She stood up, surprising both of them, and walked to his side. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened, then relaxed beneath her touch.
“You mustn’t blame yourself forever,” she said. “Mother made her choice, too. She wasn’t a woman to be led by anyone, not even her husband.”
The Earl shook his head but didn’t speak.
Celine dropped to her knees by his chair, looking up into his face. “You have punished yourself long enough. I need to hear you forgive yourself, or I’ll go mad.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. For a long moment, he stared at her as if seeing her for the first time since she was a girl.
She kept her voice steady. “I’ve lived in fear of childbirth since I was old enough to understand what it meant. I thought it would be the end of me, too. But it doesn’t have to be, not if we stop pretending we’re doomed.”
He managed a small, astonished laugh. “You really do sound like her.”
She patted his hand. “That’s the best thing you could say to me.”
They sat in silence, the only sound the hiss of the fire and the soft tick of the clock on the mantelpiece.
She looked up, a new resolve brightening her eyes. “There’s a musical soiree at Lady Eliza Ashford’s next week. You’re coming with me.”
He gaped. “I haven’t left the house for a year, Celine.”
“It’s time. You’re an earl, not a hermit.”
He made a sound that might have been a protest, but she cut him off with a shake of her head.
“You’ll wear your best cravat and shave your beard, or I’ll enlist the staff to tie you to your armchair.”
He stared at her, then at the dying fire. “You mean it?”
“I do.” She gripped his hand, squeezing hard. “We’re done being ghosts, Father. I’ll send a carriage for you, and you’ll be the most handsome man in the room.”
He barked a genuine laugh, the sound echoing off the old study walls. “You are impossible, Celine.”
She rose, smoothing her skirts. “It runs in the family.”
At the door, she paused. The portrait of her mother—in soft blue satin, her smile secretive and half-wild—hung just above the piano. Celine studied it, then touched her own cheek, tracing the same stubborn curve.
“I think she would be proud of us both,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Her father stood beside her, gazing at the portrait with something like peace in his eyes.
For the first time, Celine saw their reflections mingled in the glass—mother and daughter and father, all together again.
She smiled, and for a moment, the house was alive with more than just memory.
Celine arrived at Wylds House as the sun was setting. The front steps were crowded with porters shifting a trunk so large that it could have smuggled two fully grown governesses and a misbehaving cousin.
She paused with one gloved hand on the banister and arched a brow at the commotion.
“Careful,” called Mr. Jenkins, the London butler, as he supervised. “His Grace will have your heads if you chip the wainscot.”
Celine raised her voice above the din. “What is going on here, Jenkins?”
He turned, blinking in surprise, before bowing just the right fraction. “Your Grace. Welcome home.”
She eyed the trunk, then the small crowd, then the butler. “Is Rhys planning an expedition? He never mentioned a need for additional deadweight. Has he acquired a taste for foreign entombment?”
Mr. Jenkins stifled a smirk. “Not to my knowledge, Your Grace. The trunk is His Grace’s, but he instructed it be taken to the blue drawing room.”
