“It must have been beautiful,” she said softly.
Mrs. Allen’s face softened. “It was, my lady. Her Grace spent every spare moment there, especially after—” She stoppedherself, pressing her lips together. “Forgive me. I speak out of turn.”
“Not at all.” Maribel turned from the window, though the image lingered—that garden, overgrown and wild, much like the heart of the man who had ordered it sealed away. “Thank you, Mrs. Allen.”
She continued walking, her thoughts circling this new piece of the puzzle that was Thaddeus Blackwood. A man who could not tend his mother’s garden. A man who locked away the parts of his home that held memory and meaning who could not cope with any emotion that was not perfectly controlled.
She hastened her steps to his study and froze at the sight.
Behind a massive oak desk, Thaddeus Blackwood sat like a king holding court. His eyes followed her every movement with coldness.
He did not rise when she entered. He did not offer her a seat. He simply watched her approach with those winter-grey eyes, and Maribel felt the weight of his scrutiny like a physical thing—assessing, measuring, searching for weaknesses.
She refused to give him any.
“The boy is settled?” he asked. His voice was clipped, businesslike, as though they were discussing accounts rather than a child’s shattered peace.
“He is sleeping. Finally.”
“Good.” Thaddeus gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “Sit.”
She remained standing, her hands clasped before her. “I prefer not to.”
His mouth thinned with displeasure. Clearly, he was not accustomed to being refused. Not accustomed to anyone standing before him without deference or fear.
“Very well. Then perhaps you will explain what precisely you hoped to accomplish by arriving at my estate without invitation and undermining my authority before my own household.”
“I hoped to see Oliver. To comfort him. To remind him that someone in this world still cares for him.”
“I care for him.”
“Do you?” Maribel met his gaze without flinching. She could see the tension in his shoulders, the rigid set of his jaw—a man holding himself together through sheer force of will. “You have provided him with a roof over his head and food on his plate. You have given him tutors and schedules and rules. But when that child looks at you, Your Grace, he does not see a guardian. He sees a stranger who terrifies him.”
A muscle twitched in Thaddeus’s cheek. “He will adjust.”
“He is not a horse to be broken in. He is a grieving child who needs patience, gentleness, and love—none of which you seem capable of providing.”
“You overstep, Lady Maribel.” His voice had dropped, grown dangerous, but she refused to retreat.
“And you fail him daily.” She heard the tremor in her own voice, felt the walls she had built around her own grief beginning to crack. “You think discipline will heal what has been broken, but you are wrong. You cannot schedule away sorrow. You cannot impose structure upon a shattered heart. That boy needs someone who will hold him when he cries and listen when he speaks and show him—through action, not instruction—that he is valued. Loved. Wanted.”
Silence fell between them, heavy and charged. The fire crackled and popped, sending sparks spiralling toward the chimney. Thaddeus stared at her, and she watched the war playing out behind his eyes—fury battling with something deeper. Something that looked like grief.
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, stripped of its earlier coldness.
“And you believe yourself capable of providing such care.”
“I know I am.”
“You have no position. No resources. No standing in society save what Lady Eleanor’s charity affords you.” He leaned forward, his gaze boring into hers. “What could you possibly offer this child that I cannot?”
Maribel drew a breath. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and she was acutely aware of how precarious this moment was—how much she stood to lose, and how little she had left to bargain with.
But Oliver’s face rose in her mind. Those shadowed eyes. That desperate grip on her gown. The way he had flinched from the very man who was supposed to protect him.
She would not fail him. Not as everyone else had.
“I have an offer for you, Your Grace,” she said. “One that might help us both.”
