Thomasina gave Juliana a brief look filled with meaning and then took her father’s arm. “Let us take a walk, Papa,” she said, reverting to a more familiar address than she normally used. “That will do you good. Juliana wanted to read, I think.”

Her father jerked his head between her and her sister. “Ah, I thought you were Juliana. Thomasina then. You wish to walk?”

She bit back the painful reaction to his continued lack of differentiation between her and her sisters and forced a smile. “I do. And Jasper—”

Her husband looked at her as if he had all but forgotten she and her family were there. “Yes, good. I have some work to do in the library. I’ve been putting it off too long. I’ll see you all later.”

Thomasina flinched as he departed the foyer with very little further interaction. But she was driven to the course of turning her father’s mind. She had to focus on that, not Jasper’s dismissal.

She edged her father out the door and down the path that led to the stable and beyond toward the beach below. As they walked, he drew in a breath and made a face. “I’ve never liked the sea air,” he said. “Sour, I think.”

She tilted her head. “No? I find it bracing.”

“Then you will be happy here,” he said. “And you should thank me for my quick agreement to give you over as replacement for Anne.”

“That is what I hoped to speak to you about today,” she said softly. “You cannot truly think to leave before we know Anne is safe, can you?”

Her father stared off toward the sea as they crested the bluff and picked their way down the narrow path to the beach. “Juliana has been haranguing me enough on this subject, and now you start. I thought you were the quiet one.”

Thomasina sighed. “I am not only that, Papa. I have other parts of my personality, you know.”

“Well, I like the one,” he grunted. “But I suppose you think, like your sister, that I owe it to Anne to stay.”

“Don’t you care what is happening to her?” Thomasina asked. “Does it not wake you at night to picture it?”

He seemed to consider that question, and then he sighed. “Anne was always wild. If she made bad decisions and does not like the consequences, then I suppose she will learn a lesson.”

She drew back in horror at that dismissive response. She felt a sudden desire to rail at him, tell him what his disregard had meant to her, to her sisters, over the years. To demand the respect and care he ought to have given since their mother’s death.

But she didn’t. Not only did she not have the strength to confront him on the subject, she knew it would do no good. Her father wouldn’t change. He didn’t care to change.

He didn’t care at all, and now that fact slapped her harder than it ever had.