

A flash of irritation crossed his face before he smoothed it away. “I was going to tell you.”

“When?” I sat down and immediately regretted the shorts and shirt. The air conditioning was fierce here. Or maybe my shivers were about something else. “Before or after your funeral?”

“I didn’t want you worrying about something that might not become serious.”

“You’re having treatment. For cancer. It is serious.”

Silence stretched, punctuated only by the pump’s quiet hiss. For the first time in my life, he looked unsure of what to say.

“It’s manageable,” he settled on. “Radiotherapy. A few months, perhaps more. We caught it early.”

“So Henry tells me. Why you couldn’t is the troubling question.”

“Because you’re my son, not my caretaker. I didn’t want to become—”

“A burden?” I finished for him.

“Your work is demanding, Tristan. I didn’t want this overshadowing your pupillage.”

I almost laughed. “Overshadowing it? I found out from Marcus in the middle of the Strand.”

“As I said, he needn’t have troubled you.”

“Well, I’m here now.” I sat back. “So you can tell me what this all is now.”

“Hasn’t Doctor Henry Redmayne given you a blow-by-blow account?”

“Henry is doctoring other wounds.”

“Ah, of course. It is for the best.”

Of course, it was. For everyone but Henry and Zara.

I swallowed, tension knotting itself in my chest. “What’s the treatment for exactly?”

“Lung. The cough wouldn’t shift. They thought it was an infection at first, but—” He gestured vaguely, bitterness slipping through. “These things have their own intentions.”

Lung cancer. And he’d been going to work through this, through everything, just shouldering it as if his body wasn’t breaking down.

I didn’t know whether to admire him or shout at him.

“Dad…”

Nor did I know where the sentence was going. I hadn’t called him Dad in years. Somewhere around thirteen, ‘father’ had been imposed on us, as if titles mattered more than blood.

He lifted a hand as if brushing it away. “Tristan, don’t look at me as if I’m dying. I’m ill, not finished.”