Chapter 7 #2
He nodded once, then returned his attention to the puzzle, and Maribel sat beside him in silence, watching him work, her mind already turning toward the conversation that awaited her.
Night came far too quickly today. As much as Maribel did not know how to approach Thaddeus, she knew she had no choice. So when she found him in the library after nightfall, she lifted her chin and moved towards him.
He turned when she entered, a frown appearing between his brows.
“Lady Blackwood. Is there something you require?”
“A moment of your time, if you can spare it.”
He gestured toward the chair opposite his own—a concession, however small. Maribel lowered herself onto its edge, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap.
“It concerns Oliver.”
“I have yet to hear you consider something that does not.”
She ignored the edge in his voice. “He asked me today why he cannot play with Thomas Brennan.”
Thaddeus’s expression did not change. “I believe we have discussed this matter already.”
“We have. And I find myself dissatisfied with its resolution.” She held his gaze without flinching.
“He needs a companion, Thaddeus. Someone his own age. Someone who can teach him about frogs and blackberries and all the things children ought to learn from other children, not from tutors and governesses and well-meaning adults.”
“He has tutors. He has you.” Thaddeus took a measured sip of brandy. “He does not need a groundskeeper’s boy trailing after him, filling his head with unsuitable notions.”
“Unsuitable notions? The boy wanted to show him where the frogs live. What possible harm could that cause?”
“The harm of teaching Oliver to seek companionship in quarters where it cannot appropriately be found.” His jaw tightened. “The harm to the garderdener’s boy of teaching him to presume upon his betters, and all the consequences that can arise from such presumption.”
“He is four years old. He doesn’t understand quarters or appropriateness.
He understands loneliness.” Maribel leaned forward, willing him to hear her.
“He understands waking up in a strange house without his parents, surrounded by adults who speak to him in careful voices and servants who treat him like something fragile. He understands that every child he sees through the window has something he is denied.”
Thaddeus set down his glass with a sharp click. “You presume to know what is best for him while your own precarious family situation…” He sighed. “I have been planning for his future since his parents passed. You must understand that his life, the expectations placed upon him have changed.”
“Planning is not the same as understanding.”
The words hung between them, sharp and unretractable. Maribel watched the colour rise in Thaddeus’s face, watched his hands clench upon the arms of his chair.
“This discussion is over.”
“It is not over simply because you declare it so.”
“In my household, Lady Blackwood, it is.” He rose, towering over her, his presence suddenly overwhelming.
“I have tolerated your interference in the nursery. I have permitted your rearrangements and your requisitions and your wholesale dismantling of the structure I established. But I will not tolerate challenges to my authority on matters of consequence.”
Maribel rose as well, refusing to be diminished. “You will not allow me to challenge you when it comes to the happiness of this child?”
“His future is a matter of consequence. His happiness will follow when he has been properly prepared for the world he will inhabit.”
“And what world is that? The world of empty drawing rooms and careful silences? The world where grief is locked behind closed doors and love is treated as liability?” She could feel her entire body heating up as though she’d stepped into a furnace.
“He has already lost everything, Thaddeus. Would you have him lose his childhood as well?”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Thaddeus stared at her, his chest rising and falling with barely controlled emotion. She had gone too far—she knew it even as the words left her lips—but she could not bring herself to regret them.
“Good evening, Lady Blackwood.” His voice had gone flat, emptied of all inflection. “I trust you can find your own way back to your chambers.”
He turned and walked out, leaving her alone in the firelit library with nothing but the crackle of flames and the weight of her own frustration for company.
The collision happened three mornings later.
Maribel had been hurrying toward the nursery, her mind occupied with the day’s planned activities, when she rounded the corner and walked directly into a wall of muscle and broadcloth.
Strong hands caught her arms before she could stumble—an instinct, nothing more—and for one suspended moment, they stood frozen in the corridor, her palms braced against his chest, his fingers wrapped around her upper arms, their faces mere inches apart.
