He looked at the three empty chairs. The silence was no longer the peace he craved. It was a loud, accusing roar. He had tried to be patient. He had tried to give them space. But the realization that his own children preferred the isolation of their rooms toa single meal in his presence snapped the last thread of his restraint.
He stood up, the chair screeching harshly against the marble floor.
“Enough,” he growled. He turned to Higgins, his eyes flashing with a dark, restless energy. “Go to their rooms. Go to the library. Go wherever they are hiding and bring them here. All of them. Now.”
“Sir, Master Brook was feeling a bit?—”
“I don’t care if they are in their nightshirts, Higgins,” Rowan interrupted, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble. “Tell them their father requires their presence at the table. I will not have this house remain a graveyard for one more second.”
Higgins hurried away quickly, and a few minutes later, Rowan heard footsteps approaching. The heavy oak doors creaked open, and one by one, the boys filed in. They moved with a synchronized, mechanical slowness that made Rowan’s chest tighten. Anthony led the way, Daniel followed, looking at his boots, and finally, Brook, whose eyes were red-rimmed and dull.
They took their seats quietly; the only sound was the scraping of chairs and the soft clinking of silverware as the servants nervously served the reheated meal.
For several minutes, the dining hall was silent. Rowan watched them and felt a wave of nausea. None of them lifted a fork to their mouths. Anthony pushed a carrot from one side of his plate to the other. Daniel traced patterns in his potatoes. Brook simply stared at his water goblet as if he were trying to disappear into the glass.
The fury Rowan had felt earlier began to evaporate, leaving behind a cold, crushing exhaustion. He looked at the empty seat where Lucy should have been, the seat she had occupied with such vibrant, stubborn life, and realized that the order he had tried to restore was actually just a slow death. He was tired of the coldness. Frustrated.
He dropped his linen napkin onto the table and leaned forward, his voice cracking the silence.
“Stop it,” he said, though the command lacked its usual bite.
The boys didn’t look up.
“Look at me. All of you.”
Reluctantly, three pairs of eyes lifted to meet his. The raw hurt reflected in them was a mirror of his own soul, and it was more than he could bear. Rowan let out a long, shuddering breath, his shoulders finally sagging.
“I am sorry,” he said, the words feeling foreign and heavy on his tongue.
The boys froze. Anthony’s fork hit the porcelain with a sharp ping. “I am sorry for the way I have handled everything,” Rowan continued, his voice low and thick with an emotion he had spent years trying to bury. “From the very moment that your mother passed away. I didn’t handle things as I should. I didn’t take your feelings into consideration.”
Rowan sat back and swallowed.
“I thought that by sending Miss Crampton away, I was protecting you,” he paused, realizing that that wasn’t the entire truth. “I thought I was protecting her. You all might want Lucy as your mother, but we have to consider her feelings, too, and what she truly wants.”
He looked specifically at Brook, whose lip began to tremble.
The honesty of his confession seemed to hang in the air, stripping away the untouchable veneer of the Duke and leaving only a father who was failing.
The silence was broken by a sudden, choked sob. Daniel, usually the most cheerful of the three, shoved his chair back. He didn’t run away like Rowan expected him to. Instead, he stumbled toward the head of the table, his small face flushed and wet with tears.
“I love you, Papa,” Daniel wailed, throwing his arms around Rowan’s waist and burying his face in his father’s coat. The boy’s small frame shook with the force of his grief. “I love you so much, but I just really miss her, and I don’t know what to say.Everything feels wrong. It’s too quiet without her. Why did she have to go?”
Rowan froze for a heartbeat, his arms hovering in shock before he pulled his son close, tucking Daniel’s head under his chin. He felt the dampness of the boy's tears soaking into his waistcoat.
“She made the house loud,” Brook whispered, his voice small and fragile. “She made it feel like a home. Even when she was scolding me for my tricks, she was still nice to me.”
Rowan tightened his grip on Daniel, his heart aching with a physical pressure that made it hard to breathe. Anthony and Brook slowly rose from their chairs, drawn by the rare sight of their father’s vulnerability. They moved toward him until the three of them were clustered around the head of the table.
“We miss her too, Father,” Anthony said. “I’m trying not be sad all the time, but I really am.”
Brook stood at Rowan's elbow. He looked up, his eyes searching Rowan’s face with a frightening intensity. “Was it because you did not love her? Is that why she had to go?”
The question hit Rowan with the force of a physical blow. The word love felt like a heavy, forbidden weight. He looked at the three faces waiting for his answer, and he realized then that lying to them was no longer an option.
“That’s the opposite of the truth, Brook.”
“The opposite?” Anthony chimed in.
