And his mother's letter proved it.
Frederick stood up, the letter still clutched in his hand. He walked to the window, staring out at the garden where Lydia had stood just hours ago. Where she had listened to his plans and decided that saving him meant leaving him.
He thought about her words. The cruelty of them, the accusations about infatuation, the predictions of regret, the careful enumeration of everything he would lose. But underneath the cruelty, there had been something else. Something that sounded almost like desperation.
I love you more than I've ever loved anything. And that's exactly why I'm doing this.
She had said that. Right before she walked away. She had told him she loved him, and then she had left.
Because she was afraid.
Just like his mother had been afraid. Just like Helena was afraid. Just like everyone in his family had been afraid, for generation after generation, choosing safety over happiness and wondering for the rest of their lives why it felt so empty.
But Lydia wasn't like them. Not really. She had grown up with love—with Thomas' quiet devotion, with the memory of parents who had chosen each other against all odds. She knew what love looked like when it wasn't strangled by fear.
She had just forgotten, for a moment. Helena had made her forget.
And Frederick was going to help her remember.
He crossed to the desk and picked up the letter he had written to Helena earlier, the one severing all ties, the one Boggins had called "aggressive." He read it again with new eyes.
It wasn't enough.
Severing ties in private wasn't enough. Sending letters to sympathetic lords wasn't enough. Making plans and drafting declarations wasn't enough.
He needed to do something bigger. Something public. Something that would show Lydia, Helena, and the entire world that his love was not a passing fancy to be overcome by fear.
He needed to make a choice so absolute, so irrevocable, that no one could ever doubt it again.
If you ever have the chance to choose love, real love, the kind that makes you feel alive, choose it.
He was going to choose it. In front of everyone. In a way that could never be taken back.
But first, he needed to think. To plan. To figure out how to reach Lydia when she was convinced that leaving him was the kindest thing she could do.
He sat down at the desk and began to write.
***
The next morning, he emerged from the study with a plan.
It was audacious, possibly foolish, definitely risky. It would either win him everything or destroy what little remained of his standing in society.
But it was also true. And after a lifetime of lies, of pretending he didn't feel, didn't want, didn't love, Frederick was ready to be true.
Boggins was waiting in the corridor, his expression carefully neutral, but his eyes betraying concern.
"Your Grace. I trust you found the letter... illuminating?"
"I found it devastating." Frederick handed the letter to Boggins. "Read it. Then help me do something my mother never got to do."
"And what is that, Your Grace?"
"Choose love." Frederick’s voice was fierce. "Not in private, where it can be denied or minimised or explained away. In public. In front of everyone who matters."
Boggins read the letter in silence. When he finished, his eyes were suspiciously bright.
"Your mother was a remarkable woman," he said quietly. "I remember her vaguely. I was young when she died, but I remember thinking that she seemed... sad. Even when she smiled, there was something behind her eyes that looked like grief."
