Chapter 12 #2
He had married once, because Leah had been kind and familiar and willing.
They had been friends before they were husband and wife, and that had been the sum of it.
What followed—the brief, awkward intimacy that produced Tessa—had been obligation, not desire.
It had been the closest he had ever come to love.
After Leah’s death, there had been no one. No woman who stirred anything in him, no presence that felt worth the disruption, no one he trusted to look upon his daughter with anything approaching devotion. Until now.
Wilhelm’s jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
Henry continued, relentless. “All this time you have spent your hours on the duchy, and when you were not doing that, you were managing governesses. Replacing them. Searching for another because no one would stay. Now Tessa has a governess who will stick around, and you have something you have not had in years.”
Wilhelm’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table. “And what is that?”
Henry’s gaze was sharp, almost unforgiving. “The ability to consider yourself as more than a machine built to keep a household functioning.”
Wilhelm stared into his drink. The idea of seeking a wife made his skin tighten with discomfort, because he had trained himself to live without the softness of companionship. He had learned to endure loneliness because it was clean and predictable. Desire, however, was neither.
“And if I do not?” Wilhelm said, his voice steady but strained. “What then?”
Henry’s eyes locked Wilhelm’s. “Then desire will torment you until you act.”
Wilhelm absorbed the words in silence. He lifted the glass and finished the drink in one measured swallow, needing the burn in his throat and the weight of it in his stomach to anchor him, to give his body something it could understand.
Henry watched him. “You know I am right.”
Wilhelm felt a fierce resistance grow within him, an instinctive refusal to admit that he could be pushed into action by something so human as longing.
Yet he also knew, with uncomfortable clarity, that Henry had named the truth he had been avoiding.
The days were no longer merely busy. They were charged.
Every encounter with Madeline left him aware of himself in a way he hated, aware of his body, of his hunger, of his restraint.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “I will go to London.”
Henry’s brows rose. “To find a wife?”
“To attend to business,” Wilhelm said, but he did not bother to make it sound convincing.
Henry’s mouth curved. “Of course. Business.”
Wilhelm stood, reaching for his coat. “You are insufferable.”
Henry’s smile softened, and for a moment the teasing fell away, leaving only sincerity. “You are not wrong for wanting, Wilhelm. You are only wrong if you pretend want will not eventually demand its due.”
Wilhelm did not answer. He left the tavern with the wind cutting sharp against his face, the night air cold enough to sting, and yet his mind burned with thoughts that had nothing to do with winter.
He waited two days before he announced his intentions to travel to town. Two days in which he tried to work as though nothing had shifted, watching Madeline with quiet attention, no longer pretending she was simply another employee in his household.
He saw her in the corridor speaking with Mrs. Hayward, her posture attentive, her voice low and steady. He saw her in the schoolroom, bent over Tessa’s work, patient and encouraging.
He saw her at dinner—seated at his own table because he had asked her to join them, because he had wanted her there—taking small, careful bites as though food itself might betray her.
Each time he watched her, he felt that same vicious pull of desire and anger, because it was obscene that a woman should have been taught to shrink at a table.
He did not touch her, nor did he allow himself the luxury of lingering in her presence. He told himself he was doing the honorable thing. Yet at night, when the house quieted and his own rooms offered no distraction, his mind betrayed him with images.
Madeline’s mouth curved in laughter, Madeline’s gloved hand brushing snow from his sleeve, Madeline’s eyes lifting to his as though she understood him more than anyone had a right to.
It was not only lust. Lust would have been simpler, but this felt like hunger that had learned patience.
On the morning when he finally spoke, the breakfast room was bright with winter light.
A thin frost clung to the windowpanes, turning the outside world into a pale blur.
Tessa sat with her hair braided neatly, cheeks still pink from the cold she seemed to carry everywhere now, and Madeline sat across from her, hands folded neatly, posture composed, her gaze attentive in the quiet way that made Wilhelm feel watched even when she said nothing at all.
He cleared his throat.
Madeline’s eyes lifted immediately. Tessa looked up at him a heartbeat later, spoon suspended midair.
“We will be leaving for London tomorrow,” Wilhelm said.
The words sounded authoritative. He had practiced them in his mind enough times that they came out as though he had always intended this, yet he saw what they did the moment they landed.
Tessa’s eyes widened with immediate excitement. “London?”
Madeline went still. She had not been fidgeting before, but the change in her countenance altered subtly.
Her shoulders tightened and her fingers pressed slightly into each other.
Wilhelm noticed it at once, because he had grown attentive to her in a way born of care.
He wanted to know how his words landed, whether they troubled her, whether he had caused her pain.
“Yes,” Wilhelm replied, watching her closely as she spoke, his posture straightening as though the decision had already begun to settle its weight upon his shoulders. “There is business that requires my presence.”
Tessa leaned forward at once, elbows nearly touching the table, eyes bright with anticipation. “Will we see the shops?”
“Yes.” Wilhelm inclined his head, one hand lifting briefly as if to still the rising energy before letting it fall again.
“And the park?”
“Yes.” His mouth curved just enough to soften the word, though his fingers tightened together behind his back.
“And the big streets with all the people?”
Wilhelm’s jaw set, the muscle jumping once as his gaze flicked, unbidden, toward Madeline before he could stop himself.
His shoulders drew back instinctively, as though bracing against a crowd he had not yet entered, the image forming too clearly of her amid it, surrounded, exposed in a way she never was within these walls.
Tessa continued eagerly, hardly pausing for breath. “Will we go to the river and see the boats?”
“If time permits,” Wilhelm said.
Madeline’s voice cut in softly, carefully polite. “Your Grace?”
Wilhelm’s gaze shifted to her fully. “Yes.”
She drew a breath, and for a moment he saw the effort in her composure, as though she were forcing her fear to behave. “Is it necessary,” she asked, “that Lady Theresa and I accompany you?”
Wilhelm frowned. “Why would you not?”
Madeline’s eyes met his own, but there was something guarded there now, something that made his chest tighten. “London is… crowded,” she said.
Wilhelm’s jaw tightened. He had already decided, consciously, that going to London was necessary, because Henry’s warning had made it clear that remaining here with Madeline in his daily orbit would become unbearable. He needed distance.
“Tessa will come,” Wilhelm said.
Tessa nodded vehemently, as though daring anyone to contradict her. “I want to go.”
Madeline’s gaze flicked to Tessa, and Wilhelm saw the quick calculation there, the way she smoothed herself into agreement for the child’s sake. Her mouth curved into a smile that looked practiced rather than real.
“Of course,” Madeline said. “It will be… a good experience.”
Wilhelm did not like the way her voice changed on the last words, as though she were holding herself together by force, but he could not press her further.
Tessa’s grin returned. “Miss Watton will be with me.”
He pushed his chair back with controlled motion. “Finish your breakfast,” he told Tessa, then he inclined his head to Madeline. “We must start packing.”
As he spoke, his gaze lingered on her a fraction longer than necessary.
She had not brightened at the mention of London, not even slightly.
No curiosity, no anticipation—only a careful stillness, as though the idea of crowded rooms and watchful eyes weighed more heavily on her than the journey itself.
He wondered, not for the first time, what it was she feared in places where too many eyes might linger, and how deeply her mother’s scrutiny had taken root.
Madeline’s eyes lifted, alert. “Of course, Your Grace.”
He left for his study before his restraint could fray further.
Visiting London, he reminded himself, was necessary. In London, he would put distance between him and temptation. Yet as he stared at the closed door, he knew with bleak clarity that distance did not erase hunger.