Wilhelm’s gaze hardened. “There is only one choice. I do nothing.”
Henry shook his head. “That is not a choice; it is torture. You either take her, or you find another solution.”
Wilhelm’s eyes narrowed. “Take her,” he repeated. “As though she is a bottle of wine one might uncork.”
Henry leaned forward again, his voice sharpening. “Do not twist my words. You are not a careless man, Wilhelm. If you chose her, you would not use her. You would marry her tomorrow if you believed you were permitted to want what you want.”
The statement struck too close. Wilhelm’s chest tightened, and for a moment he felt the shame of recognition, the weight of his own desire made visible.
Henry held up a hand. “But you will not do that. Fine. Then find a wife.”
Wilhelm’s mouth tightened. “I cannot.”
Henry blinked once. “You cannot?” he repeated, as though tasting the words with disbelief. “You can manage an entire duchy, you can face down the most vicious gossips in London when you must, and yet you cannot find yourself a wife.”
Wilhelm’s fingers curled against the table. “It is not that simple.”
“It is,” Henry said bluntly. “You have had no time, yes. You have told yourself for years that you cannot afford a wife because a wife brings complications and expectations.”
Wilhelm did not answer.
Henry’s gaze did not soften. “But you are already vulnerable,” he said. “Because you have let this governess into your home, and she has softened something in you, and now you are walking around like a man haunted.”
Wilhelm’s throat tightened. He wanted to deny it. Yet even now, in a tavern miles from his estate, he could not escape the memory of Madeline’s expression when she looked at him. She had simply held his gaze as though she could see the man beneath the title, and that was its own kind of seduction.
He had not known what to do with it, only that desire did not absolve him of responsibility, and he would not harm her for the sake of it.
“I cannot ruin her,” Wilhelm said again, quieter now, as though repetition might turn it into truth solid enough to stand upon.
Henry nodded once, conceding that point. “Then you must distract yourself.”
Wilhelm’s gaze flicked up, cold. “With a wife?”
“With a wife,” Henry confirmed. “Because you need something respectable to occupy you, that will stop you from looking at Madeline as though you are starving. And do not look at me like that.”
He had married once, because Leah had been kind and familiar and willing. They had been friends before they were husband and wife, and that had been the sum of it. What followed—the brief, awkward intimacy that produced Tessa—had been obligation, not desire. It had been the closest he had ever come to love.
After Leah’s death, there had been no one. No woman who stirred anything in him, no presence that felt worth the disruption, no one he trusted to look upon his daughter with anything approaching devotion. Until now.
Wilhelm’s jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
Henry continued, relentless. “All this time you have spent your hours on the duchy, and when you were not doing that, you were managing governesses. Replacing them. Searching for another because no one would stay. Now Tessa has a governess who will stick around, and you have something you have not had in years.”
Wilhelm’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table. “And what is that?”
Henry’s gaze was sharp, almost unforgiving. “The ability to consider yourself as more than a machine built to keep a household functioning.”
Wilhelm stared into his drink. The idea of seeking a wife made his skin tighten with discomfort, because he had trained himself to live without the softness of companionship. He had learned to endure loneliness because it was clean and predictable. Desire, however, was neither.
“And if I do not?” Wilhelm said, his voice steady but strained. “What then?”
Henry’s eyes locked Wilhelm’s. “Then desire will torment you until you act.”
Wilhelm absorbed the words in silence. He lifted the glass and finished the drink in one measured swallow, needing the burn in his throat and the weight of it in his stomach to anchor him, to give his body something it could understand.
Henry watched him. “You know I am right.”
Wilhelm felt a fierce resistance grow within him, an instinctive refusal to admit that he could be pushed into action by something so human as longing. Yet he also knew, with uncomfortable clarity, that Henry had named the truth he had been avoiding. The days were no longer merely busy. They were charged. Every encounter with Madeline left him aware of himself in a way he hated, aware of his body, of his hunger, of his restraint.
