He had prepared for many questions, but not this one. “It is not so simple.”
Sophia leaned forward, eyes enormous. “Why not? You’re a Duke. You can do anything you want.” Whisper, having finished exploring, jumped onto the desk and began kneading at it as if it, too, were stricken with loss.
Tristan watched the cat, then watched his daughter, and for a fleeting moment, the urge to say, ‘yes, I will bring her back,’rose in him with such force that it nearly broke his ribs. Instead, he said, “Lady Lavinia has chosen her future. It is not for me to interfere.”
“But what if she wants you to?” Sophia’s voice came out in a rush, as if she had been holding her breath for weeks. “What if she wants—” Here, she faltered, then blurted, “What if she wants you to stop her?”
He could not bear to see himself in her pleading, so he stared down at his hands, noting with distant surprise that they were trembling. “She would never say as much.”
“Maybe she’s waiting for you to say it.” Sophia’s voice was brittle with hope. “I… Father, I think you can do something. Even Whisper thinks it.”
The cat, sensing its cue, let out a mournful mewl.
Tristan struggled to marshal his thoughts. “There are some things that cannot be undone, Sophia. Some mistakes which cannot be corrected.”
He had expected her to argue. Instead, she went perfectly still, like an animal caught in the sights of a predator. “Why not?” she whispered. “You told me nothing was impossible. You said, if I worked hard and learned, I could do anything.”
“That is different.”
“It isn’t.” Now she looked him dead in the eye, and for the first time, he saw a steel in her that surprised him. “Why don’t you marry her, if you don’t want her to go?”
The room spun. He gripped the desk to anchor himself. The absurdity of the question, its childlike bluntness, stripped him bare. He had no answer, because every possible answer was an admission of cowardice.
He heard his own voice say, “Because I cannot.”
Sophia’s brows knit in confusion. “But why?”
He had never told her about his vow, or the guilt that walked beside him every moment of every day. He had never said,“I do not believe I deserve another chance.”He had never said,“I am afraid of loving anyone, because I do not know how to keep them safe.”He did not say it now.
Instead, he folded his hands and said, “There are some things which must remain as they are.”
Sophia’s mouth set in a thin, unhappy line. For a moment, he thought she might argue further, but she only reached out and, without asking, took his hand. “I don’t want things to stay the way they are,” she said. “I want her back.”
He squeezed her hand, just once, before letting go. “So do I,” he said, and the honesty of it shocked them both.
They sat like that for some time, the only sound the slow, uneven thud of Whisper’s purring.
Eventually, Sophia stood, wiped her nose with the heel of her hand, and looked down at the cat. “Come, Whisper. We’ll go to bed and dream better dreams.”
The cat, ever obedient to her moods, hopped down and wound itself around her ankle.
When the door shut, he allowed himself a single, shuddering breath. The pain in his chest did not abate; if anything, it grew sharper.
He sat alone, and if he listened carefully, he could almost hear Lavinia’s voice in the room, or see her shadow across the carpet. It was not a comfort, but it was better than nothing.
“Are you sure that isn’t poison?”
Henry’s voice broke the silence, slicing through the thick blue. Tristan, caught mid-pour, eyed the brandy as if it were something newly discovered, then set the decanter down with a carefulness that was, in itself, a confession.
He did not bother to reply. Instead, he raised the glass to his mouth and drank until the taste burned away anything that might have passed for feeling. He set it down, then reached for the decanter again.
“Ah,” Henry said, sitting across from him. “So it is poison, then.”
Tristan kept his eyes on the glass. “It is the only thing I find tolerable, just now.”
He did not need to say more. The study was private, and Henry had always known when to let silence ferment into the sort of talk men would die before they’d have in daylight.
They sat. The brandy diminished, but Henry’s own glass remained untouched.
