Chapter 11
T he next morning, Adam decided to go to the drawing room instead.
He couldn’t stay in his study longer than necessary after what had happened the previous day. He couldn’t believe he let his control slip for that long. That was probably how it started with his father. One minute, he was entangled with his mother; the next, she was dead.
He shook off the thought anyway and stepped inside, only to be met with a most bizarre sight.
Harriet had somehow acquired a tiny silver tiara, which she was at that moment trying to settle on Gilbert’s head while the dog endured the ordeal with nothing but utter patience.
Theodore stood near the fireplace in the role of solemn witness, and Emily was kneeling on the carpet beside Harriet, one hand under Gilbert’s chin and the other trying with dangerous seriousness to keep the tiara from sliding off his ears.
What in the ? —
For a second, Adam stood there.
He had expected silence. He had expected perhaps a book, a tray, some ordinary item. He had not expected to find his wife on the floor in her day dress, helping his sister crown a Pomeranian as if it were state business.
Harriet looked up first. “Brother, do not move. We are nearly finished.”
Emily turned then.
The sight of her did something sharp and unwelcome to his composure. She was not posed or guarded as he had come to expect. She was wholly engaged in the foolishness of the moment, her hair a little loose at the temples and color bright in her face.
“The crown keeps slipping,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“It does,” Harriet agreed.
The dog sneezed at that moment, and the tiara fell sideways.
Harriet groaned in despair.
Emily caught it before it hit the carpet and, with a patience Adam did not understand at all, set it back in place.
“There,” she said. “He looks magnificent.”
Gilbert looked insulted.
“And… what exactly is this?” Adam asked.
“A singing competition,” Harriet replied.
The answer came so promptly that it suggested the matter had long since become obvious to every reasonable person in the room. She said it almost like it was an insult that Adam wasn’t aware of what exactly was happening.
“Gilbert is one of the competitors,” Theodore added.
Adam looked at him. His brother did not smile.
Then, Emily began to sing.
It was terrible; there was no gentler word for it. She missed the pitch, then found another one and went on with such wholehearted conviction that for one helpless second, Adam forgot to breathe properly.
She was simply ridiculous and fully committed to being so, because Harriet had decided this absurdity mattered and Emily, without vanity or caution, had thrown herself straight into it. He knew just how convincing his little sister could be. He had witnessed it firsthand.
Harriet clapped in delight, and Gilbert threw back his head and howled. That ended the competition.
Theodore folded his hands behind his back, took one measured second to judge, and spoke just as he had before. “Gilbert is the clear winner.”
Harriet shrieked with triumph, and Emily laughed and bent to hug the dog as if he had done something extraordinary.
Adam felt the room shift around him in a way he did not like and could not resist. It made a gnawing truth settle somewhere inside him.
Emily fit here.
She fit with Harriet’s nonsense and Theodore’s watchful demeanor. She had been in the house for only a few days and already looked less like a duchess and more like someone the room had been waiting to make space for.
Theodore looked up and caught Adam’s eye. Then, with the smallest tilt of his head, he indicated the circle on the carpet.
No, no, no, no.
Adam ran out of ways to say no in his head, but before he could speak it out loud, Emily did it for him.
“Your brother is busy.”
She said it without looking at him, and for some reason, that made it cut deeper. The words carried the leftover hurt of the previous day and the now-familiar expectation that he would choose distance whenever given the chance.
Harriet turned, startled. “He is?”
Emily rose from the carpet, with Gilbert’s tiara still in one hand. “Very.”
Adam should have left then. He knew that. A man with an instinct for self-preservation would have taken the accusation, perhaps deservedly, and gone back to his study, where papers did not sing badly or look up at him with blue eyes full of annoyance and life.
Instead, he cleared his throat and spoke, his voice sharp, “Not so busy as all that.”
Emily looked at him then, only for a moment, but it was enough. The surprise on her face was clear, and the caution that followed it was even clearer.
Harriet brightened. “Then you can have your breakfast with us,”
Adam removed his gloves one finger at a time. “It seems I can.”
That pleased Harriet at once.
Theodore’s face gave nothing away, though his attention sharpened.
Emily set the tiara down on a nearby table and said nothing, which was somehow more unsettling than if she had argued.
Breakfast was laid out in the smaller dining room, and thanks to Harriet, no one ate the food in silence.She filled every gap left by the adults and used it to talk about the dog winning the competition. She then spoke about her intention to improve the dog’s wardrobe before the next performance.
“I suppose we can see what he likes and does not like?” Emily said, her voice clear. “Perhaps get some ribbons for him, too.”
“Ooh!” Harriet clapped her hands, her eyes brightening even more. “He will like ribbons.”
Adam found himself watching Emily—how she listened properly when Theodore spoke, and how she never spoke down to Harriet. Not even once. It made everything feel perilously close to the shape of a family meal. A real one.
For the briefest of minutes, silence reigned as Harriet chewed on a large chunk of bread. Emily took that opportunity and looked straight at Adam.
