Chapter 3 #2
There. Near the doorway that led to the card rooms, speaking with Lady Eleanor Whitcombe.
The older woman had taken Maribel’s arm, drawing her slightly apart from the flow of traffic, and was speaking with evident intensity.
Maribel’s face had gone very still, but even from the distance he could see the tension radiating from her.
Thaddeus watched as Maribel nodded once, twice. As Lady Eleanor released her arm with a final, emphatic squeeze. As Maribel turned back toward the ballroom with an expression that anyone else might have mistaken for composure.
Thaddeus knew better. He had seen that expression before—in his own reflection, in the weeks after his mother’s death, in the years of maintaining control when everything within him threatened to shatter.
It was the face of someone holding themselves together by force of will alone.
He turned away from her, walking back to the crowds. Ignoring her was the only true option, he decided. Yet, it became increasingly difficult as the evening wore on.
Thaddeus danced twice, because refusing would have invited comment, and each time he was acutely aware of Lady Maribel somewhere in the periphery of his vision.
She did not dance. No one asked her. She moved through the gathering like a ghost, present but unacknowledged, and something in the set of her shoulders grew heavier with each passing hour.
He should not have noticed. He should not have cared.
He noticed. He cared. And the realisation sat in his chest like a stone.
Near midnight, he observed a minor commotion near the refreshment tables—a cluster of ladies laughing rather too loudly, their attention fixed on something beyond his line of sight.
He altered his course, driven by an instinct he did not care to examine, and arrived in time to see Lady Maribel stepping back from a small group of young women with her head held high and her cheeks burning.
“—hardly surprising,” one of them was saying, her voice carrying with deliberate clarity. “What else would one expect from someone of her family? The apple never falls far from the tree, as my mother says.”
“Such a shame.” Another voice, dripping with false sympathy. “She was quite pretty once, before the disgrace. Now look at her—reduced to playing nursemaid to someone else’s cast-off child.”
Anger coursed through Thaddeus at the thoughtless diction. Cast-off.
He stepped forward before conscious thought could intervene.
“Ladies.”
The young women turned, their expressions shifting rapidly from malicious satisfaction to wide-eyed alarm as they registered his presence. Curtsies were performed with varying degrees of grace, champagne glasses clutched like talismans against his displeasure.
“Your Grace,” one of them managed. “We were just—”
“Leaving.” His voice held no warmth. “Were you not?”
They fled with admirable speed, trailing whispers in their wake.
Thaddeus turned to find Lady Maribel regarding him with an expression he could not entirely decipher. Her eyes were bright—too bright—and that damnable chin remained lifted at its defiant angle.
“That was unnecessary,” she said.
“It was entirely necessary.”
“I am capable of defending myself.”
“I do not doubt it. Nevertheless.”
They stood perhaps three feet apart, and Thaddeus became abruptly aware of how exposed they were—how many eyes had witnessed his intervention, how many tongues would already be crafting interpretations of his behaviour.
He should walk away. He should offer a polite dismissal and return to the tedious work of political conversation, leaving Lady Maribel to navigate her own course through the treacherous waters of the ton.
He did not walk away.
“You look as though you require air,” he said. “The terrace—”
“The terrace would be inadvisable, Your Grace.” A flicker of something that might have been dark humour crossed her features. “Have we not given them enough fuel for speculation without adding more?”
She was right, of course. She was invariably, irritatingly right.
“Then perhaps the library,” he heard himself say. “I have a matter regarding Oliver that requires discussion. It cannot wait.”
Her expression shifted—concern replacing the careful neutrality. “Oliver? What has happened? Is he unwell?”
“He is perfectly well. But I received a communication this afternoon that concerns his future, and I find myself... in need of your counsel.” The words tasted strange upon his tongue.
He had not sought anyone’s counsel in years.
“The library will afford us privacy without impropriety. We will not be there long.”
Maribel hesitated, her gaze searching his face. Whatever she found there seemed to satisfy her, for she inclined her head.
“Very well, Your Grace. Lead on.”
He did that, without a single word further—acutely aware of her, trailing behind him.
The library was blessedly quiet.
