Chapter 17 #2
"As much as you want," Theodore said. "The whole evening if you like."
He set Frederick back on his feet, watching him scurrying back toward his new friends, before he felt a presence at his elbow. Alistair stood there, nursing a glass of sherry and wearing a look of amused curiosity.
"You look remarkably cozy, Theodore," Alistair remarked, glancing from Theodore to the retreating boy. "One might almost think you were changing your mind about the merits of fatherhood."
Theodore scoffed and shook his head. "Absolutely not. My stance on children remains unchanged."
Alistair raised an eyebrow. "Yet, you seem quite taken with that one."
"Frederick is an exception," Theodore replied firmly. "I adore him, certainly, but children of my own? No. I was not raised in a house that modeled such things. Who could expect me to know how to be a father when I never truly had one myself?"
Alistair opened his mouth to respond. Then his gaze moved. Just slightly. Past Theodore's shoulder to something behind him.
Theodore turned.
He drew a short breath, caught off guard by the fact that Emily was standing only a foot away. He took in another sharp, jagged breath as their eyes locked.
She was in the pale green gown with her hair up, and she was looking at him with an expression he felt rather than read.
She looked shocked, her eyes wide and clouded with a sudden, sharp hurt.
Before Theodore could even part his lips to speak her name, the expression hardened into something cold and brittle.
Then she turned and walked away. Smoothly. Composedly. Into the group near the window where Yvette and Rose were standing, as though she had simply been passing through and had somewhere else to be.
Theodore watched her go.
"Theodore," Alistair said.
“Yes?”
“How are things with you and Emily?”
Why did she look at me like that?
He replayed the last few minutes, but his mind bypassed his own words entirely, landing instead on the tension that had been simmering between them for days.
He wondered if she was still reeling from that night in the library; perhaps she was humiliated by how close they had come to a mistake.
Or, more likely, she was furious that he had spent the last five days acting like a coward, keeping a cold, calculated distance when they had explicitly agreed to speak more openly.
He had broken the fragile peace they had built, and now, seeing that flash of pain on her face, he feared his tactical retreat had finally pushed her too far.
He had intended to protect himself from his own lack of control, but looking at her now, he realized he might have traded his composure for her trust.
“Things are good,” Theodore answered, the lie tasting smooth and familiar.
“We have reached a level of mutual respect and understanding that I didn't think possible when we first began this arrangement. We are doing a commendable job of raising Frederick together, and quite honestly, I am glad we made the decision to marry. I find that I am never bored.”
Alistair looked at him for a moment longer than the answer required. "Good," he said simply.
Theodore was glad of it because the honest answer was considerably more complicated than the one he had given, and he was not ready to give it to Alistair.
Before either of them could say anything further, Christopher appeared at Alistair's shoulder, suggesting that someone had found a set of cards. There was talk of a game before dinner, and the conversation dissolved naturally into a more easy setting.
They played Speculation for an hour. It became loud within the first fifteen minutes, which was entirely expected…
and argumentative within twenty, which was also entirely expected.
By the halfway point, Alistair was disputing the value of a trump card, Christopher was outbidding everyone at the table with a serenity that suggested either exceptional cards or exceptional bluffing, and Rose had accused him of the latter twice already.
When the party transitioned to the dining room, Emily didn't take her customary place at his right hand. Instead, with a brief, tight smile that didn't reach her eyes, she slipped into the chair beside Yvette.
Throughout the meal, Theodore found himself unable to focus on his own plate.
He watched her from across the table as she chatted animatedly with Alistair, her laughter ringing out at intervals that felt like sharp stabs to his pride.
She didn't look at him once. Not a single glance to check if he was listening, not a single shared smile over an inside joke.
A heavy, prickling heat settled in his chest. It wasn't just that she was ignoring him; it was the way she seemed to be intentionally carving out a space where he didn't exist. He felt a sudden, irrational resentment toward Yvette for occupying the space that belonged to him, and a sharp hunger to be the one making Emily laugh like that.
He told himself it was merely the annoyance of a disrupted routine, but the way his grip tightened on his wine glass suggested something much more primitive.
By the time the night drew to a close, the children had long since fallen asleep in the nursery, and the guests were beginning to retreat to their own chambers.
Yet, Emily still hadn't spoken a single word to him.
She moved toward the stairs, her silhouette disappearing into the shadows of the upper landing before he could find his voice.
Theodore stood in the darkening hallway, the silence of the house pressing in on him.
