Frederick closed his eyes.
He did not wish to hear it.
Did not wish to accept what she was asking of him.
“You must not keep him from it,” she said softly. “Not for my sake.”
“Anya—”
“Promise me, Frederick.”
“I… I promise.”
It was as though that promise had been the last thread binding her to this world.
She died that night.
Frederick had thought himself acquainted with grief. He had believed he understood its weight, its persistence, the way it settled into a man and made its home there.
He had not.
Not like this.
There was no preparing for the silence that followed. No preparing for the absence of her—her voice, her presence, the quiet steadiness that had come to anchor his days. The house felt altered beyond recognition, as though some essential part of it had been removed, leaving everything else diminished in its wake.
He tried to bear it as he had been taught as an Englishman: with restraint, with composure. With the same rigid control he had once believed to be a mark of strength.
But grief does not yield so easily to discipline.
And in the stillness of the night, when the house lay quiet and there was no one to observe him, he heard his son weeping.
Softly at first.
Then with a helplessness that no child should ever be made to endure.
Frederick lay awake, staring into the darkness, his own throat tight with the effort not to join him. But the sound cut too deeply, and at last, he turned his face into the pillow and wept as well—silently, fiercely, as though the act itself might ease something that would not, in truth, be eased.
But the long hours passed, eventually giving way to days. And in time, the gaping hole in his heart began to give way, making room for emotions he thought he would never feel again.
And one morning he awoke and remembered, for the first time, the promise his wife had wrested from him.
His mind immediately rebelled; it felt simply too impossible to keep his word.
At first, there were reasons—reasonable ones. They were in mourning. Theodore was too young. There were arrangements to be made, affairs to be settled, inquiries to be sent.
Time, he told himself.We need more time.
But time passed, and still, he did not act.
Until one day, a letter arrived in response to his inquiries about his brother.
And he discovered, to his horror, that his brother had no son. The estate, he knew, was entailed. And since he, Frederick Bennet, was long presumed dead and without issue, everything would be left to his uncle’s progeny.
Frederick read the letter once.
Then again.
Slowly.
