“He was a merchant,” she said, and watched Wilhelm’s face as she spoke, searching for the flicker of disdain she had learned to expect from titled men whenever trade was mentioned, but his expression remained controlled. “A successful one. We had… a comfortable life, while he lived.”
“And then he passed,” Wilhelm said, not as a question, but as recognition.
Madeline’s throat tightened. “Yes.”
He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, and the movement brought him closer in a way that made Madeline’s pulse jump. His closeness always did that, as if her body had decided he was dangerous.
“How old were you?” he asked.
Madeline’s fingers curled into her skirt. “Fifteen.”
Wilhelm’s gaze held hers, and something shifted in his eyes, a quiet understanding that unsettled her more than pity ever could. “That is young.”
“It was,” she said, and tried to smile, but it did not quite form. “And it was… sudden.”
His jaw flexed, and Madeline could see, in the small flex of muscle near his temple, that he was thinking of Tessa. He was imagining his own child at fifteen with no one to raise her and the thought seemed to scrape something raw inside him.
“And your mother?” he asked after a beat.
Madeline’s stomach tightened, but she forced herself to remain composed. “We did not… get on well,” she answered vaguely on purpose.
Wilhelm studied her, and she could feel his gaze moving over her face as if he could see the fracture beneath the polite words. “I gathered as such after you told me that she taught you not to eat in front of men.”
Madeline’s breath caught so sharply she almost coughed. For a heartbeat, she could not speak at all. She could only hear her mother’s voice, sharp as a needle.
Do not chew like that. Do not take another bite.
Madeline swallowed, her throat too raw. She nodded once.
Wilhelm’s expression hardened. “I should not have said it,” he murmured, and there was something strangely careful in his tone now, as though he realized he had put his finger on a bruise and was deciding whether to withdraw or to stay.
Madeline forced her gaze to remain calm, though she could feel heat rising behind her eyes, the humiliating kind that threatened tears.
Wilhelm’s voice lowered. “I am sorry.”
Madeline blinked. “Your Grace…”
“No one deserves that,” he said, cutting her off with quiet finality. His hands gripped his knees. “No child deserves to be taught that her appetite is shameful.”
Madeline’s mouth opened, then closed again, because she did not know how to respond to a kindness that did not ask for anything in return. Her father had given her that kindness, but her father was gone, and she had spent so long learning to expect harshness that gentleness felt like an unfamiliar language.
She managed a small nod. “It is… in the past.”
Wilhelm’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Is it?”
Madeline’s fingers clenched under the fold of her skirt because he was too perceptive, looking at her as though he could see the way she still counted bites in her head.
She forced her voice to remain calm. “It does not matter.”
“It does,” Wilhelm said, and the firmness of it made her stomach dip. “It matters because you are in my house. And you will not be made to feel small.”
Her breath caught. She should have thanked him, should have said something polite, but her tongue felt clumsy, and her chest too full.
Wilhelm leaned back slightly, exhaling as though he had realized he was pushing too close to the edge of something. His gaze drifted to the fire for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter, rougher.
“That,” he said, “is why I have avoided remarrying.”
Madeline stilled. “Your Grace?”
