“And what good would that do either of us?” Bitterness leaked through despite his efforts to contain it. “Even if I allowed myself to—to care for her as you suggest—what then? She deserves warmth. Affection freely given. I am capable of neither.”
“Are you not?” Julian challenged. “Because I have known you all my life, Thaddeus. And… I know you. I know you better than you care to admit. I know that you love that boy, and I know that you care far more for that woman than you’d like to admit. I…”
“Stop,” Thaddeus insisted firmly. “You are not part of my marriage. You do know…”
“I do not need to be. Unlike you, my friend, I do not fear feeling. And I care about your wellbeing. Perhaps more than you do.” Julian returned to his chair, settling with the satisfaction of a tactician whose strategy had succeeded. “You cannot protect people by pushing them away. You tried that. With your father after your mother died. With me when we returned from the Peninsula. With Nicholas’s memory. It doesn’t work. It has never worked. All it does is ensure that when loss comes—and loss always comes—you face it having lived only half a life.”
The words landed with terrible precision. Thaddeus thought of his mother’s chambers, sealed and dark. Thought of Nicholas’s grave covered in wildflowers he’d gathered himself because the grief of tending it was better than the emptiness of avoiding it entirely.
“I don’t know how,” he said finally. The confession emerged barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how to lower thesedefences without them crumbling entirely. Don’t know how to care for her without—” His throat closed.
“Without losing yourself to it?” Julian finished gently. “Then perhaps that’s what you need. To lose yourself. To stop controlling every feeling, managing every emotion, treating your own heart like enemy territory.” He rose again, moving to the sideboard. “Love isn’t tragedy, Thaddeus. It’s not weakness. It’s the only thing that makes any of this—” he gestured vaguely at the world beyond his windows, “worth enduring.”
Thaddeus accepted the brandy Julian pressed into his hands. The crystal was cool, the liquid within amber and burning.
“She deserves better than a man who cannot even speak of his mother without fleeing the room.”
“She deserves honesty,” Julian corrected. “She deserves a husband who tries. Who acknowledges his failings whilst working to overcome them rather than hiding behind them.” His expression softened. “You’re trying, Thaddeus. I can see that much. The question is whether you’ll let her see it too.”
The question haunted him during the entire journey back to Blackwood.
Thaddeus watched the countryside roll past his carriage window and thought of Julian’s words—the challenge beneath them, the uncomfortable truth they contained. He was trying. In his own inadequate, halting way, he was attempting something he had not attempted in eight years.
He was allowing himself to feel.
The realisation should have brought relief. Instead, it sat in his chest like a stone, heavy with implications he was not prepared to examine.
The carriage turned up the drive, and Blackwood rose before him—grey stone and tall windows, the house that had been his prison and his refuge for most of his adult life. But something had changed. The windows seemed brighter somehow. Smoke curled from more chimneys than strictly necessary. There were flowers in the entrance hall when he stepped through the door—roses, their scent filling the space with unexpected warmth.
“Your Grace.” Mrs. Allen appeared, taking his coat and gloves. “Welcome home. Lady Blackwood is in the east garden, I believe. And Master Oliver is?—”
“In the stables,” Thaddeus finished, his jaw tightening. “Yes. I am aware.”
Mrs. Allen’s brow lifted ever so slightly and Thaddeus pondered the meaning of this change in expression. Surprise, perhaps, that he knew. Or concern about what he might do with the knowledge.
Thaddeus moved through corridors that felt somehow different, though he could not identify precisely what had changed. Everything was in its place. The furniture arranged exactly as it had been. Yet something fundamental had shifted—as though the house itself had taken a breath after years of holding still.
He found himself walking toward the east wing without conscious decision.
The corridor stretched before him, narrower than those in the main house, its faded wallpaper somehow less oppressive than he remembered. At its end, the carved doors stood slightly ajar.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Someone had been here. Someone had opened what he had sealed.
He crossed the remaining distance and pushed the door wider.
The sitting room lay revealed—clean, dusted, the Holland covers removed from furniture that gleamed with fresh polish. Late afternoon light streamed through windows that had been washed, falling across carpet that showed no trace of eight years’ accumulated dust. The painted ceiling—cherubs and clouds—emerged from shadow like something resurrected.
It was beautiful.
He had forgotten how beautiful it was.
Thaddeus moved deeper into the room, his breath coming shallow, his hands trembling at his sides. Every surface held evidence of careful tending—books straightened on shelves, ornaments repositioned, even the pianoforte in the corner showed signs of recent cleaning, its keys gleaming white and black beneath their cover.
She had done this.
Maribel had entered rooms he could not bear to open and had restored them with a tenderness that made his throat ache. Had cleaned away years of deliberate neglect. Had let light back into spaces he had condemned to darkness.
Through the conservatory doors, he could see the garden beyond—still wild, still overgrown, but showing signs of recent work. Pathways cleared. Beds weeded. And someone—a figure in a simple dress, her dark hair coming loose from its pins—working amongst the roses with earth-stained hands.
