“I need a mother for my daughter,” he continued, and he said it with a bluntness that felt almost painfully honest. “Not a title-hungry woman who will tolerate Tessa as a chore or treat her as something broken.”
Madeline’s heart beat faster because she could hear the fear of trusting and being punished for it beneath his control.
“And because,” Wilhelm added, his gaze returning to her, “my own mother was not… kind.”
He hesitated, only briefly, as though weighing whether the truth was worth the disturbance it would cause. Then he exhaled.
“My mother,” he said, “was cold. Precise. Affection was something to be earned, and rarely.” His jaw flexed, though his voice remained even. “Even as a child, I never expected warmth. I swore I would never become her.”
Madeline did not interrupt. She could hear, now, that this was not an explanation offered lightly or frequently.
“When Leah came to me,” he said, and his tone shifted, softened by memory rather than grief, “she was already my friend. She needed protection, a name that would keep the world at bay.”
He glanced away, just long enough to gather himself. “I married her to help her. Not because I wanted a wife. Certainly not because I wanted children.”
Madeline’s stomach dropped.
“I had no intention of building a family,” Wilhelm said plainly. “I believed myself unsuited to it. I believed that wanting nothing was safer than risking becoming someone cruel without meaning to.”
His gaze returned to her then. “Tessa was never planned. But once she existed, she became my reason for existing in a way nothing else ever had.”
The fire popped softly. Wilhelm did not move, and neither did she.
“I will not give her a mother who rules her the way I was ruled,” he said at last. “That is the only certainty I have.”
A quiet pressure built inside Madeline’s chest, because she had seen the way he held himself rigid, and suddenly she understood that perhaps he had learned that rigidity the same way she had learned hers.
He hesitated, then said, “Leah, my late wife, was kind.” His jaw flexed. “She was my friend before she was my wife.”
Madeline held herself very still, because she sensed that this was not something he spoke of easily, and she did not want to startle him into silence.
“I married because it was the sensible thing to do,” Wilhelm continued, and his eyes sharpened, as if daring her to judge him. “Her husband died and left her with debts that would have ruined her. My position could protect her, and I thought she would be a good mother.”
Madeline’s breath caught again, not from lust this time, but from the bleakness of it. “And she was?”
“I’m certain she would have been,” he said, and for the first time his voice cracked, just slightly, eyes dropping. “She passed after the birth.”
Silence settled between them, heavy and intimate. Madeline could hear the fire, the faint settling of the house, and she could hear, most of all, the sound of his restraint, the way he held himself together as if grief might tear him apart.
Madeline’s chest ached. “I am sorry,” she said, and the words felt inadequate the moment they left her mouth.
Wilhelm’s gaze lifted again, and there was something almost exposed there now. “There was no passion,” he admitted, voice low. “No romance. We did our duty once, and it resulted in a child. Leah laughed afterward and said perhaps we had done it wrong because it had felt… unnatural.” His mouth thinned. “And I agreed.”
Madeline felt heat creep into her cheeks because she could not stop her mind from imagining his large hands, his mouth, his body pressed close, and the thought was so indecent it made her grip the book harder in her lap as if she could anchor herself to paper and ink instead of flesh.
Wilhelm’s eyes remained on hers. “I believed duty was enough,” he said quietly. “Then she died and left me alone with a child I did not know how to raise, and I have spent eight years trying not to fail her.”
Madeline’s chest clenched. She saw him, suddenly, as someone who had been handed something fragile and precious and had been terrified of breaking it.
“Tessa is lucky,” Madeline said, and her voice was steadier than she felt. “She is lucky to have you.”
Wilhelm’s brows drew together. “Is she?”
“Yes,” Madeline insisted. “You care deeply for her. It is clear.”
His gaze focused on her, as if he did not know what to do with praise. “I am not gentle.”
“You try,” Madeline said softly. “You show her she is safe. Even when you are stern, she knows you are present.”
