“Lady Maribel.”
She looked back.
Thaddeus stood where she had left him, silhouetted against the firelight. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough, as though the words cost him something.
“I hope that you understand… though you seem to care for him, the boy belongs to me now.”
“He is not an object, Your Grace,” she responded softly. “I do hope that in time… you will see that.”
With that, she opened the door and stepped through, leaving him standing alone in the firelit darkness.
Behind her, she heard nothing—no response, no movement, no indication of what thoughts churned behind those winter-grey eyes.
But as she followed Mrs. Allen toward the guest chambers, Maribel permitted herself one small, fragile hope.
He had not refused her.
CHAPTER 2
“Ido hope that you have reconsidered your… absurd notion.”
Thaddeus Blackwood’s voice cut through the morning silence, sharp as a blade drawn across glass. He stood behind his desk, morning light streaming through the tall windows at his back, his tall frame rigid and unmoving.
Maribel clasped her hands at her waist to still their trembling. She had been summoned to his study at half-past eight, before she had even finished her breakfast, the footman’s message clipped and formal:His Grace requires your presence immediately.
She had known, even then, what was coming.
“The offer stands, Your Grace.” She kept her chin lifted, her spine straight. “Oliver needs consistency. Familiarity. Someone who understands?—”
“What Oliver needs,” Thaddeus interrupted, “is not your concern.”
“He is a child who has lost everything. How can that not be my concern?”
Thaddeus moved around the desk, his footsteps measured against the carpet. In the unforgiving daylight, shadows marked the hollows beneath his eyes, and a muscle worked steadily in his jaw. He stopped several feet from her, close enough that she could see the fine lines of tension carved around his mouth.
“Let me speak plainly, Lady Maribel, since subtlety appears lost on you.” His grey eyes held hers without wavering. “You arrive at my estate uninvited. You undermine my authority before my own servants. You insert yourself into a situation that has nothing whatsoever to do with you, and then you have the extraordinary audacity to suggest that youremainhere—in my household, under my roof—as though this were some sort of charitable institution rather than a private residence.”
Heat flooded Maribel’s cheeks. “I did not intend to undermine?—”
“Did you not?” His laugh was short, humourless. “You swept into my entrance hall, gathered that child into your arms as though I were the interloper, and proceeded to inform me—before my own butler—that I am failing in my duties as guardian. Tell me, Lady Maribel, what precisely would you call that, if not undermining?”
The accusation struck closer to truth than she wished to acknowledge. Shehadacted on instinct, had allowed her heart to overrule her head. But the memory of Oliver’s tear-streaked face, his desperate grip on her gown, his whisperedyou came, you came—her chest tightened at the thought of doing otherwise.
“I call it compassion, Your Grace. Something you appear to find deeply threatening.”
He looked at her coldly, though his hands trembled ever so slightly. “Compassion. Yes. How convenient that yourcompassionleads you directly into the household of one of the wealthiest men in England.”
Maribel’s breath caught. The blood drained from her face, then rushed back in a hot wave. “You think I am here for yourmoney?”
“I think,” Thaddeus said, his voice flattening, “that people rarely offer assistance without expectation of reward. I believe I mentioned as much last evening.”
“And I told you?—”
“You told me a great many things. Noble sentiments, prettily expressed. But unless you are an… angel, you have no reason to care for a child who would have forgotten your existence in a year. And now here you stand, the disgraced daughter of a disgraced house, offering to install yourself in the home of a duke under the guise of charitable concern.”
Maribel’s throat constricted. Her eyes burned, and she pressed her nails into her palms, focusing on the small sharp pain. She thought of her father in his final months, hollow-eyed at the card tables, throwing away what little remained. She thought of her mother in that rented room in Bath, too ill to travel, too proud to accept charity from relations who had turned their backs. She thought of Margaret—beautiful, defiant Margaret—who had quietly cut off her family in fear of her new husband’s friends and family being ashamed of her own scandal.
And now Margaret was dead. And Maribel stood in this cold, magnificent room while this man, who had never known a moment’s financial uncertainty, dissected her circumstances with surgical precision.
