Maribel had pulled every cushion from every settee, draped blankets over chairs to form walls, and enlisted Oliver’s help inconstructing what could only generously be called architectural chaos. The boy was in his element, his earlier boredom forgotten as he directed the placement of each element with the seriousness of a general planning a siege.
“That one’s the tower,” he declared, pointing to a particularly tall stack that swayed ominously. “And this is the drawbridge—see? We can pull the chaise back and forth.”
“Brilliant tactical thinking.” Maribel wedged another cushion into place, creating what might have been a battlement or possibly just another source of structural instability. She’d removed her shoes at some point—they’d been interfering with her ability to climb over furniture—and her hair had come loose from its pins, falling in dark waves around her shoulders.
She looked, she imagined, utterly ridiculous.
She could not remember the last time she’d felt this light.
“We need a flag,” Oliver said suddenly. “Every castle needs a flag.”
“What shall we use?”
He looked around the room with the focused intensity of a child on a mission, then his face lit with inspiration. “Your shawl! The blue one you were wearing earlier!”
Maribel retrieved it from where she’d draped it over a chair, and together they fashioned a banner from her shawl and a fire poker. Oliver planted it atop their precarious tower with a flourish that nearly brought the whole structure tumbling down.
“Perfect,” he breathed, stepping back to admire their work. “Now we just need?—”
He stopped mid-sentence, his gaze fixed on something behind her.
Maribel turned.
Thaddeus stood in the doorway.
He’d been out riding that morning—she’d heard the grooms discussing it over breakfast—and had clearly just returned. His dark hair was damp from the rain, his riding coat spotted with water, and he held his gloves in one hand as though he’d frozen mid-gesture of removing them.
His eyes swept the room as though it were a battlefield.
The cushions pulled from their carefully arranged positions. The blankets draped over Chippendale chairs worth more than most people earned in a year. The ottoman serving as a drawbridge. Her shawl—a gift from Lady Eleanor, and one of her few remaining possessions of any value—tied to a fire poker and planted atop a tower of silk damask that was currently defying several laws of physics.
And in the centre of it all: herself, barefoot and dishevelled, with Oliver clutching her hand and looking suddenly uncertain.
The silence stretched.
Maribel lifted her chin, preparing for the lecture, the cold dismissal, the reminder that drawing rooms were not meant for play and duchesses were not meant to remove their shoes and build forts from furniture that cost more than a cottage.
“The left flank is exposed.”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Thaddeus moved into the room with measured steps, his gaze fixed on their construction with an expression she could not quite decipher. He stopped before the section Oliver had designated as the western wall—two settee cushions propped against each other at a precarious angle.
“Here.” He picked up a cushion from the floor and wedged it into place, reinforcing the weak point with the same precision he might apply to reviewing estate accounts. “You’ll need more support if you expect to withstand a siege.”
Oliver’s mouth had fallen open. Maribel felt her own doing much the same.
Thaddeus stepped back, surveying his addition with a critical eye. Then he nodded once—curt, businesslike—and turned to leave.
“Your Grace,” Maribel found her voice. “Thank you.”
He paused at the threshold without turning back. For a moment she thought he might say something—acknowledge the absurdity of a duke offering architectural advice on pillow fortresses, perhaps even smile at the ridiculousness of it all.
Instead he simply walked away, his footsteps echoing down the corridor until they faded into silence.
Oliver looked up at her, his brown eyes wide. “He helped us.”
“He did.”
