Maribel’s breath caught in her throat. He had never spoken of his mother—not beyond the barest acknowledgment of her existence. She remained perfectly still, afraid any movement might shatter this unexpected moment of confidence.
“She had been ill for some months, though she concealed the severity from me. From nearly everyone, save my father.” His voice was low, rough with suppressed emotion. “I was attending to estate matters when word reached me. By the time I returned—” He stopped, and closed his eyes as though the memory pained him. “By the time I returned, she was already gone. I never had the chance to say farewell.”
“I am so sorry,” Maribel whispered. “That must have been unbearable.”
“My father did not speak for a fortnight,” Thaddeus continued, his gaze fixed upon some distant point beyond the firelight. “When he finally emerged from his chambers, he was—altered. Diminished in some way I cannot adequately describe. As though part of him had died alongside her.”
He fell silent, and Maribel dared not interrupt his contemplation.
“I had her rooms sealed the day after the funeral,” he said eventually. “Ordered everything left precisely as it was. I told myself it was respect, that I was preserving her memory.” He paused, taking a deep breath, one that made his entire body tremble for a second. “In truth, I could not bear to acknowledge her absence. Could not face the knowledge that I would never hear her voice again. Never seek her counsel. Never?—”
His voice broke entirely, and he pressed his lips together, clearly struggling to maintain composure.
Maribel’s hands trembled in her lap. She wished desperately to offer some comfort, yet something in his rigid posture warned her that such a gesture might cause him to retreat.
“And I suppose the only thing that made sense to you then... was that distance was safer,” she said softly. “That if you never allowed yourself to care deeply, you might avoid such pain.”
“Yes.” He turned his head to look at her directly, and the naked pain in his eyes made her breath cease. “I watched my father waste away from grief. Watched him become a mere shadowof himself because he had loved my mother with his entire heart. And I thought—” He stopped, then continued with evident difficulty. “I thought that if I never allowed myself to feel so intensely, never permitted anyone close enough to matter—then I would never have to endure what he endured.”
“Has it worked?”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “No,” he said at last. “It has kept me safe, perhaps. But it has also kept me utterly alone.”
The confession hung between them, raw and unguarded. Maribel felt tears threaten and blinked them back.
“You defended Oliver today,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Before half the ton, you chose him over political advantage. You forgot about distance and simply acted. Because he needed you to.”
Thaddeus’s expression shifted, something painful crossing his features. “I did not think. Had I thought, I would have maintained my composure. Would have found some diplomatic response that offended no one whilst protecting no one. But I looked at that child, and all I could see was Nicholas. My dearest friend. The best man I have ever known. And I could not bear to hear him disparaged. To have his son reduced to nothing more than an inconvenient circumstance.”
“You love him,” Maribel said quietly. “Oliver. You love him, though you have tried so hard not to.”
Thaddeus’s jaw tightened. “Love is dangerous.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is. But perhaps it is also necessary. Perhaps a life without it is no life at all, but merely existence.”
He regarded her with such intensity that she felt exposed in a way she had never experienced. She watched something shift behind his eyes—something that might have been longing, or fear, or both intertwined.
“You speak as though you know something of this,” he observed.
“I loved my sister with all my heart,” Maribel said, her voice trembling despite her efforts to control it. “Losing her was the worst pain I have ever known. The grief is—it remains—devastating. Yet I would not trade a single moment I had with her, even knowing how it would end. Even knowing that every memory now carries that grief.”
“Then you are braver than I,” Thaddeus said, and there was no mockery in his tone—only genuine admiration.
“No. I am simply less willing to live half a life to protect myself from pain. I would rather feel everything—joy and sorrow both—than feel nothing at all.”
The words were perhaps too direct, too honest for polite discourse. “I do not know how to do this,” he said at last, his voice barely audible. “I do not know how to care for that childwithout constant fear that I will lose him. That he will be taken from me as everyone else has been.”
“You need not know how,” Maribel said gently. “You need only try. Show up each day and do your best, even when it frightens you.”
“And if I fail him? If I prove inadequate?”
“Then you will have failed while trying, which is infinitely better than succeeding at remaining distant.” She paused, then added with quiet emphasis: “He needs you, Thaddeus. Not your title or your wealth or your connections. He needs you—the man who confronted Lord Hastings today because someone dared suggest his ward was anything less than worthy.”
Thaddeus closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, they held a suspicious shine. “I am terrified,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. “Every day, I am terrified.”
“I know,” she whispered.
They sat in silence for several moments, the space between them charged with something she could not name. It was not romantic precisely—it was deeper than that. A recognition of shared pain. Of mutual understanding.
