“You’re entirely too perceptive, Lady Eleanor.”
“And you’re entirely too meddlesome. The man is trying. Let him try without your constant supervision...”
Their words faded as they moved deeper into the house and Maribel found herself turning towards Thaddeus.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For today. For?—”
“For crawling through grass and making myself ridiculous?” His tone held self-mockery. “I can only be grateful that the party was intimate, else I suppose the papers would have had rather enjoyable headlines.”
“For giving Oliver something he shall remember always.” Maribel moved to stand beside him, maintaining carefuldistance whilst watching his profile in the dimming light. “For choosing his joy over your dignity.”
“One hardly excludes the other.”
“Does it not?” She heard herself smile despite everything. “You were magnificent. As dragons go.”
His mouth twitched—barely perceptible, swiftly suppressed, yet unmistakable evidence of pleasure at her teasing.
“The boy deserved a proper birthday,” Thaddeus said after extended silence. “After everything he has endured, the least we could provide was one afternoon free from adult complications.”
“He loves you,” Maribel heard herself say. “Oliver. He loves you, Thaddeus. I hope you know that.”
His hands gripped the terrace balustrade, knuckles whitening. “He loves the attention I provide. The stability. He would love anyone who?—”
“No.” She spoke with certainty. “He would not. I have witnessed how he looks at you. How he seeks your approval. How your opinion matters to him in ways that cannot be manufactured or feigned.” She paused, gathering courage. “You have become his father in all the ways that truly matter. Whether you acknowledge it or not.”
“I do not wish to fail him,” he said quietly. “As I have failed so many others.”
“You have not?—”
“I have.” Flat. Final. “My mother. Nicholas. Everyone I have ever—” He stopped himself, but the confession hung incomplete between them, requiring no elaboration. Everyone he had ever loved.
“Then perhaps,” Maribel said softly, “the question is not whether you might fail, but whether the attempting is worth the risk.”
He stared at her, and she watched him process her words, watched understanding dawn alongside resistance.
“You make it sound simple,” he said at last.
“It is not simple. It is terrifying.” She drew breath, steadying herself. “But I believe—I must believe—that choosing to care despite fear is the only thing that makes any of this bearable.”
“Thank you,” Thaddeus said finally, his voice barely audible. “For today. For—” He stopped, and she watched him struggle to complete the thought, to voice whatever he wished to express but possessed no language to communicate.
“You are welcome,” Maribel said simply. And meant it with every fibre of her being.
He turned and walked toward the house, leaving her alone beneath emerging stars, her heart aching with things she could not name and dared not examine too closely.
CHAPTER 15
He wanted to send Oliver away. Maribel could hardly believe the bombshell Thaddeus had dropped in the midst of dinner. She stared at him, her eyes wide.
“You cannot possibly mean to permit it.”
Maribel’s voice carried across the drawing room with more force than she had intended, her hands curling into fists within the folds of her skirt. The evening had begun civilly enough—a quiet dinner, Oliver settled peacefully in the nursery, the house wrapped in the particular stillness that descended after the servants had withdrawn for the night.
Then Thaddeus had mentioned, with his customary detachment, that he had received correspondence from Lord Stanton regarding Oliver’s future education.
“The arrangement is perfectly reasonable,” Thaddeus replied, his tone maddeningly composed. “Stanton has offeredplacement at an excellent preparatory establishment. Oliver would benefit considerably from structured instruction amongst boys of similar station?—”
“He is five years old!” Maribel crossed the room toward him, propriety forgotten in the face of such incomprehensible suggestion. “You propose to send him away? To strangers? When he has only just begun to feel secure here?”