“Mama is hosting a house party soon, and I mean to go with her. It is the one thing making her happy at present.”
Adam answered before caution could intervene, “A house party? That seemed perfectly in line with her character.”
Emily laughed. “Well, she is not exactly hosting one this time around. She decided to leave the hosting duties to her friend, Lady Lake. Though something tells me she will have over a hundred things to complain about when the party starts.”
A low grin appeared on Adam's face as the words settled over the table.
Harriet accepted them at once with delighted certainty. “Will Gilbert come too?”
“No,” Theodore said.
Emily laughed anyway and looked at Adam. He had a small smirk on his face.
By the time the dishes were cleared, the house had, for one fragile hour, begun to resemble something he had spent months refusing to imagine.
Breakfast ended uneventfully, and that unsettled Emily more than any argument might have.
She sat for one moment longer after Harriet had begun explaining to Gilbert in perfect seriousness why winners win. Theodore was quieter now and a bit less guarded than he had been at the start of the meal.
Adam had surprisingly not fled.He had not withdrawn behind work either. He had remained at the table, answered when spoken to, and then, when she mentioned her mother’s house party, offered to accompany her.
That small choice had altered the whole room, and Emily did not know what to do with it.
A larger gesture might have been simpler. She would have understood he was apologizing for something. This, however, was harder.
Adam had done nothing dramatic. He had merely stayed. Yet his staying felt almost intimate. Perhaps it was the steadiness of his presence or the way he listened when Harriet spoke nonsense that seemed to do it, but she didn’t know. And frankly, she wanted even more to get to the bottom of it.
What she would not do, however, was hold onto hope. Hope had humiliated her before. On her wedding day, no less.
Still, as she rose from the table and smoothed her napkin into place, she could not stop herself from feeling that the morning had shifted by some small, meaningful degree. The house party no longer sat in her mind as another event to endure alone. Adam had said they would go.
Harriet looked up. “Will you come see Gilbert’s sleeping basket later? He is very grand in it now.”
“I would be honored,” Emily said.
Those words made the little girl happy. Emily could see it on her face.
She turned then and left with more of Adam inside her than she trusted. She did not look back. She did not need to. She just needed a moment of peace and quiet.
“Duke,” she offered, feeling his eyes on her as she made her way out of the room.
Later that evening, the door closed behind her.
For one brief moment, the dining room seemed to be only about what remained after dinner. Then, Theodore spoke.
“I can see you like your wife.”
Adam looked at him sharply, waiting for a mischievous grin or some look that would indicate his brother was teasing him as usual.
None of it came.
So he gave a shrug. “Everybody does.”
He had spoken it plainly, in such a direct manner that made him sound so much older than his years.
He had spent days convincing himself that control remained visible, but somehow, Theodore’s remark made a wreck of that illusion. If a child saw it, then the whole household saw it. Perhaps even Emily already knew exactly what he kept trying to deny.
Adam set down his glass. “You see too much.”
Theodore did not retreat. “Do I?”
Harriet, happily oblivious to any danger in the room, had begun explaining to Gilbert that he must not bite the ribbons off ceremonial gifts. Adam waited until Mrs. Fenwick came to take her upstairs, and Harriet went with only a minor protest. The dog followed, trailing victory and fur behind him.
When the room had fallen completely quiet, Theodore spoke again.
“So what happens when you start having babies?”
Adam heard the old fear of displacement beneath the bluntness.
“Theodore, I have told you before that you have nothing to worry about.”
Theodore scoffed. “You think I have not seen how these things go? A new marriage, then children, then the first ones matter less.”
“No.” Adam’s sharp response came out immediately and with more force than he had intended.
Theodore held his gaze.
Adam breathed once and forced the rest into words instead of temper. “I told you, I have no need for babies, and the Duchess does not need someone like me… someone like our father… in her life.”
Theodore’s expression shifted. “I heard nice words before from men in this family,” he said. “They never kept them.”
Those words landed without a raised voice, which made it worse. Adam wondered what his brother had heard all these years and had to withstand.
There was nothing to say. Whatever intentions he had sounded utterly feeble compared to the boy’s bitterness. Promises from men in this house had indeed been broken before.
Whatever Adam believed about his own restraint, whatever noble shape he tried to give his distance from Emily, Theodore had cut to the simpler truth.
Children did not live by what men in this house meant. They lived by what the men did, day after day, at the table, in the hallways, and in drawing rooms.
“Your Grace,” Theodore muttered and then rose to his feet.
He did not wait for Adam’s dismissal. He only nodded once, more out of habit than respect in that moment, and left Adam alone with the candles, the half-finished wine, and the quiet weight of what he had asked.
Adam remained where he was until the wine had gone warm and the room felt stripped down to silence. He could still hear Theodore.
For all his care, for all his distance, for all the noble reasons he kept building around his own fear, he could not prove the boy wrong.
Not yet.
But he had to.
He needed to.
The lives of everyone in the house, including his, depended on it.