Chapter 28
The dowager stepped inside the study and closed the door with a soft click. She remained there for a moment, as if gathering courage from the polished wood at her back. The silence stretched between them until she finally spoke.
“Roman.”
Her fingers tightened against the fabric of her skirt, knuckles bleaching white. She drew in a slow, rattling breath.
“Can you forgive me, Roman?” she asked.
Roman looked at the woman who had governed his entire life.
He thought about the lifetime of lies. He thought about the sister he never had the chance to know.
He thought about Thelma shivering in a freezing stone house because the Langley legacy of secrets had paved the way for Daphne Vane's cruelty.
"I am working on it," Roman said quietly. "The anger is still very present. The betrayal is still very heavy. Forgiveness is not a simple line to cross."
"Thelma told me about your conversation," Roman explained, his voice entirely steady.
"She told me she did not offer you absolution.
She told me she could not forgive you. But she stayed in the chair, and she listened to you.
She did not leave the room. That is where this starts, Mother. We stay in the room."
She closed her eyes. A single tear escaped, tracking a wet line down her pale, lined cheek. She nodded once.
That single nod was the only gesture either of them could manage at that moment. Roman stood up and walked back out into the corridor.
The afternoon brought the sharp, rapid clatter of hooves striking the gravel in the front courtyard.
Roman was reviewing the estate ledgers in the library when Orson strode through the doors.
The viscount’s riding boots were dusted with dry earth, but his posture radiated absolute, triumphant energy.
He threw his leather riding gloves onto the table and poured himself a glass of water from the crystal pitcher near the globe.
"The magistrate in Farnham did not hesitate," Orson announced, drinking half the water before setting the glass down with a solid clink. "He filed formal criminal charges against Daphne Vane for the abduction. Warrants have been issued."
Roman closed the heavy leather ledger. He leaned back in his chair. "And the Earl of Harworth?"
"The Earl is currently exercising the most spectacular display of damage control the north has ever seen," Orson replied, a fierce smile curving his lips.
"He sent a courier to my estate this morning.
He has written a formal, groveling apology on his daughter's behalf.
He claims Lady Daphne suffered a temporary break from reality brought on by wedding nerves.
He has immediately packed her into a closed carriage and sent her to reside with an obscure, elderly relative in Hertfordshire. "
"Hertfordshire," Roman repeated. The location was remote. It was a complete social exile. Lady Daphne would spend the rest of her youth managing the complaints of an aging aunt, entirely cut off from the London ballrooms she prized above all else. "It is exactly what she deserves."
“The carriage leaves from her father's townhouse at noon,” Orson added. “If you intend to say anything to her, Roman, it will need to be before then.”
Roman was already reaching for his riding gloves.
The Harworth townhouse sat at the edge of the village; a tall, narrow building with its curtains already drawn against the curious eyes of the street.
A travel carriage waited at the curb, trunks lashed to its roof.
Roman did not wait to be announced. He walked straight through the front door past a footman who took one look at the Duke of Langley's face and decided not to object.
Lady Daphne stood in the front hall in a traveling cloak, drawing on a pair of gloves with brisk, businesslike movements, as though she were leaving for a weekend at a friend's estate rather than the ruins of her own life.
She looked up when the door opened, and whatever she saw in Roman's face stopped her hands.
“Your Grace,” she said, recovering her composure with the speed of a woman who had spent a lifetime practicing it. “Come to see me off?”
“I came to look at you,” Roman said. “Once. Before you disappear into whatever corner of the country your father has found for you.”
Lady Daphne's chin lifted. “Come to gloat, you mean.”
“You hired men to lock a woman and an infant in a freezing tower and walk away when the money to keep them fed didn't arrive,” Roman said.
His voice did not rise. It didn't need to.
“I am not interested in gloating, Daphne. I am interested in understanding how you tell yourself the story so that you come out of it blameless. I would genuinely like to know.”
Something flickered across Lady Daphne's face, there and gone too fast to name. For a moment she looked less like a woman cornered and more like one genuinely searching for the answer.
“I told myself the baby wasn't really yours to claim,” she said.
