He wasn’t quite sure if it was true. But he had to try.
CHAPTER 19
Despite the clarity he had experienced, acting on it was a different matter, Thaddeus found. He had no idea where to begin. He’d become like a bear with a sore tooth—everyone had started avoiding him.
“You look like hell.”
Well, almost everyone. Julian Westcott stood in the doorway of Thaddeus’s study, his travelling coat still damp from the rain.
Thaddeus did not look up from the papers scattered across his desk. Numbers swam before his eyes—estate accounts, investment reports, correspondence requiring responses he could not summon the focus to write. Three days had passed since Oliver’s departure. Three days since he had made the decision to do something to win Oliver and Maribel over, and three days since he had decidedly not acted on it.
“I was not aware you were expected,” he said.
“I wasn’t.” Julian crossed the room and dropped into the chair opposite the desk without invitation. “Lady Eleanor sent word. She seemed to think I should know that your wife has taken residence with her again, and that Oliver has been sent to Ashford Academy.” He paused, his gaze sharp. “She also mentioned that you appear to have lost your mind.”
“Lady Eleanor is out of line. Though I hear it is not new for her. She knows no bounds.”
“Is that so?” Julian leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Because from where I’m sitting, it appears you’ve managed to drive away both your wife and the child you swore to protect within the span of a fortnight. That strikes me as either madness or something worse.”
Thaddeus’s jaw tightened. He set down his pen with deliberate precision and finally met Julian’s eyes. His friend looked tired—the journey from London took four hours in good weather, longer in this rain—but there was no sympathy in his expression. No gentle understanding.
Good. Thaddeus did not deserve it.
“I… There is a… Perhaps it is better this way. Things were… easier before.”
“Before what?” Julian’s voice carried an edge Thaddeus rarely heard from him. “Before you accidentally revealed that you possess feelings? Before she glimpsed the terrifying possibility that you might actually need her?”
“Before it became worse.”
“Worse than what, exactly?” Julian gestured at the empty study, the silent house beyond. “Worse than this? You’ve achieved precisely what you always wanted, Thaddeus. Perfect isolation. Absolute control. No one left who might inconveniently care whether you live or die.” He sat back, his expression hard. “Congratulations. How does it feel?”
Thaddeus looked away.
The rain lashed against the windows, blurring the view of the grounds beyond. Somewhere out there lay the garden Maribel had restored. He could not see it through the grey curtain of weather, but he knew it was there. Blooming without witness. Beautiful and utterly pointless in a house where no one walked anymore.
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly.
“Then explain it to me.” Julian’s tone softened fractionally. “Because I have known you for fifteen years, and I have watched you construct walls so high that even you cannot see over them anymore. I watched you inherit grief from your father and decide that the solution was to feel nothing. To need no one. To make yourself invulnerable by making yourself alone.” He leaned forward again. “And now I’m watching you destroy the first real thing you’ve built since your mother died. So please, Thaddeus. Help me understand what possible justification you have for this.”
Thaddeus’s hands clenched on the armrests of his chair. His throat felt tight, his chest constricted. The urge to dismiss Julian, to order him from the study, to retreat into the cold silence that had always been his refuge—it rose in him like a familiar tide.
But he could not.
Because Julian was right.
And Thaddeus was so desperately tired of being wrong.
“I was afraid,” he said at last. The words emerged rough, barely audible. “She was becoming... essential. Too important. Every morning I woke wondering if this would be the day something happened to her. Every time she left the house, I imagined accidents. Illness. The thousand ways one can lose someone without warning.” His voice cracked. “I could not—I cannot—survive that again.”
“So you guaranteed it instead.”
It was true, and while he had admitted it silently to himself, it was a different matter to hear it so callously. Thaddeus flinched.
“You’ve spent your whole life preparing for loss,” Julian continued, his voice steady and unforgiving. “Guarding against it. Building defences so elaborate that you convinced yourself they were strength rather than cowardice. And now you’ve ensured that the very thing you feared has come to pass. Notthrough chance or tragedy or any force beyond your control. But through your own deliberate choice.”
“I did not choose this.”
“Didn’t you?” Julian’s eyes bored into him. “She asked you to love her. To trust her. To allow yourself to need her. And you refused because you have spent twenty years believing that needing anyone makes you weak. That vulnerability is failure. That the only way to survive is to keep everyone at arm’s length.” He paused. “Tell me, Thaddeus. How is that working for you?”
