Silence settled over the house once more. Alexander stood where he was for a brief moment longer, listening to the quiet that followed their departure.
Then he turned back toward Diana.
She was still standing near the doorway of the drawing room, her hands resting loosely at her sides now as though she had not yet quite realized that the confrontation had ended. Her expression carried the faint, stunned look of someone still trying to process what had just occurred.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
He crossed the room at once.
“You should not have had to endure that,” he said.
She gave a small shrug. “They have always been… persistent.”
Alexander studied her face, and the quiet pain he found there made something fierce and protective rise instantly in his chest. He felt his blood begin to boil, though he forced the anger down before it could reach his voice.
“Come,” he said more gently, softening his tone as he stepped closer. “Sit with me for a moment.”
He guided her toward the hearth and settled her into the chair nearest the fire, drawing it slightly closer to the warmth before stepping back. Diana sank into the chair, her hands resting loosely in her lap as though she had not yet fully gathered herself after the encounter.
Alexander remained standing for a moment, watching her with careful attention. Now that the tension of the confrontation had passed, he could see the faint strain still lingering in her expression, the effort she was making to appear composed despite the lingering distress that had been written so plainly across her face only minutes before.
He sat beside her chair.
“Diana,” he said quietly, “what did they do to you?”
Her gaze drifted toward the fire, following the slow rise and fall of the flames as though the movement might help her steady her thoughts. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the calm tone of someone recounting something long ago accepted rather than newly endured, though Alexander suspected the memory had never truly lost its edge.
“My parents were kind people,” she said softly. “Very kind.”
A faint, distant warmth touched her expression as she spoke of them.
“My father adored the countryside and spent most of his time among the tenants or riding across the estate. My mother had a talent for making every room feel welcoming, no matter how grand the house might have been. Our home was always full of visitors, music, and laughter. I was… very happy then.”
Alexander listened without interrupting.
“She used to read to me every evening,” Diana continued after a moment, her voice quieter now. “Stories about brave knights and clever heroines who solved impossible problems with nothing but their wits. I remember thinking the world must surely be full of such people.”
The faint smile faded slowly.
“I was nine when they died. The carriage overturned on a narrow road during a storm,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the fire. “I remember the rain that day more clearly than anything else. It fell so heavily that the sky seemed to disappear entirely. I waited, and… they never came home.”
Alexander felt his chest tighten.
“I was sent to live with my uncle and aunt the following week,” she continued. “My father’s title passed to Uncle Charles, and with it the responsibility of my guardianship.”
She paused briefly, as though considering how best to describe what followed.
“At first, I believed they simply did not know what to do with a child like me,” she said slowly. “Perhaps they believed discipline was the only proper method of raising one.”
Alexander’s hands had begun to curl at his sides as he braced himself for what he knew was coming. He could tell, by the way Diana’s eyes darkened, that the rest of the story wouldn’t be something he wanted to hear, but he knew he needed to.
“But it did not take long to realize that discipline was not truly the point,” she added.
Her voice remained steady, yet the quiet restraint within it made the words all the more difficult to hear.
“They cared very little about me,” she explained. “What mattered to them was how I appeared to others. Every movement was watched. Every word corrected. My tutors were instructed to ensure that I behaved exactly as a proper young lady of society ought to behave. I learned very quickly that mistakes were unacceptable.”
Alexander remained silent, though the slow burn of anger had begun to spread steadily through his chest.
