She was taken from me by my father. He stole all those things from me and left me with anger, hate, and resentment.
Winston drew a slow, painful breath. “I was blind. I thought duty could make a family. When she began to drift away, I called it melancholy, nothing more. If I’d seen, if I’d stood against my father and refused to marry her, then perhaps she’d have lived.”
Adeline reached for his hand, resting her fingers lightly on his. “And likely her father would have blamed her for the failure of the match. What kind of life would she have had then as the object of his resentment?”
“I should have tried.”
He looked at her then, eyes dark and unguarded. “I was a coward, Adeline. I did what was expected. And when it killed her, I kept her ghost alive by shutting every door. It was easier than acknowledging the truth.”
“Louisa does not know what would hurt her,” Adeline said softly. “She feels her mother as something distant, not cruel. You protected her in your way.”
He closed his eyes, and for a while there was only the quiet tick of the clock. When he spoke again, his tone had changed.
“You understand grief well.”
Adeline hesitated. The letter. The man in the theater. The lie she had told Cordelia. The secrets that would not stay buried.
She was vacillating, and she knew it.
“I have experienced my share of mourning. My mother’s death was particularly hard.”
That was true, and the tears she rubbed from her cheeks were real. He stroked away a rogue tear-trail with his thumb.
“I do not know what that is like. My father’s death took away a disciplinarian who desired to control everything and everyone around him. His passing removed the weight from around my neck of trying to live up to his ideals.”
“I think you have replaced that weight with one of your own making. It may be even heavier,” Adeline observed.
“Very astute. What of your weights?”
“Do I carry a burden?” Adeline said, deflecting.
“Of course you do,” Winston replied. “You have been like a chicken watching a fox enter the coop since we arrived. Tell me what concerns you. Please.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Her hand remained tucked in his. She saw the injuries his courage had inflicted on him. Saw the future that had nearly come to pass, where the Duke of Greystone was dead.
Dead because I panicked. I owe him something.
“Winston,” she began, and the name came more easily than she expected, “I need to tell you something.”
He studied her, eyes open and without barrier. “You don’t have to. I have no right to pester. It is only that I want to know. But what I want and what I am entitled to are different things.”
“You do have a right to know. You are my employer, and I am the reason you are swathed in bandages.”
Winston grimaced. “I have had worse falling from my horse.”
Adeline raised an eyebrow, and he grinned.
“Almost,” he said.
That smile, so rare, was not a ray but a blaze of sunshine. It was impossible to ignore or resist. He radiated when he smiled like that. Winston was glowing and it was infectious.
“You’ve been honest with me. I owe you the same,” Adeline said, even as she prepared another lie.
I’m sorry, Winston. Perhaps one day I will be able to tell you everything, but this is not it.
She drew a breath. “The man I told you was my fiancé; he wasn’t only unkind. He was violent. Controlling. My father…refused to help. He called it my fault. Then, to add insult to injury, he jilted me.”
Winston said nothing, but his jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. Adeline thought that he would look the same whether he was angry at her fictitious fiancé or seeing through her story. It sent a chill down her spine, thinking that she was about to lose her position and be banished. She might never see Winston again. Or Louisa. Or Cordelia. The names appeared in her regret in that order.
