Chapter 7
“Did my papa like soldiers too?”
The question floated across the breakfast table with the innocence only a child could possess, landing squarely in the middle of a silence that had been carefully maintained for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Maribel’s hand stilled upon her teacup. Across the vast length of the table, Thaddeus sat frozen—his fork suspended halfway to his mouth, his grey eyes fixed upon Oliver with an expression that might have been carved from stone.
Oliver remained oblivious to the tension his words had wrought.
He simply continued arranging his porridge into small mountains.
“Only Thomas said his papa taught him to whittle soldiers from wood, and I thought perhaps my papa might have done something like that. With me.” He looked up, those brown eyes—so achingly like Margaret’s—bright with innocent curiosity. “Did he?”
The fork lowered. Maribel watched Thaddeus’s throat work, watched the careful mask of his composure crack along its edges as he searched for words that would not come.
“Your father,” Thaddeus began, his voice emerging rougher than usual, “was a man of many interests.”
“But did he like soldiers? The wooden kind, I mean. Or the painted ones like I have?”
The silence stretched. Maribel could hear the clock upon the mantelpiece marking each painful second, could feel the weight of Thaddeus’s struggle pressing against the very air of the room.
“He was a soldier himself,” Thaddeus said at last. “A real one. He served with me in Portugal.”
“A real soldier?” Oliver’s eyes went wide. “With a sword and everything?”
“Yes.” The word seemed to cost Thaddeus something. His knuckles had gone white around his fork, and his shoulders stiffened. “With a sword and everything.”
Oliver’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth—clearly intending to ask more questions. Maribel set down her teacup, preparing to intervene, but Thaddeus was already rising from his chair. The movement was too swift, too sharp—the motion of a man fleeing rather than departing.
“I have business to attend to.” His voice was cold, though there was something suspicious in the way he pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you will excuse me.”
He was gone before Oliver could respond, his footsteps echoing down the corridor with the measured precision of a military retreat. The breakfast room felt suddenly too large, too quiet, filled with the ghost of a conversation that had ended before it properly began.
Oliver stared at the empty doorway, his small face creased with confusion. “Did I say something wrong?”
The ache in Maribel’s chest sharpened to something almost unbearable. She rose from her own chair and crossed to kneel beside him, taking his small hands in hers.
“No, sweetheart. You said nothing wrong.”
“Then why did he leave? He always leaves.” Oliver’s lower lip trembled, though he fought valiantly to still it. “Whenever I ask about Papa, he goes away. Does he not like talking about him?”
Maribel smoothed the hair from his forehead, searching for words that would explain without wounding.
“Your papa and His Grace were very close. The closest of friends—brothers, almost, though not by blood. When we lose someone we love that much...” She paused as she thought of her sister, the grief nearly overwhelming her too.
“It hurts to speak about them sometimes… because we miss them so much.”
“Like how you get sad when you talk about Mama?”
She swallowed down the flash of pain that coursed through her at the innocent question.
“Yes,” Maribel whispered. “Exactly like that.”
Oliver considered this with a frown that would have bordered on petulant had it not been for his tender age. He was quiet for a while, then looked up at her. “But you still talk about her. Even when it makes you sad.”
“I do. Because I think it’s important for you to know her. To remember her, even though you were so young when...” The words caught. She steadied herself. “She loved you so much, Oliver. More than anything in this world. And your papa loved you too.”
The corners of Oliver’s mouth dropped as he looked at her. “Sometimes at night… I try to remember them, but I can’t.”
Maribel pulled her closer, tears forming in her own eyes. “Oh, my sweet boy. That doesn’t mean that you didn’t love them enough, or that you’ll forget them entirely. And I promise… I will try my best to keep their memories alive for you.”
Oliver leaned into her embrace, his small body warm against hers.
“Thank you, Maribel,” he whispered. “So you mean you will tell me more stories? About Papa and Mama?”
“As many as you want. Whenever you want to hear them.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
This seemed to settle him down, and Maribel marched him up to his nursery. Though she read him stories like always and watched with a tender smile as he played with his wooden soldiers, Maribel could not get the thought of Thaddeus’s barely-covered heartache out of her mind.