Thaddeus closed the door behind them—leaving it slightly ajar, because he was not entirely devoid of sense—and moved to the fireplace, where low flames cast dancing shadows across the walls of leather-bound volumes.
The distant strains of the orchestra filtered through the walls, muffled and dreamlike.
Lady Maribel remained near the door, her posture watchful. The candlelight caught the curve of her cheek, the line of her throat where a simple gold chain disappeared beneath her bodice.
He looked away.
“You mentioned a communication,” she said. “About Oliver.”
“Yes.” He withdrew the letter from his interior pocket—he had carried it with him all evening, though he could not have said why. “This arrived today. It is from Lord Stanton.”
Her brow furrowed. “I do not know the name.”
“You would not. He is newly elevated—made his fortune in shipping, recently acquired a barony through service to the Crown.” Thaddeus unfolded the letter, scanning the contents though he had already committed them to memory.
“He has three children of approximately Oliver’s age, and he has taken it upon himself to host a gathering for the sons of quality families.
A sort of... educational assembly. Riding lessons, deportment, the foundations of classical instruction. ”
“That sounds entirely appropriate.”
“It would be, were it not for the addendum.” Thaddeus looked down, a frown forming between his brows.
“Stanton writes that he has heard rumours regarding Oliver’s care—specifically, regarding the woman who has been installed at Blackwood to oversee it.
He wishes to assure himself, before extending a formal invitation, that the child’s guardianship meets his standards of propriety. ”
Silence.
When Thaddeus raised his gaze, Lady Maribel’s face had gone pale.
“He wishes to vet me,” she said quietly. “To determine whether my presence makes Oliver unsuitable for respectable society.”
“That appears to be the implication.”
“And what have you decided to tell him?”
Thaddeus set the letter down upon the mantel, his movements deliberate. “I have not decided anything. That is why I required your counsel.”
She stared at him. “You are asking me... what I think you should do?”
“I am asking you what is best for Oliver.” He turned to face her fully, and the distance between them seemed suddenly inadequate.
“You know the boy better than I. You understand what he needs in ways I cannot pretend to grasp. If this gathering would benefit him—if the companionship of other children his age would help him heal—then perhaps accommodations must be made.”
“What sort of accommodations?”
“I could send you away.” His voice was flat, stripped of inflection. “Temporarily. Until the gossip dies down. Until Oliver’s position is secure enough that no one thinks to question his circumstances.”
Lady Maribel took a step backward. “You would send me away?”
“I did not say I would. I said I could.” Thaddeus ran a hand through his hair, disturbing its careful arrangement.
“I am attempting to consider all possibilities, Lady Maribel. I am attempting to do what is right for a child who has already lost everything, and I find myself singularly ill-equipped for the task.”
The admission cost him. He saw her register it—saw the surprise flicker across her features before she schooled them into neutrality.
“You will not send me away,” she said, her voice low but firm.
“Oliver has already lost his parents. He has already been uprooted from everything he knew. He is only now beginning to trust that I will remain. If you take me from him now, for the sake of appeasing a shipping baron with social aspirations—”
“I am not attempting to appease anyone.” His voice rose before he could stop it. “I am attempting to protect him. From whispers. From cruelty. From a society that will judge him for circumstances beyond his control—”
“And you think removing the one person who offers him comfort will achieve that?” She stepped closer, her eyes blazing. “You think isolation is protection? You think a child learns to weather cruelty by being shielded from it entirely?”
Without meaning to—or fully realizing it—his hand captured her arm, though he was not sure whether he meant to push her away or pull her closer.
“I think,” Thaddeus said, his own voice dangerous now, “that you have no concept of what I am trying to—”
The door opened.
Later, Thaddeus would reconstruct the moment with agonising precision: the creak of hinges, the sudden flood of light and noise from the corridor beyond, the rustle of silk as three figures swept into the library without so much as a knock.
Lady Forsythe. The two women who had flanked her earlier. And behind them, barely visible, a fourth figure with a lorgnette raised to her eye and an expression of delighted scandal.
They stopped just inside the threshold, their gazes moving from Thaddeus to Lady Maribel and back again with the speed of predators scenting blood.