“You were a boy.”
“I was old enough to know better.” He’d told himself that for seventeen years. “If I’d told my father immediately—if I’d exposed them when I first discovered them—he might have divorced her quietly. Sent Charles away. They’d both still be alive.”
“Or your father might have challenged Charles anyway.” John’s voice was careful. “From what you’ve told me, the former Duke wasn’t exactly known for measured responses.”
“The point,” Theodore said, “is that I let myself be manipulated. Let emotion override judgment. Let attachment blind me towhat was happening. That’s what caring about people does, John. It makes you stupid. Weak. Vulnerable to exactly the kind of destruction I’ve spent seventeen years learning to prevent.”
John was quiet for a long moment. Then: “I used to think like that.”
Theodore glanced up.
“Before Harriet.” John turned his own glass slowly, watching the light catch in it. “I told myself attachment was weakness. That caring too much about anything—anyone—was a liability in a world that would take advantage of it. I was quite committed to my rakish existence. Gambling, drinking, bedding women whose names I wouldn’t remember. It was safe. Empty, but safe.”
“And then?”
“Then I met a woman who refused to let me hide.” John’s expression softened in a way that made Theodore’s chest constrict. “Who saw through every defense I’d built and decided I was worth the trouble of breaking them down. She made me furious at first. Absolutely incandescent with rage at her presumption.”
“What changed?”
“I did.” John met his eyes. “Not because she fixed me. Not because she’s some magical cure for my damage. But because she made me realize the safe life I’d built wasn’t actually lifeat all. It was just… existing. Going through the motions. Never risking enough to get hurt, which meant never risking enough to feel anything real.”
Theodore wanted to dismiss it. Wanted to explain how John’s situation was different, how his friend hadn’t watched his family destroy itself, hadn’t spent seventeen years building walls designed specifically to prevent this exact kind of weakness.
But the words wouldn’t come.
“Go home, Theodore.” John pushed back from the table. “Go back to Ashmere. Stop running from the one person who’s actually willing to see you as something other than the duke everyone’s afraid of.”
“She left me.”
“No.” John’s voice was firm. “Youdrove her away. You said vicious things designed to hurt her badly enough that she’d leave. And she did. Which means you succeeded.” He paused. “Is that what you wanted? To prove you were right about yourself? To confirm you’re the monster you’ve decided you have to be?”
Theodore’s jaw clenched.
“Find me when you’ve got your sense back.” John dropped a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Before you’ve destroyed something you can’t rebuild.”
Then he was gone, leaving Theodore alone with the whiskey and the hollow ache in his chest that felt suspiciously like grief.
Five days passed.
Theodore didn’t return to Ashmere. He told himself it was estate business keeping him in London: meetings with his solicitor, correspondence with his steward, ledgers that needed reviewing. But the truth sat in his rooms at Ashmere House like an unwelcome guest—he couldn’t face the castle empty of her.
It had felt alive with her in it. He’d come home from morning rides to find her in the breakfast room, reading with that little crease between her eyebrows that meant she was working through some argument in whatever book she’d chosen.
He’d find her in the library, pulling volumes from high shelves with a determination that would have been amusing if it hadn’t been so endearing. He’d catch glimpses of her walking the grounds with that ridiculous maid who’d somehow become her confidante, laughing at something he wasn’t privy to.
He’d gotten used to her presence. The way she’d look up when he entered a room, her face lighting up with something that had made his chest tight. The questions she’d ask at dinner about estate matters, proving that she actually cared about the tedious details of land management. The warmth of her asleep beside him, fitting against him like she belonged there.
It was gone now. All of it was gone because he’d been too much of a coward to let her stay.
His study at Ashmere House offered no comfort. He’d opened the ledgers three times that afternoon and absorbed nothing. The numbers blurred into meaninglessness, replaced by the memory of her face in that gallery, hurt crystallizing into cold dignity.
He might be the one who couldn’t trust her, but she was the one who should never have trusted him.
She’d been right. He’d demanded honesty from her, openness, vulnerability, all while keeping himself locked behind walls he’d convinced himself were necessary.
The whiskey bottle on his desk was half-empty. He didn’t remember opening it.
He pushed back from the desk and crossed to the window. London’s evening spread before him, amber lamplight beginning to glow in windows across Mayfair. Somewhere out there, Cressida was sitting in her parents’ house… away from him.