She had to speak to him, she decided as evening approached. Before she could talk herself out of it, she made her way to the study. The door stood ajar and she paused at the threshold, the tea tray balanced in her hands. She took a deep breath and peered through the gap.
Thaddeus sat behind his desk, but he was not working. The papers before him lay untouched, the ink in his standish long since dried. He was staring at some point beyond the window with an expression that made Maribel’s heart ache for him.
He looked lost. Utterly, completely lost.
She thought of the breakfast table. Of the way his voice had cracked ever so slightly when he spoke of Nicholas. Of the way he had fled rather than face a child’s innocent questions about the father he would never know.
What happened to you? she wondered once again. What broke inside you so thoroughly that you cannot even speak of love without retreating behind your walls?
She did not announce herself. She simply pushed the door open with her hip, crossed the carpet with quiet steps, and set the tea tray upon the corner of his desk.
Thaddeus stirred, his gaze focusing slowly, as though returning from a great distance.
“Lady Blackwood—”
“You missed dinner.” She kept her voice neutral, uninflected. “Mrs. Allen was concerned.”
“I was not hungry.”
“Nevertheless.” She straightened, her hands clasped before her. “The tea is hot. You should drink it before it cools.”
She turned to leave, but something made her pause at the threshold. She did not look back—could not look back, not with the image of his grief still burning behind her eyes—but she spoke into the silence nonetheless.
“He fears forgetting his parents.”
She heard the sharp intake of breath behind her, felt the weight of his attention upon her back.
“I told him what I could,” she continued quietly. “What I knew. Not that… I knew Nicholas all that well.” A pause. “You could tell him more, if you wished. You knew him far better than I.”
The silence stretched. Maribel waited, her heart beating too fast, her fingers curled into her palms.
“Thank you,” Thaddeus said at last. His voice was rough, scraped raw. “For the tea.”
She inclined her head without turning and stepped into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind her with trembling hands.
The days that followed brought no resolution, only a deepening of the strange tension that had settled over Blackwood like morning mist.
Maribel threw herself into Oliver’s care with renewed determination.
She reorganised the nursery completely—not merely moving the chair this time, but rearranging the entire space, if only to keep her mind somewhat busy.
She requested new books from the library, commissioned art supplies from the village, established a schedule of lessons and play that bore no resemblance to the rigid structure Thaddeus had imposed.
Little by little, she thought as the week carried on, she could see a bit of a change in Oliver. He would never, she feared, be the carefree boy he’d have been with Nicholas and Margaret. Yet he now laughed more readily, cried less often, and slept through the night without waking to nightmares.
“Why can’t I play with Thomas?”
Maribel looked up from her book. Oliver sat cross-legged on the nursery floor, a half-finished puzzle spread before him, his brown eyes fixed upon Maribel with a curiosity that was unbound as only a child’s could be.
Maribel’s hands stilled upon the picture book she had been selecting from the shelf. She had been expecting this question, but that did not make it easier to answer.
“Thomas has his own duties to attend to,” she said carefully. “His father needs his help with the gardens.”
“But he said he could show me the frogs. He said they’re big this time of year.” Oliver’s lower lip pushed forward. “Why did the footman make me come inside? I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
No. He hadn’t been. That was precisely the problem.
Maribel crossed to sit beside him on the carpet, her skirts pooling around her in waves of dove-grey muslin. “Sometimes,” she began, choosing each word with care, “grown-ups have rules that don’t make sense to children. Rules about who can be friends with whom, and when, and how.”
“That’s foolish.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped her. “Perhaps it is.”
“Thomas is nice. He knows about frogs and rabbits and where the best blackberries grow. And he doesn’t mind that I don’t know about any of those things yet.” Oliver’s voice had taken on a plaintive quality that tugged at her heart. “I just want a friend. Is that so very bad?”
“No, sweetheart. It’s not bad at all.”
“Then why—”
“I don’t know.” The admission pained her. She was meant to have answers, meant to be the steady presence that made sense of a senseless world. “But I shall speak to His Grace again.”
Oliver frowned.
“Will he listen?”
Maribel leaned forward with a smile that showed a confidence she did not truly have. “I will make him,” she whispered.