Of the life he had lost.
“And now,” he finished, “I find myself in a position I did not expect. I would not presume—nor place you under any obligation—but if you would consent…”
He drew a breath.
“I should like to marry you.”
She stared at him.
“You must not feel bound,” he added quickly. “If you prefer—if you would rather—”
“Yes.”
The word came soft—but certain.
He stopped. “You… what?”
She lowered her gaze briefly, then lifted it again. “You are kind,” she said. “And you do not see me as… less.”
Frederick swallowed. “No,” he said quietly. “Never that.”
She smiled at him, with the same tender expression she wore each time she soothed a crying orphan. In that moment,Frederick felt, with sudden certainty, that he had been offered something far greater than he deserved.
And so they married.
It was not done in haste, nor in secrecy; it was properly done, under the rites of the Anglican church, with every legality observed. Frederick would not have any other way.
He would not place her in a position where she might be abandoned.
As her mother had been.
As Cathy had been.
No, he would not be that kind of man. He had seen too much—had known too well what came of promises made lightly and discarded with equal ease. If he gave his word, it would be one she might rely upon for the rest of her life.
Their first year of their marriage was a quiet one, but not without happiness. They did not possess the grand comforts of England, nor the ease of a well-established household, yet there was a steadiness to their days that Frederick had never before known. Anya moved within their small home with the same gentle purpose she had shown at the mission, and he found, to his own surprise, that he looked forward to each evening not for rest alone, but for her company.
There was peace in it.
Not the careless joy of youth, nor the fevered intensity of first love, but something deeper—something chosen, built day by day, until it settled into a contentment he had once believed forever beyond his reach.
And a year later, when their son was placed in his arms for the first time, that quiet happiness deepened into something richer still. Frederick named his son Theodore, after the grandfather he would never know, and Frederick prayed he would be able to raise young Teddy with the same strength of character his namesake possessed.
The boy grew quickly—bright, curious, with questions that multiplied as the years passed. Frederick was constantly amazed at his son’s thirst for knowledge that grew as quickly as his height did.
But then England began to appear in those questions more often than Frederick liked. It came first in small ways—in the stories other boys told, in the departures of those who were sent away for schooling, in the quiet awareness that there was a wider world beyond the one he knew.
In time, it became something more difficult to ignore.
Frederick resisted it.
He had chosen his life. He had made his peace with it. There was nothing for him in England now—nothing but complications, old wounds, and a society that would not look kindly upon the woman he loved. He would not expose Anya to that. He would not see her diminished by the judgments of those who neither knew her nor deserved to.
And yet—
Life does not always permit a man to hold fast to the course he has chosen.
Anya’s decline came quietly at first, so slight that it might have been dismissed as fatigue. But the simple ailment that began shortly after Teddy’s twelfth birthday did not pass. It lingered, deepened, and before long there could be no mistaking the truth of it.
