Madeline’s throat tightened. “I am here,” she whispered. “Sleep.”
Tessa’s fingers curled around Madeline’s hand once, then slowly loosened as she drifted off, her breathing evening out.
Madeline remained beside her a moment longer, watching her small face in the candlelight, and felt again that sharp ache of attachment, that terrifying warmth that made her want to stay, protect, and belong to this family.
When she finally returned to her own room, the corridor was quiet, the house settled into night.
She opened her door, expecting darkness. Instead, she found a tray on the small table near the fire, covered neatly with a cloth.The scent of warm bread and broth rose faintly beneath it, and beside it rested a folded note.
Madeline went still. Her heart began to pound again, slower than before, heavier, as though it understood something her mind had not yet dared to admit.
She crossed the room with careful steps, as if the tray might vanish if she moved too quickly.
The note was addressed simply.Miss Watton.
Madeline’s fingers trembled as she unfolded it. And before she could even read the words, she felt warmth bloom in her chest, because she already knew, with a certainty that frightened her, that this was attention and care, something a man like the Duke of Kirkford did not give lightly.
CHAPTER 11
“Theresa.”
Wilhelm stopped short at the edge of the corridor.
Laughter spilled through the open terrace doors at the far end of the hall, bright and unrestrained, carrying easily across the stone floors. It was not the polite, contained sound he was accustomed to hearing from his daughter, not the careful cheer she offered in measured portions, but something fuller, freer, utterly careless of who might hear. The realization struck him with unexpected force, because it had been far too long since he had heard that sound from her at all.
He stood there for a brief moment, listening, his brow furrowing as the laughter rose again, and then, without quite acknowledging the choice, he moved toward it, his steps quiet, his boots making no sound against the stone as though he did not wish to announce himself.
The terrace doors stood open to the winter air, and beyond them the grounds were alive in a way he did not at first recognize as his own estate. Snow lay thick across the lawns, unbroken except where small boots had cut careless paths through it. Tessa darted across the white expanse with her skirts gathered high. Her cheeks were flushed pink with cold and exhilaration and her breath was visible in the sharp air as she laughed again and veered away.
Miss Watton stood a short distance away, half turned toward her, bent slightly as she shaped a snowball between gloved hands. Her movements were quick and sure despite the cold. Her laughter echoed warmly and openly when Tessa shrieked and jumped away, the effortless sound surprising Wilhelm. As he watched them together, he felt a sudden tightness in his chest; the lively scene was so different from the careful order he kept at home that, for a moment, it seemed like he was witnessing something entirely apart from himself.
Wilhelm took in the scene before him, aware at once that this was not a lesson conducted under orderly supervision but something looser, louder, and far more alive, filled with movement and cold air and a reckless sort of delight that set every instinct shaped by years of responsibility on edge. Snow was treacherous underfoot, hills invited falls, and children, however spirited, were easily hurt, and yet he did not step forward at once or raise his voice as he knew he should have done.
Instead, he watched the way Madeline encouraged Tessa without hovering, how her laughter met the child’s rather than overshadowing it, how Tessa kept glancing back at her not forinstruction but as though seeking quiet permission to be wholly herself, and how naturally they moved together, unguarded and sure, as though such ease had always belonged between them.
Madeline’s presence seemed to soften the world around his daughter, making room for her to run and shout and exist without apology, and the sight of it stirred something in Wilhelm that unsettled him far more deeply than the cold or the snow ever could.
Tessa had not looked over her shoulder once since he had begun watching, and the realization struck him with a sharpness he had not anticipated, unsettling in its immediacy. A sensation uncomfortably close to jealousy stirred in his chest, unwelcome and swiftly disciplined, and he told himself at once that it was concern, nothing more than a father asserting himself in the face of risk. It was his responsibility to intervene when play edged toward danger and when his child forgot her own limits.
And yet, when he finally stepped out onto the terrace, the cold air cutting across his face and seeping through his coat, his heart was beating faster than the temperature alone could justify. His shoulders hunched as though bracing for something. He paused there for a moment, one gloved hand curling against his palm, his gaze fixed on his daughter, readying himself before crossing an unseen threshold.
“Theresa,” he called, his voice carrying across the snow, even as his jaw set and his posture straightened, authority settling over him like armor as he waited for her to turn.
Both turned.
Miss Watton stopped laughing immediately. Her posture straightened at once and she dropped the snowball she’d been hastily forming just a moment before. For a fleeting second, something like guilt crossed her face, as though she had been caught doing something improper.
Tessa, on the other hand, groaned.
“Papa,” she said, with all the drama of a child whose joy had been discovered, “you’re going to ruin it.”
Wilhelm paused mid-step, the cold biting through the soles of his boots as he surveyed the expanse of white beyond the terrace doors. Snow lay thick across the grounds, unbroken except for a narrow path cut by the gardeners that morning, and beyond it the hill sloped away, smooth and inviting in a way that made his reflexes bristle.
“I am preventing injury,” he said flatly.
Madeline stood a few paces behind Tessa, her cheeks already flushed from the cold, her eyes bright with a kind of quiet excitement Wilhelm had come to recognize over the past days. He now understood Miss Watton more thoroughly and saw that her eagerness had nothing to do with recklessness and everything to do with joy. She had wrapped herself in a wool cloak that softened her lines without hiding them. The fabric moved gently as the air stirred around her curves.
“We mean to go sledding next,” she said, tone mild but unyielding. “Not prepare for battle.”
