His heart performed some acrobatic maneuver that had no business occurring in a grown man’s chest.
She was deadheading the roses, he realized. Her attention fixed on each bloom with that particular focus she brought to every task, examining, judging, and making swift decisions with the secateurs in her ungloved hands. Sunlight caught in her hair—loosely pinned today, soft curls escaping to frame her face in a way that made his fingers ache with wholly inappropriate urges.
She was entirely unaware of him, consumed by the work she was busy with. She had a smudge of soil on one cheek.
He should leave. Should remount Apollo and ride in literally any other direction. Go back to his office, call Pemberton, and continue the frustrating conversation…
His feet carried him forward instead.
Closer. Near enough to hear her humming—something wordless and gentle, the same sort of tune she sang to Henry. Near enough to watch her hands move with practiced confidence among the thorns, selecting each spent bloom, cutting clean, dropping it into her basket with economical grace.
She had not noticed his approach, too absorbed in her work. He stood perhaps ten paces distant, caught between the urge to announce himself properly and the desire to simply watch her exist unguarded for a few moments longer.
This was her domain—the gardens she had coaxed into beauty through patient care. Here, her shoulders lost some of their careful tension. Here, her expression softened into something approaching contentment. Here, she could simply be, rather than constantly performing the role of a proper widow.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been making inquiries.”
The words emerged without conscious permission, abrupt and graceless. Amelia’s hands stilled mid-cut, the secateurs suspended above a particularly dead bloom. Her shoulders stiffened beneath the thin muslin.
“Both Lord Ashbourne and Lord Denby… have expressed their interest in courting you further.”For several heartbeats, she remained frozen—perfectly still save for the slight tremor in her hands. Then, with movements that seemed to require considerable effort, she set down the secateurs and rose to her feet. Her hands moved to brush soil from her skirts, but they were shaking badly enough that she curled them into fists at her sides instead.
When she finally turned to face him, her expression was perfectly composed. Perfectly, devastatingly blank.
“I see.” Her voice emerged flat, stripped of all inflection. “Then it seems my future is well in hand.”
“Of course,” he continued almost too quickly, “The decision remains yours. Who you allow to court you. They… both… both these gentlemen are quite… adequate…”
“Adequate?”
Blood rushed to his cheeks at the question in her voice. She’d had an adequate marriage before. Did she not deserve more? Much more.
“I… You… If either of them is the one who… the one you can see…”
She turned to face him.
“The one who takes Henry and me off your hands? The one I marry? Henry’s new father?’
He could not show her how much those words, those ideas, tore through him. Henry calling another man papa. Her saying ‘yes’ to another man, becoming someone else’s wife… Someone who would have the right to comfort her, to touch her, to look at her. Tobias cleared his throat, suddenly uncertain of the ground that had seemed solid mere moments ago. “I only wish to keep my promise. To see you settled. Secure.”
“Of course.” Her smile was small and sharp as the thorns surrounding them. “That was our agreement.”
He wanted to go back on that promise more than anything. Wanted to tell her that he did not want her to leave. Not that he could offer her anything. Which was exactly why he knew he needed to let her go. Who was he but the rakish younger brotherof her late husband? Lord Ashbourne, Lord Denby… Either one of them would offer her security. A proper inheritance.
Safety from scandal.
They could offer her a husband who was born for his title, not one who inherited it from the brother who’d chosen her first.
“I… I only want what is best for you,” he muttered at long last. “For both you and Henry.”
The boy.
The boy who loved him, who called him Papa. The boy, who was the first person in memory to look at him as though he were something special. The boy who deserved to grow up far removed from tarnished reputations and whispers of scandals.
Neither spoke for a long moment. The silence stretched between them, heavy with things neither would voice. A bee droned past, absurdly loud in the quiet. Somewhere distant, voices drifted from the stables. The roses perfumed the air with sweetness that felt almost obscene in its cheerfulness.
Tobias found himself studying her—truly looking, perhaps for the first time in days. The curve of her neck where sunlight painted her skin gold. The way escaped curls moved with the slight breeze. The rapid flutter of her pulse visible at her throat. The careful neutrality of her expression that could not quite conceal the hurt lurking beneath.
His hands ached to reach for her. His throat closed around words he had no right to speak.
