"She always seemed to hope I'd be a trader like my father, I'd imagine." Not that he ever could have figured out why she'd want him to be anything like that man. Shirogane would have preferred the life he'd wound up in, prison and all, rather than running out on his own wife and son when fatherhood became too constricting.

But something Mary had said caught his attention rather well. "'We?'" he asked curiously, completely unaware of the possibility of that being a sensitive subject. He hadn't been aware the governess had any children...was she simply that attached to her own charges?