She had to speak to him, she decided as evening approached. Before she could talk herself out of it, she made her way to the study. The door stood ajar and she paused at the threshold, the tea tray balanced in her hands. She took a deep breath and peered through the gap.
Thaddeus sat behind his desk, but he was not working. The papers before him lay untouched, the ink in his standish long since dried. He was staring at some point beyond the window with an expression that made Maribel’s heart ache for him.
He looked lost. Utterly, completely lost.
She thought of the breakfast table. Of the way his voice had cracked ever so slightly when he spoke of Nicholas. Of the way hehad fled rather than face a child’s innocent questions about the father he would never know.
What happened to you?she wondered once again.What broke inside you so thoroughly that you cannot even speak of love without retreating behind your walls?
She did not announce herself. She simply pushed the door open with her hip, crossed the carpet with quiet steps, and set the tea tray upon the corner of his desk.
Thaddeus stirred, his gaze focusing slowly, as though returning from a great distance.
“Lady Blackwood?—”
“You missed dinner.” She kept her voice neutral, uninflected. “Mrs. Allen was concerned.”
“I was not hungry.”
“Nevertheless.” She straightened, her hands clasped before her. “The tea is hot. You should drink it before it cools.”
She turned to leave, but something made her pause at the threshold. She did not look back—could not look back, not with the image of his grief still burning behind her eyes—but she spoke into the silence nonetheless.
“He fears forgetting his parents.”
She heard the sharp intake of breath behind her, felt the weight of his attention upon her back.
“I told him what I could,” she continued quietly. “What I knew. Not that… I knew Nicholas all that well.” A pause. “You could tell him more, if you wished. You knew him far better than I.”
The silence stretched. Maribel waited, her heart beating too fast, her fingers curled into her palms.
“Thank you,” Thaddeus said at last. His voice was rough, scraped raw. “For the tea.”
She inclined her head without turning and stepped into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind her with trembling hands.
The days that followed brought no resolution, only a deepening of the strange tension that had settled over Blackwood like morning mist.
Maribel threw herself into Oliver’s care with renewed determination. She reorganised the nursery completely—not merely moving the chair this time, but rearranging the entire space, if only to keep her mind somewhat busy. She requested new books from the library, commissioned art supplies from the village, established a schedule of lessons and play that bore no resemblance to the rigid structure Thaddeus had imposed.
Little by little, she thought as the week carried on, she could see a bit of a change in Oliver. He would never, she feared, be the carefree boy he’d have been with Nicholas and Margaret. Yet he now laughed more readily, cried less often, and slept through the night without waking to nightmares.
“Why can’t I play with Thomas?”
Maribel looked up from her book. Oliver sat cross-legged on the nursery floor, a half-finished puzzle spread before him, his brown eyes fixed upon Maribel with a curiosity that was unbound as only a child’s could be.
Maribel’s hands stilled upon the picture book she had been selecting from the shelf. She had been expecting this question, but that did not make it easier to answer.
“Thomas has his own duties to attend to,” she said carefully. “His father needs his help with the gardens.”
“But he said he could show me the frogs. He said they’re big this time of year.” Oliver’s lower lip pushed forward. “Why did the footman make me come inside? I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
No. He hadn’t been. That was precisely the problem.
Maribel crossed to sit beside him on the carpet, her skirts pooling around her in waves of dove-grey muslin. “Sometimes,” she began, choosing each word with care, “grown-ups have rulesthat don’t make sense to children. Rules about who can be friends with whom, and when, and how.”
“That’s foolish.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped her. “Perhaps it is.”