She could smell him. Sandalwood and something sharper beneath it—ink, perhaps, or the leather of the books he spent his days among. The warmth of his grip seeped through the thin fabric of her sleeves, and her pulse stuttered traitorously in her throat.
His eyes met hers. Grey as winter storms, as morning mist, as all the cold things she had associated with him since the moment they met. But there was heat there too—she saw it flare, saw his pupils dilate, saw the moment awareness crashed over him like a wave.
He released her as though she had caught fire.
“You should watch where you’re going.” His voice came out rougher than usual, stripped of its customary polish.
Maribel stepped back, pressing her hands to her skirts to still their trembling. “I might say the same, Your Grace.”
She stepped around him and continued toward the nursery, her heart hammering against her ribs, furious with herself for noticing the warmth of his grip, for remembering the scent of sandalwood, for the way her skin still tingled where his fingers had pressed.
She did not look back.
For the rest of the day, she managed to avoid him. The avoidance came to a sudden halt that evening, when loud voices came from the study.
“—the new Duchess has opinions about the nursery budget.”
The voice belonged to Mr. Crawford, the estate steward. Maribel had met him only once, briefly, and had formed an immediate impression of a man who resented any disruption to established order.
She paused, knowing she should move on, unable to make her feet obey.
“The expenditure she’s requested is considerable, Your Grace. Art supplies, new linens, books that will need to be specially ordered from London. The previous arrangements were more than adequate—”
“The previous arrangements were made before the Duchess assumed responsibility for the nursery.” Thaddeus’s voice cut across the steward’s objections. “Her opinions are not your concern, Crawford. If she has requested changes, see them done.”
Maribel’s breath caught.
“But Your Grace—”
“Did I not make myself clear? The Duchess’s authority in all matters regarding the boy is to be respected.” A heavy pause followed the instruction. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The words emerged stiff, reluctant. “Perfectly understood.”
Maribel moved on before she could be discovered, her heart beating too fast, her thoughts spinning in directions she could not quite follow.
He had defended her. Not to her face—that would have required an acknowledgment of accord neither of them was prepared to make—but in private, to his own staff, where she would never have known if not for chance and an open door.
Her opinions are not your concern.
The Duchess’s authority is to be respected.
Nothing about what the man said and did make sense.
In truth, she knew not how to reconcile the man who dismissed her arguments to her face with the man who championed her authority behind closed doors.
Did not know how to fit this new piece into the puzzle she had been assembling since the moment she crossed Blackwood’s threshold.
She reached her chambers and closed the door behind her, pressing her back against the wood, staring at nothing.
In the nursery above, Oliver would be settling into sleep, his wooden soldiers arranged in careful formation on his nightstand, his dreams—she hoped—finally free of shadows.
And in his study below, Thaddeus Blackwood sat alone with his brandy and his silence and his grief, defending a woman he claimed not to trust while refusing to meet her eyes in the light of day.
Nothing about this man made sense.
Nothing about her reaction to him made sense either.
She tried her best to push the thoughts of him from her mind as she rushed to her own chambers, praying to heavens for sleep to come and stop the tumultuous thoughts from swirling around in her mind.
Her dreams were interrupted shortly after midnight. A sound broke through the barriers that separated reality from dreams, one that pierced through the darkness like a blade.
Oliver’s screaming.
Maribel jumped out of bed before conscious thought could intervene, her bare feet slapping against cold floorboards as she raced toward the nursery. The corridor stretched endless before her, shadows clinging to the walls, her heart pounding in her throat.
She burst through the nursery door and found him there—not alone.
Thaddeus stood beside Oliver’s bed, still dressed in his evening clothes, his face pale in the candlelight, his hands hanging helplessly at his sides. Oliver thrashed beneath his covers.
“Mama! Don’t go! Papa, wait!”
Beside his bed, Thaddeus stood frozen.
Their eyes met across the room.
And for the first time since she had known him, Maribel saw real grief in his gaze.