Behind him, Maribel returned to the garden. Tohergarden. To her quiet restoration of beauty from neglect. And in the stables, Oliver’s laughter rang out again—pure and unrestrained and utterly free.
Thaddeus walked through corridors that felt somehow lighter, past windows that seemed to admit more sun than they had that morning. He climbed toward his study—toward the familiar refuge of ledgers and correspondence and all the careful mechanisms of control.
But he stopped at the threshold.
Turned instead toward the east wing.
The corridor stretched before him, its faded wallpaper somehow less oppressive in afternoon light. At its end, the carved doors stood ajar—no longer sealed, no longer forbidden, simply open.
Waiting.
Thaddeus drew a breath. Then another. His hands trembled as he moved forward, and he did not try to still them.
He crossed the threshold into his mother’s sitting room.
Light fell across furniture his wife had cleaned. Across carpet she had tended. Across surfaces that showed no trace of eight years’ dust because Maribel had entered where he could not and had restored what grief had tried to destroy.
In the corner, on the pianoforte, sat a vase of roses. Fresh-cut. Their scent filled the room—the same roses his mother had planted, now tended by hands he was only beginning to trust.
Thaddeus crossed to the instrument and sat upon its bench. His fingers found the keys—cold, stiff beneath his touch. He had not played since before his mother died. Had not permitted himself the comfort of music because it reminded him too acutely of afternoons spent here whilst she played and he turned pages and they had been happy.
One note. Then another. His hands remembered the patterns even as his mind struggled to accept them. A simple melody—something his mother had loved, something he had not allowed himself to think of for eight years.
The music filled the room, hesitant and imperfect but real.
And Thaddeus sat in his mother’s restored sitting room, playing her pianoforte whilst roses she had planted filled the air with their scent, and felt the first true tears he had shed since she died slide down his face unchecked.
He was trying.
It would have to be enough.
CHAPTER 13
Maribel had been mending Oliver’s torn coat in the corner of the nursery whilst Thaddeus observed the boy’s military formations from his chair near the window. It had become something of a routine over the past few days—Thaddeus finding reasons to pause here in the afternoons, watching Oliver play, occasionally offering tactical suggestions that made the child’s face light with pleasure.
She had been pleased by this development. Had begun to hope that perhaps the walls between guardian and ward might finally be crumbling.
It happened suddenly: the word that shattered the peaceful afternoon.
“Papa, look—I’ve positioned the cavalry exactly as you showed me?—”
The word fell into the nursery like a stone dropped into still water.
Maribel’s hands froze mid-stitch, her needle hovering above fabric. She looked up sharply to find Oliver standing rigid beside his soldiers, his small face draining of all colour as he registered what he had said.
Thaddeus had gone absolutely still in his chair.
The silence stretched to unbearable lengths.
“I didn’t mean—” Oliver’s voice was high and panicked. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I didn’t mean to say—please don’t be angry, I know you’re not my papa, I know that, I just forgot and?—”
His words tumbled over themselves whilst tears began streaming down his cheeks. He pressed both hands over his mouth as though he might somehow take back what had escaped.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t send me away, I’ll never say it again, I promise?—”
Maribel set aside her mending, preparing to intervene, but Thaddeus moved first.
He rose from his chair and crossed to where Oliver stood trembling, then knelt beside the boy with careful deliberation. Maribel remained still, watching, scarcely daring to breathe.
