Chapter 1 #3
She remained standing, her hands clasped before her. “I prefer not to.”
His mouth thinned with displeasure. Clearly, he was not accustomed to being refused. Not accustomed to anyone standing before him without deference or fear.
“Very well. Then perhaps you will explain what precisely you hoped to accomplish by arriving at my estate without invitation and undermining my authority before my own household.”
“I hoped to see Oliver. To comfort him. To remind him that someone in this world still cares for him.”
“I care for him.”
“Do you?” Maribel met his gaze without flinching.
She could see the tension in his shoulders, the rigid set of his jaw—a man holding himself together through sheer force of will.
“You have provided him with a roof over his head and food on his plate. You have given him tutors and schedules and rules. But when that child looks at you, Your Grace, he does not see a guardian. He sees a stranger who terrifies him.”
A muscle twitched in Thaddeus’s cheek. “He will adjust.”
“He is not a horse to be broken in. He is a grieving child who needs patience, gentleness, and love—none of which you seem capable of providing.”
“You overstep, Lady Maribel.” His voice had dropped, grown dangerous, but she refused to retreat.
“And you fail him daily.” She heard the tremor in her own voice, felt the walls she had built around her own grief beginning to crack.
“You think discipline will heal what has been broken, but you are wrong. You cannot schedule away sorrow. You cannot impose structure upon a shattered heart. That boy needs someone who will hold him when he cries and listen when he speaks and show him—through action, not instruction—that he is valued. Loved. Wanted.”
Silence fell between them, heavy and charged. The fire crackled and popped, sending sparks spiralling toward the chimney. Thaddeus stared at her, and she watched the war playing out behind his eyes—fury battling with something deeper. Something that looked like grief.
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, stripped of its earlier coldness.
“And you believe yourself capable of providing such care.”
“I know I am.”
“You have no position. No resources. No standing in society save what Lady Eleanor’s charity affords you.” He leaned forward, his gaze boring into hers. “What could you possibly offer this child that I cannot?”
Maribel drew a breath. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and she was acutely aware of how precarious this moment was—how much she stood to lose, and how little she had left to bargain with.
But Oliver’s face rose in her mind. Those shadowed eyes. That desperate grip on her gown. The way he had flinched from the very man who was supposed to protect him.
She would not fail him. Not as everyone else had.
“I have an offer for you, Your Grace,” she said. “One that might help us both.”
Thaddeus went very still, his grey eyes narrowing. “I am listening.”
“Allow me to remain here. In your household.” She forced herself to hold his gaze, though every instinct screamed at her to look away.
“Not as a guest. Perhaps… something akin to a governess, someone who can help care for Oliver. He knows me. He trusts me. And you have seen for yourself that he responds to my presence in ways he does not respond to yours.”
The words hung between them, dangerous and undeniable.
His expression shattered, that controlled mask falling into place. But she caught the tightening of his fingers against the arm of his chair.
“You propose to install yourself in my home,” he said slowly, “under the pretense of caring for a child.”
“It is no pretense. Oliver is—” She closed her eyes as grief threatened to overcome her.
He was all she had left of her sister. “Oliver is dear to me. I have known him since his birth. I was there when he took his first steps, spoke his first words. I am not some stranger seeking advantage, Your Grace. I am the closest thing to a mother that boy has left.”
His eyes narrowed further, and she saw the questions forming there—the suspicion, the calculation.
“And what do you gain from this arrangement, Lady Maribel? Forgive my cynicism, but in my experience, people rarely offer assistance without expectation of reward.”
“What I gain,” she said quietly, “is the knowledge that a child I love is not suffering alone in a house full of strangers. That he has someone who will hold him when he wakes from nightmares and answer his questions about his parents and remind him, every single day, that he is worthy of love.” Her voice wavered, but she steadied it.
“I gain nothing material from this, Your Grace. Only peace of mind—something I suspect you cannot put a price upon.”
The fire crackled in the grate. Beyond the windows, the October darkness had fully descended, pressing against the glass like something alive.
Thaddeus rose from his chair and crossed to the fireplace, his back to her. She watched the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his hands clasped behind him with white-knuckled precision.
“You despise me,” he said at last, his voice flat. “You have made that abundantly clear on multiple occasions. And yet you would willingly place yourself under my roof, subject to my authority, for the sake of a child who is not your responsibility.”
Maribel averted his eyes. This was the perfect opportunity to tell him—tell him that Margaret was her sister and best friend, that Oliver was the only family she had left.
She remained quiet.
Thaddeus turned. The firelight caught his features, throwing them into sharp relief—the hard line of his jaw, the shadows beneath his cheekbones, the grey eyes that studied her with an intensity that stole her breath.
“You understand what you are asking,” he said. “The impropriety of an unmarried woman residing in the home of an unmarried man. The whispers it would invite. The damage to whatever remains of your reputation.”
“I understand.”
“And still you offer.”
“I do.”
The silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring. Maribel could hear her own pulse thundering in her ears, could feel the weight of his scrutiny pressing against her like something physical.
Thaddeus took a step toward her. Then another. He stopped when barely two feet separated them, close enough that she could see the firelight reflected in his grey eyes, close enough that the scent of sandalwood and smoke curled into her senses.
“You are either very brave,” he said softly, “or very foolish.”
“Perhaps both, Your Grace.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but the closest she had ever seen him come to one. It vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the familiar mask of control.
“I will consider your offer,” he said. “You may stay the night. Mrs. Allen will prepare a room.”
“And Oliver?”
“The boy will be informed that you are here. Whether you remain beyond tomorrow—” He paused, his gaze searching her face. “That decision requires further thought.”
It was not a yes. But it was not a no.
Maribel inclined her head, refusing to let him see how violently her heart was racing. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
She turned toward the door, acutely aware of his eyes following her every step. Her hand had just closed around the handle when his voice stopped her.
“Lady Maribel.”
She looked back.
Thaddeus stood where she had left him, silhouetted against the firelight. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough, as though the words cost him something.
“I hope that you understand… though you seem to care for him, the boy belongs to me now.”
“He is not an object, Your Grace,” she responded softly. “I do hope that in time… you will see that.”
With that, she opened the door and stepped through, leaving him standing alone in the firelit darkness.
Behind her, she heard nothing—no response, no movement, no indication of what thoughts churned behind those winter-grey eyes.
But as she followed Mrs. Allen toward the guest chambers, Maribel permitted herself one small, fragile hope.
He had not refused her.