The question landed with unexpected weight. Tobias shifted slightly, allowing him to meet Henry’s earnest gaze.
“What do you mean, stay?”
“You stay.” Henry’s small hand patted Tobias’s chest with emphasis. “Not go away again. Stay with Mama and me.”
Oh.
Tobias’s throat constricted painfully. The boy remembered his departure for London. Remembered six months of absence even at his young age. Of course, he did—children remembered abandonment even when they couldn’t articulate it properly.
“I’m here now,” he said carefully, each word requiring more effort than it should. “Right here with you.”
“But you go away before.” Henry’s lower lip trembled slightly. “You leave.”
“I did. I’m sorry for that.” The apology emerged rough, scraped raw by guilt. “But I’m back now. And I’m not planning on going anywhere.”
Are you not? What happens when Amelia marries Ashbourne? When they establish their own household? You’ll be relegated to visiting uncle at best. Watching from a distance whilst another man raises this boy. Whilst another man makes Amelia laugh. Whilst another man?—
He shut down that spiral before it could consume him entirely.
Henry seemed to accept this assurance, though his next words proved he hadn’t finished interrogating the situation.
“Mama sad when you gone.”
Tobias went very still. “Was she?”
“Yes.” Said with the absolute certainty of a child reporting observed facts. “She looked at your chair at dinner. Lots and lots. And she didn’t smile right.”
“And now?” The question escaped before wisdom could intervene. “Does she smile right now?”
Henry considered this with the gravity of a philosopher contemplating the existence of life.
“Sometimes,” he said at last. “When we play in the garden. When you make funny faces.” Henry twisted in his lap, small hands coming up to frame Tobias’s face with unexpected seriousness.
“I love you, Papa.” Henry pressed his forehead against Tobias’s, the gesture achingly tender. “You the best papa.”
Tobias gathered him close, his eyes burning traitorously. He pressed his face against Henry’s hair and simply held on whilst the boy cried out his small heart.
“I love you too,” Tobias whispered against dark curls. “More than you could possibly know.”
The boy’s breathing evened out, deepened, slipped into genuine sleep. But Tobias didn’t move. Didn’t return him to the nursery or call for Mary. Just sat there in his study, holding Edward’s son—hisson, in every way that mattered—and felt the future he desperately wanted but couldn’t have slip further from reach.
The sound of laughter drifted up from somewhere below. Feminine and warm. Amelia’s laugh, probably in response to something Ashbourne had said.
The appropriate gentleman making the appropriate widow laugh whilst planning their appropriate future together.
Tobias tightened his hold on Henry fractionally.
“I’m sorry, lad,” he whispered to the sleeping child. “I’m so desperately sorry.”
Outside, afternoon light began its slow fade toward evening. Somewhere in the house, propriety continued its inexorable march. And Tobias sat alone in gathering shadows, holding the boy who called him Papa, and wondered precisely when doing the right thing had started feeling so much like dying.
CHAPTER 24
“Pemberton, forgive me—what figure did you say Thornton proposed for the timber?”
Tobias stared at the ledger spread before him, though the neat columns of numbers had long since ceased to hold any meaning. He had been sitting in Edward’s chair—his chair now, he had to keep reminding himself—for the better part of two hours, pretending to review quarterly accounts whilst his mind wandered down corridors it had no business traversing.
“Three hundred and forty pounds, my lord.” Pemberton’s tone was surprisingly patient for someone who had been repeating himself all morning. “For the oak stands on the northern boundary. A fair offer, given current market conditions.”
