Chapter 12
“If I am not mistaken, I believe that you may be falling in love with your wife.”
Thaddeus’s head shot up at this, and he looked at Julian with narrowed eyes. It was entirely untrue, of course. He cared for her, of course. Perhaps, there was a reluctant friendship forming between them, but love? No. He was most certainly not falling in love with her.
The fact that he wanted to protect her from hurt, wanted to stare into her eyes, wanted her opinion on all that mattered… it was meaningless. He cleared his throat.
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it?” Julian settled deeper into his leather chair, swirling brandy in his glass with the particular calm of a man who knew he’d struck bone. “Because from where I sit, watching you pace circles around my study like a caged beast, it seems rather obvious.”
Thaddeus turned sharply. “You presume too much.”
“I presume exactly enough.” Julian’s voice remained mild, but his eyes held that particular glint Thaddeus had learned to recognise during their years of service—the look of a man preparing to press an advantage.
“You defended that boy in front of half of London with a ferocity that shocked even me. Made Hastings look the fool he is. Risked your own reputation to protect Oliver’s. ”
“The child is my responsibility—”
“The child is Nicholas’s son, yes. And you would have protected him regardless.
” Julian leaned forward. “But the way you speak of Lady Blackwood now—the way your entire demeanour shifts when her name is mentioned—that has nothing to do with duty and everything to do with the fact that you’ve developed genuine feeling for the woman you married. ”
The fire crackled in the grate. Beyond the windows, London sprawled grey and cold beneath November clouds that threatened snow. Thaddeus thought of Blackwood—of Maribel moving through those corridors, her dark hair catching lamplight, her voice soft as she read to Oliver before sleep.
Thought of her face when he’d touched her cheek. The way she’d looked at him as though seeing past every wall he’d built.
“I cannot afford such feelings,” he said at last.
“Cannot? Or will not?” Julian rose, crossing to stand beside him.
“Thaddeus. You married her. She lives in your house. Cares for your ward with devotion most mothers would envy. Has transformed that mausoleum you call home into something approaching warmth. At what point does denying your regard for her become not protection but cruelty?”
“Cruelty would be encouraging attachment when I cannot—” Thaddeus stopped himself.
“Cannot what? Love her?” Julian’s voice gentled dangerously. “Or cannot survive loving her?”
The truth of it struck deep. Thaddeus turned away, staring into flames that offered no answers.
“You tried this before,” Julian continued quietly. “After your mother died. After Nicholas. You have a tendency to attempt to convince yourself that distance equals safety. That if you care for nothing, nothing can hurt you. How has that served you so far?”
“It has served adequately.”
Thaddeus’s voice left no room for argument. He had not reckoned, however, with Julian’s refusal to listen to that tone of his.
“Adequately.” Julian’s laugh held no humour. “You call eight years of sealed rooms and deliberate isolation adequate? You call pushing away everyone who might actually matter to you adequate?”
“I call it survival.”
“Calling it survival, does not make it true.” Julian moved to block his view of the fire, forcing eye contact.
“You call it survival because acknowledging what it truly is—slow death by your own hand—would require admitting you’ve been wrong.
That the walls you’ve built haven’t protected you.
They’ve simply ensured you suffer alone. ”
Thaddeus’s jaw worked soundlessly. Every instinct screamed to leave, to retreat behind the familiar armour of ducal hauteur and dismissive coldness. But Julian knew him too well. Had known him too long.
“She… plagues me.” He admitted at last. “I do not… mean this as any kind of confession, but… Perhaps, when I look at her I do sometimes wish that I could…” He broke off at this and shook his head. Julian was not dissuaded.
“Could be what? The man you were before grief convinced you feeling was weakness?” Julian’s hand settled on his shoulder—brief, firm.
“That man still exists, Thaddeus. Buried beneath ice and distance, perhaps, but not gone. Lady Blackwood sees him. That’s why she frightens you.
Because she sees past the Duke to the wounded man beneath. ”
“And what good would that do either of us?” Bitterness leaked through despite his efforts to contain it. “Even if I allowed myself to—to care for her as you suggest—what then? She deserves warmth. Affection freely given. I am capable of neither.”
