“Sally. Yes, I shall see both of them.” Luke continued to eat. The food was sumptuous, and there was no sense in letting his father ruin the day, much less the meal. “Mr. Cooke suggested I could stay with them.”

“I can’t imagine they have proper accommodations, unless you’ve bought it for them.”

“I assure you I have not purchased them a house.” Luke refrained from admitting he had sent money so they could rent one when they first arrived. Since then, Scott had found a good job fishing, and the rent was part of his pay.

“They probably live in a hovel.”

“Perhaps, but I’m looking forward to seeing them again, especially with the baby being due almost any day. Your first grandchild, I might add.”

“You might also bite your tongue. That baby is nothing to me. He or she will no doubt be raised in squalor and poverty.”

“It wouldn’t have to be that way. You have the means to keep that from being the case.”

His father gave a low growl. “I won’t go back on my word. Your brother made a grave error in defying me.”

“To marry the woman he loved? That hardly seems fair of you, Father. You have no tenderness for your own child.”

Luke could see he’d riled his father. “He might have at least remained here so that I might oversee the child’s upbringing.”

“So you could take the baby away from them, you mean? I remember the offer. You suggested that he might divorce his wife and return home with the baby so you could see it properly reared.”

“There was nothing wrong with my offer.” Father waved his hand over the linen- and china-covered table. “Just look at what they might have had. I could have given Scott and the child everything. All would have been forgiven with one simple action.”

“An action that would deny Scott happiness and refuse the woman he loved. It would have ripped a newborn from the bosom of its mother.” Luke shook his head. “I cannot approve. It was cruel.”

“It was for the betterment of all. She was nothing more than a scullery maid! My sons could have married royalty. There were offers, as you well know.”

Luke remembered a couple of rather homely daughters of a financially strapped duke—a relative to the queen of England. The duke needed to marry his daughters to money to save his estates and in return had assured Father that his sons would receive titles from Queen Victoria herself. Things like that were important to Luke’s father, a transplanted Englishman.

“He could have had so much more,” Father muttered.

Luke smiled. “But his heart chose Sally. I’ve never seen two people more in love. I would have thought you’d be happy for them, but instead you turned into a raving lunatic.”

“Watch your tongue, boy.” His father shook his finger.