It would remain that way.
"I asked Seraphine to remain at Wexford Manor until I resolved everything."
Thalia nodded slowly. "And she refused."
"She believes I am keeping her prisoner," Damien said. A muscle worked in his cheek. "Perhaps she is not entirely wrong," he muttered, the words clipped and bitter.
The admission surprised even him. He remembered the look on Seraphine's face when she had spoken of her father, the terrible certainty in her eyes as she had implied he was becoming him. The words still echoed relentlessly inside his head. He had feared resembling his own father for years, and now the woman he loved had spoken her own fear aloud.
"So what is the solution?" Thalia asked, rising from the chair with a frown.
Damien rested one hand against the sill. "I agreed she should leave."
Thalia stared at him in open disbelief. "You what?"
"When Laurent and Rosaline return north..." He paused, as though the words themselves displeased him. He swallowed once, then forced himself to continue. "...Seraphine will accompany them to Scotland."
Silence filled the room. Finally Thalia stood, her skirts whispering around her ankles as she crossed the carpet.
"You cannot possibly be serious," she said, stopping before him with her hands planted firmly on her hips.
"I am entirely serious," Damien replied, though the flatness of his tone did little to disguise the strain beneath it.
She walked towards him until they stood only a few feet apart.
"You have been married less than a fortnight," Thalia said, staring at him in disbelief.
"I am aware," Damien replied.
"And then agreed to send her to another country?" Thalia finished, her voice rising with incredulity.
His silence answered for him.
"Oh, Damien." Thalia let out a breath. She sounded heartbroken. "You truly are a fool sometimes."
His eyes opened at once, and he fixed her with a flat stare. "I beg your pardon?"
"I say that with enormous affection," Thalia said, lifting one shoulder in a faint shrug as though that softened the blow.
"I somehow find that difficult to believe," Damien replied, folding his arms across his chest and giving her a look that would have intimidated most people.
Thalia folded her arms. "Do you imagine love is demonstrated by sending one's wife hundreds of miles away?" She fixed him with a look that was equal parts exasperation and pity.
"I imagine," Damien replied, "that love is keeping her safe."
"There is something you are not telling me," she said at last, her voice quieter now.
"Yes," Damien answered, the word clipped and final.
"And you never will?" Thalia asked, stepping closer as if proximity might coax the truth from him.
"No."
She sighed. "You inherited Father's stubbornness," Thalia said.
"I inherited considerably more than that," Damien replied, his mouth tightening.
"But thankfully," she said softly, stepping closer and lowering her voice, "not his heart."