“A foundling. A complication someone would have quietly removed eventually, whether I did it or your mother did. I told myself the nursemaid was a liar who deserved whatever came from lying. It is remarkably easy to do a cruel thing, Your Grace, once you have convinced yourself the people in front of you are obstacles rather than people.”
“That is the most honest sentence I have ever heard you say.”
“Honesty was never going to win me a duke,” Lady Daphne said, the brittle composure sliding back into place like a visor dropping. “Calculation nearly did. I lost. I am aware of that, Roman, more keenly than you can imagine, so spare me the satisfaction of watching you explain it to me.”
“You did not lose a duke,” Roman said. “You were never going to have one. You lost the right to stand in a room with decent people and be believed. That is a smaller thing to lose than a title, Daphne, but I suspect you will feel the absence of it for considerably longer.”
For just a moment, the practiced blankness in Lady Daphne's eyes cracked, and something that looked almost like fear showed through it. Then she pulled her gloves tight and turned toward the door, her spine very straight.
“Tell your nursemaid I hope the cold finally thaws out of her bones,” she said, not quite managing to keep the venom from her voice. “And tell her I hope it was worth it.”
“It was,” Roman said simply. “She has a niece who is alive and a name that is true. You have a carriage to Hertfordshire and an aunt who will not let you forget what you cost yourself. I find I do not need to add anything else to that.”
He did not watch her walk to the carriage. He had already turned for the door, and he did not look back.
***
"The society papers are completely losing interest in her fabricated story," Orson continued, leaning his hands flat against the mahogany table. "The Morning Post piece is losing all traction. It cannot compete against a legally stamped birth record and Mr. Sterling’s formal solicitor statement. Furthermore, three highly prominent county families in Somerset have publicly vouched for the Preston family’s impeccable character. "
Orson paused. He picked up his glass of water, swirling the remaining liquid. "Nicolette Upperton organized the Somerset letters. She tracked down the families, forced them to sign sworn affidavits, and personally paid the couriers to ride through the night to London."
Roman watched his friend very closely. Orson lingered on Nicolette’s name for a full three seconds longer than necessary. His pale blue eyes softened, losing their usual cynical edge. The faint, undeniable trace of deep admiration colored his entire expression.
Roman filed that specific observation away.
"Her intervention turned the tide of the scandal entirely," Roman said. He stood up from the desk. "You should stay for dinner, Orson. We have a great deal to celebrate. The house is finally secure."
Orson cleared his throat. He set the glass down and picked up his leather riding gloves. "I cannot stay for dinner, Roman. I have supper at Upperton this evening."
Roman raised a single eyebrow. "Is that the third time you have taken supper at the Upperton estate this week?"
"It is the fourth," Orson corrected quickly. He turned on his heel and strode rapidly toward the library doors. "I must go. The roads are muddy, and Nicolette despises tardiness."
Orson was out the door and halfway down the corridor before Roman could even formulate a response. Roman chuckled quietly to himself in the empty room.
The house was profoundly quieter now. Lady Daphne was gone. The oppressive, manufactured tension of the past month had completely evaporated.
His mother remained downstairs in her sitting rooms, slowly reentering the rhythm of the household without her usual dictatorial demands. The corridor outside the nursery now belonged entirely to Thelma and Liliana, exactly the way it should have been from the very beginning.
That evening, the temperature dropped, bringing a crisp, clean chill to the Yorkshire air.
Roman walked into the library after finishing his final correspondence for the day.
He noticed the heavy glass doors leading out to the stone terrace were slightly ajar.
A single oil lamp burned on the small iron table outside, throwing a warm, golden circle of light across the carved stone railing.
He stepped out onto the terrace.
Thelma was standing by the balustrade. She wore a deep burgundy evening dress, the dark fabric providing a stark, beautiful contrast to her pale skin.
Her auburn hair was pinned loosely at the nape of her neck, allowing a few soft curls to fall against her collarbone.
She was looking out over the manicured lawns, watching the moonlight reflect off the distant surface of the ornamental lake.
She was standing in the exact spot where he had found her weeks ago. It was the night before the scandal broke, the night before Lady Daphne arrived and tore their fragile world apart.