“Are you not?” Julian challenged. “Because I have known you all my life, Thaddeus. And… I know you. I know you better than you care to admit. I know that you love that boy, and I know that you care far more for that woman than you’d like to admit. I…”
“Stop,” Thaddeus insisted firmly. “You are not part of my marriage. You do know…”
“I do not need to be. Unlike you, my friend, I do not fear feeling. And I care about your wellbeing. Perhaps more than you do.” Julian returned to his chair, settling with the satisfaction of a tactician whose strategy had succeeded.
“You cannot protect people by pushing them away. You tried that. With your father after your mother died. With me when we returned from the Peninsula. With Nicholas’s memory.
It doesn’t work. It has never worked. All it does is ensure that when loss comes—and loss always comes—you face it having lived only half a life. ”
The words landed with terrible precision. Thaddeus thought of his mother’s chambers, sealed and dark. Thought of Nicholas’s grave covered in wildflowers he’d gathered himself because the grief of tending it was better than the emptiness of avoiding it entirely.
“I don’t know how,” he said finally. The confession emerged barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how to lower these defences without them crumbling entirely. Don’t know how to care for her without—” His throat closed.
“Without losing yourself to it?” Julian finished gently.
“Then perhaps that’s what you need. To lose yourself.
To stop controlling every feeling, managing every emotion, treating your own heart like enemy territory.
” He rose again, moving to the sideboard.
“Love isn’t tragedy, Thaddeus. It’s not weakness.
It’s the only thing that makes any of this—” he gestured vaguely at the world beyond his windows, “worth enduring.”
Thaddeus accepted the brandy Julian pressed into his hands. The crystal was cool, the liquid within amber and burning.
“She deserves better than a man who cannot even speak of his mother without fleeing the room.”
“She deserves honesty,” Julian corrected. “She deserves a husband who tries. Who acknowledges his failings whilst working to overcome them rather than hiding behind them.” His expression softened. “You’re trying, Thaddeus. I can see that much. The question is whether you’ll let her see it too.”
The question haunted him during the entire journey back to Blackwood.
Thaddeus watched the countryside roll past his carriage window and thought of Julian’s words—the challenge beneath them, the uncomfortable truth they contained. He was trying. In his own inadequate, halting way, he was attempting something he had not attempted in eight years.
He was allowing himself to feel.
The realisation should have brought relief. Instead, it sat in his chest like a stone, heavy with implications he was not prepared to examine.
The carriage turned up the drive, and Blackwood rose before him—grey stone and tall windows, the house that had been his prison and his refuge for most of his adult life.
But something had changed. The windows seemed brighter somehow.
Smoke curled from more chimneys than strictly necessary.
There were flowers in the entrance hall when he stepped through the door—roses, their scent filling the space with unexpected warmth.
“Your Grace.” Mrs. Allen appeared, taking his coat and gloves. “Welcome home. Lady Blackwood is in the east garden, I believe. And Master Oliver is—”
“In the stables,” Thaddeus finished, his jaw tightening. “Yes. I am aware.”
Mrs. Allen’s brow lifted ever so slightly and Thaddeus pondered the meaning of this change in expression. Surprise, perhaps, that he knew. Or concern about what he might do with the knowledge.
Thaddeus moved through corridors that felt somehow different, though he could not identify precisely what had changed.
Everything was in its place. The furniture arranged exactly as it had been.
Yet something fundamental had shifted—as though the house itself had taken a breath after years of holding still.
He found himself walking toward the east wing without conscious decision.
The corridor stretched before him, narrower than those in the main house, its faded wallpaper somehow less oppressive than he remembered. At its end, the carved doors stood slightly ajar.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Someone had been here. Someone had opened what he had sealed.
He crossed the remaining distance and pushed the door wider.
The sitting room lay revealed—clean, dusted, the Holland covers removed from furniture that gleamed with fresh polish.
Late afternoon light streamed through windows that had been washed, falling across carpet that showed no trace of eight years’ accumulated dust. The painted ceiling—cherubs and clouds—emerged from shadow like something resurrected.
It was beautiful.
He had forgotten how beautiful it was.