For a long while, he looked into the flames, shoulders drawn tight.
“I was finishing at Eton when August invited me to spend Christmas with your family. I did not want to come. The idea of spending the holiday with strangers held no appeal.”
April tucked her legs beneath her and leaned slightly toward him. “And yet you came.”
“Because August insisted. But you…” He turned his head, meeting her eyes briefly. “You made it different.”
A quiet smile rose on her lips. “Then why didn’t you return?”
His jaw flexed. “I assumed my title soon after. The duties were... consuming. And I didn’t wish to encroach on something I had no right to.”
I waited for you,she thought.I searched the door the Christmas after that. Then another until three years passed… and you became only a story in my mind.
Theo shifted again, his hand dragging slowly down the armrest. “I’ve noticed the changes you’ve made to the manor. The drawing room feels brighter. The music room—more welcoming.”
April arched a brow. “You sound surprised.”
“I am. Though I admit, I feared you might hang lace in the library.”
She gave a soft laugh. “I thought about it. I refrained out of mercy.”
“I appreciate the mercy. Though I must ask—what possessed you to rearrange every book by theme and language?”
“Because your former system was an abomination,” she replied, lifting a brow. “Fencing manuals next to German philosophers? Three copies ofParadise Lostwedged between gardening guides?”
“I knew where everything was.”
“I’m quite sure you did not.”
“Perhaps not. But your order has made it unnervingly… efficient.”
“Heaven forbid,” she teased.
“Even Aunt Eugenia will likely say she hardly recognizes the manor when she visits. I suspect she might think I’ve sold the place and moved into a pastry shop.”
April grinned. “Then we must bring her here when it is finished. I’d like her to see it transformed.”
“She would like that,” he said after a pause. “She has long considered it too bleak, but she never said so.”
“It’s not bleak anymore. It just needed… a little life.”
“That it has,” he murmured.
Then, more quietly, he added, “Stone Hall has been in my family for nearly a century, but I never lived here with my parents. We stayed in Kent—an older manor, falling to ruin in places.”
Something shifted in his voice—something old and frayed at the edges.
“One night,” he swallowed, and his eyes took on a darker look,, “men broke into the house. My mother had just enough time to tell me to hide in the servants’ passages. So I did. I stayed hidden… even when I heard her scream. Even when they found my father. He tried to protect my sister and my brother.”
April’s fingers curled around the cushion. Her breath had stilled.
“They were killed,” Theo finished. “All three of them. And I did nothing. I stayed hidden like a coward.”
She reached for his hand, threading her fingers through his.
“You were a child.”
He did not look at her. “I should have fought. I should have helped.”
