Margaret hesitated. Then she stepped a little closer.
“But I want you to promise me something.”
Nathaniel looked at her carefully.
“What?”
“That you will not harm her.”
He frowned slightly.
“She made her choices,” Margaret continued softly. “And she must live with the consequences, but I would not have someone destroyed entirely on my behalf.”
Nathaniel studied her in silence for several seconds. Then he nodded. Margaret knew it was perhaps foolish to defend the girl, but she knew how it felt to be desperate.
“She will not be harmed.”
Margaret let out a small breath she had not realized she was holding. The tension in the room eased slightly, though the fragile space between them remained. Still, something had shifted.
Margaret no longer felt as though she stood entirely alone.
Nathaniel did not move closer after the room emptied. The silence between them was quieter now, but no less serious. The confrontation had ended, the witnesses had gone, and Arabella Vaughn was no longer a shadow hanging over the room. Yet the distance between husband and wife remained exactly where it had been.
He seemed to understand that.
Nathaniel rested one hand lightly against the edge of the desk and regarded Margaret with a calm steadiness that held none of the urgency she had expected from him earlier that morning.
“I know this does not repair everything,” he said.
Margaret did not answer, but she did not deny it either.
“What happened last night,” he continued, “and what you believed you saw, that cannot simply be erased because I say it should be.”
She appreciated that he did not pretend otherwise. Nathaniel drew a slow breath before speaking again.
“I will not ask you to return.”
Margaret’s gaze lifted slightly.
“Not unless you want to,” he clarified. “You deserve time to decide what you believe, and what you want your life to be. I will not take that choice from you.”
The words were spoken without bitterness.
“And whether you forgive me or not,” he added, “I will continue to protect your name and your family. That was never conditional.”
Margaret watched him for a long moment. There was no plea in his voice, no attempt to persuade her with soft promises. He simply stated the truth as he intended to live it.
At last she nodded.
“I need space,” she said quietly. “Time to think.”
Nathaniel inclined his head.
“Then you shall have it.”
He did not attempt to stop her when she left Ravensmere again later that day. And so, Margaret remained with her family.
The first days passed slowly, her thoughts circling the same questions again and again. The certainty she had felt when leaving Ravensmere had begun to soften, replaced by a quiet uncertainty that she could not easily resolve.
