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I nodded, curling tighter into his embrace. The grief still lingered in the shadowed corners of the room, but for now, Richard’s touch kept it at bay.

I had come here to comfort him.

By the time I closed my eyes, safe in his arms, I felt like he had chosen me in return.

And that made the thought of ever leaving him feel utterly impossible.

Chapter 8

Richard

Funerals are all about performance.

I learned that when I was a child, after Caroline died and my parents dressed me in an itchy black suit. Catherine kept one hand on my shoulder through the entire service, pressing her fingers into me whenever someone came too close. Leonard stood beside us with his chin lifted and his hand at the back of my neck, making sure I didn’t fidget, look bored, or say anything honest.

People leaned down to speak to me that day. They told me I was brave. They told me Caroline was in a better place. They told me my parents needed me to be strong. I don’t remember their faces but I remember her casket. Too much pity. Too many voices. Too many hands touching my hair, my arm, my shoulder, as if grief gave them permission to put their fingers on me.

After the service, Leonard bent down beside me in the hallway outside the reception room.

“You did well Richard,” he said. “You need to keep what happened a secret.”

That was the only useful thing he taught me.

I hadn’t embarrassed them then, and I wouldn’t embarrass them now.

Catherine and Leonard Kincaid lay in matching caskets beneath two arrangements of white flowers. Catherine would have hated the flowers. She had spent half her life correcting other women’s taste, and someone had still filled her funeral with white lilies and tulips. Leonard would have cared less about the flowers and more about the bill. He would have asked who approved the invoice before he asked who sent the arrangement.

Their opinions no longer mattered.

That was the pleasant part.

The church was full by the time Samantha and I arrived. My father had known enough powerful men to make attendance necessary. My mother was well known in many social circles so the funeral was a spectacle. They had both spent years teaching people that Kincaid events were not optional, and even death had not freed anyone from the expectation.

Samantha stood beside me with both hands wrapped around my arm. She wore a long black dress with a modest neckline and small pearl earrings. She looked appropriate, elegant, and sincerely concerned. Her father had raised her well. Henry Whitmore’s daughter knew how to enter a room without demanding attention, and that made people give it to her anyway.

I had to admit, I liked having her there.

Not because I needed comfort. I liked the way people looked at us together. Samantha was beautiful, wealthy, young, talented, and untouched before me. She had given herself to me a week ago, and now she stood beside me at my parents’ funeral, worried for me, loyal to me, and unaware that the grief she had come to soothe didn’t exist.

She had value.

And I valued her.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was low enough that no one around us could hear. She had asked variations of that question all morning. She tried not to ask too often, but concern kept pulling it out of her.

“I’m managing.”

Her thumb moved over my sleeve. “You don’t have to be composed every second.”

I looked down at her. “Today I do.”

Her face softened.

“You’ve handled all of this better than anyone could expect,” she said.

“That’s kind of you to say.”

She meant it. That was one of her weaknesses, though I had begun to think of it as one of her uses. Samantha believed what she felt. If she looked at me and saw pain, she trusted it. Her father had protected her from men who used gentleness as a tool, and because of that, she had no real defense against me. I could be whoever she wanted me to be and her heart would be mine forever.