He had wanted this gathering to be an olive branch, a way for her to find joy amidst the rumors, but he had waited too long to bridge the gap between them.
He feared that the awkwardness he had allowed to fester for five days had finally hardened into something permanent, leaving him on the outside of a life they were supposed to be building together.
"I think I’ve figured it out."
Theodore nearly jumped, spinning around to find Alistair leaning against the doorframe of the smoking room, a half-empty glass of brandy in his hand. He hadn't heard the man approach, a lapse in awareness that felt like a personal failure.
"Figured what out?" Theodore asked, his voice sharp with the remnants of his frustration.
"The frost in the air," Alistair said, stepping into the dim light of the hallway. "Tell me, did you ever explicitly tell Emily that you have no intention of ever having children of your own?"
Theodore stiffened, his jaw tightening. "We had an understanding, Alistair. Pardon me, but I am in no mood to get into the details. She needed a shield for Frederick, and I needed... well, I needed to fulfill my duty. We both got what we wanted. It was a settled matter."
Alistair chuckled, a dry, knowing sound that grated on Theodore’s nerves.
"Theodore. Whatever Emily told you she wanted from this marriage, whatever arrangement you two agreed to before you stood in that church, I am telling you right now that what I watched tonight was not two people honoring a transaction.
" He paused. "You were looking at her all evening. "
Theodore opened his mouth to protest, but Alistair held up a hand.
"Like a man who has forgotten entirely that there are other people in the room," Alistair continued.
"I have known you for over a decade. I have watched you charm half of London.
I have never once seen you look at a woman the way you were looking at Emily tonight.
" He paused. "Like something primitive in you had simply decided, and the rest of you had not quite caught up yet. "
Theodore said nothing.
"I know what that looks like," Alistair said quietly. "I still look at Yvette that way. I recognized it immediately." He let that sit for a moment. "I also noticed that Emily was looking at you."
Theodore turned to look at him.
"Not when you were looking at her," Alistair said.
"Every time you looked away. Every single time.
She looked at you the moment your attention went elsewhere and looked away the moment it came back.
" He tilted his head. "That is not a woman honoring a transaction, Theodore.
That is a woman who has feelings she is not ready to admit to. "
The corridor was very quiet.
"Which means..." Alistair continued. "... that she has let her guard down. Which means that whatever she told you she wanted from this marriage, she wants something different now, whether she knows it yet or not."
Alistair stepped closer, his expression turning uncharacteristically grave.
"I knew Emily long before this marriage, Theodore. I know she wants children. If she has developed feelings for you — and it is painfully obvious that she has — then hearing what you said earlier was a death knell. She must have overheard you telling me that you’d never be a father to your own blood because you weren't raised to know how.
Did you ever actually say those words to her face? "
Theodore felt a cold hollow opening up in his chest. The memory of her shocked, violet eyes flashed through his mind, suddenly making a terrible kind of sense. "No," he admitted, his voice barely a whisper. "I never told her."
"Then there is your problem," Alistair said, reaching out to clap Theodore on the shoulder. "You’ve just told the woman who is falling for you that the one thing she likely dreams of is a door you’ve already locked and bolted. Good luck, Theodore. You’d better find a way to solve this.”
With a final, pitying look, Alistair turned and walked toward the guest wing, leaving Theodore standing alone in the dark.
Theodore remained frozen in the corridor, Alistair’s words sinking into him like lead.
He could not deny it anymore; something had been brewing between him and Emily since that night in the library, a shift that had moved far beyond the cordial bounds of their arrangement into something dangerously visceral.
He hated the way it made him feel, hated the sharp, biting jealousy that had flared up just watching her socialize with Yvette and Alistair.
He had never been a man ruled by such petty, primitive impulses, yet he had felt a surge of genuine anger toward Alistair simply for occupying the space at Emily’s side that he craved for himself.
It was a loss of composure he wasn't ready for, and it confirmed his deepest fears; he was drifting into a territory where he had no map.
Theodore had no intention of venturing into the messy, uncertain world of fatherhood.
He was a man of skill and strategy, but family was a language he had never been taught, a legacy of silence and desertion left behind by his father and the mother who had fled.
If his words earlier were indeed the cause of Emily’s coldness, it meant they had already crossed a line they were never supposed to touch.
For her sake, and for the sake of his own sanity, he knew he had to find a way to retreat to the safe, sterile side of that line before the fire he’d sparked consumed them both.