“But Father’s mistake was not loving Mother,” Richard said. “His mistake was having nothing left when she was gone. No strength. No discipline. No purpose beyond her. When she died, he collapsed, because she was the only thing holding him up.” Richard paused. “You are not held up by anyone, Evander. You have been holding yourself up since you were a boy. You held me up. You held this entire family up. The strength is already there. It has always been there. Loving Mary will not take it from you. It will give you something to use it for.”
The words landed. Evander felt them settle into the place where every other argument had bounced off, and this time, they did not bounce. They stayed. They pressed.
“Sometimes we cannot control who we are,” Evander said. The doubt came out raw, unfiltered, and the admission of it, here, in this room, in front of the two people who knew him best, cost him more than any confession he had ever made. “What if I am more like him than I think?”
Quentin laughed.
The sound was so unexpected in the moment’s gravity that every head in the room turned. Quentin sat on the chaise with his glass in his hand and laughed, genuinely, the kind of full-bodied laugh that came from deep in the chest, and the absurdity of it cracked the tension open.
“Forgive me.” Quentin wiped his eyes. “But that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard you say, and I have heard you say some spectacular nonsense over the years.” He sat up straight. “Evander. You are the most controlled man in England. You have been controlling everything around you since before your voice broke. You control your estate, your household, your staff, your finances, your diet, your wardrobe, your correspondence, the precise number of drinks you allow yourself in an evening.” He gestured at the whisky glass. “You have had exactly one sip of that drink in the last twenty minutes. I have been counting.”
Evander looked at the glass. Quentin was right. One sip. Twenty minutes.
“Your father had no control,” Quentin continued. “That was his failing. He could not manage his grief, so he drowned it. Hecould not face his children, so he hid from them. He could not hold himself together, so he fell apart and let a seventeen-year-old boy pick up the pieces.” Quentin leaned forward, and every trace of humor left his face. “You are not that man. You have never been that man. You could not become that man if you tried. And the fact that you are sitting here, agonizing over whether loving your wife might turn you into your father, is the single greatest proof that it will not. Because your father never once asked himself that question. He never once stopped to consider the damage he was doing. You have not stopped considering it since you were a boy.”
The room was very still. The fire settled. Richard watched his brother’s face. William had abandoned the ceiling and was watching, too.
Evander sat with the whisky in his hand and Quentin’s words ringing in his ears, and the wall that had held for fourteen years, the wall built on a vow made in a dark corridor by a seventeen-year-old boy who had just carried his father to bed, the wall that had survived every kiss and every midnight and every moment Mary had pressed against it, trembled.
And fell.
It was just Mary. Standing in a nursery. Holding a baby. Saying his name.
Evander set the glass down.
“I have to go.”
Richard grinned. “Yes, you do.”
Quentin raised his glass. “About time.”
William looked between the three of them. “Should I?—”
“Stay. Drink. Celebrate your wedding.” Evander was already on his feet, reaching for his coat. “I will see you in the morning.”
“Evander.” Richard caught his arm as he passed. Evander stopped. His brother looked up at him, and the face that had spent five months hiding in a cottage wore an expression Evander had not seen since they were boys. Pride. “Tell her.”
Evander gripped Richard’s shoulder once, hard, and let go.
He crossed Quentin’s drawing room in four strides, threw open the front door, and hit the night air at a run. The carriage waited at the curb, but Evander did not wait for the driver to climb down from the box. He wrenched the door open, hauled himself inside, and slammed his palm against the roof.
“Blackholm House. Now.”
The carriage lurched forward. London blurred past the windows, gas lamps streaking into ribbons of light, and Evander sat on the edge of the seat with his heart hammering and his hands gripping his knees and the ruins of fourteen years of careful, disciplined, meticulously constructed self-protection scattered around his feet.
The truth. Richard was right. The feeling had been living inside him for weeks, pressed against every wall he built, every corridor retreat had been an attempt to contain something that could not be contained. Mary had seen it before he did.
She had always known. From the kitchen to the carriage to the corridor to the bedroom, Mary had seen through every wall, every excuse, every careful deflection, and she had loved him anyway, and she had asked him for the one thing he was terrified to give, and he had let her walk away.
The carriage turned onto the Mayfair streets. Evander’s pulse raced. The house appeared at the end of the block, dark except for a single light burning in the nursery window.
The nursery. She was with Tommy. Of course, she was with Tommy. Because Tommy was leaving in three days, and Mary was counting the hours, and she was spending every one of them holding the child she loved in a house where the man she loved could not bring himself to hold her.
The carriage stopped. Evander was out the door before the wheels finished turning. He took the front steps two at a time, pushed through the entrance, and climbed the staircase toward the light.
CHAPTER 33
“This one is too small already.”
