Chapter 16 #4
“She took it! She took it!” Aurora cried happily, as if it were the most amazing result ever.
Despite everything, Hector felt prideful in that moment.
Poppy’s song faltered into laughter. “Again.”
He followed her instructions and fed Princess again. And again. Each successful spoonful produced in him satisfaction so disproportionate that he would have been embarrassed had anyone named it.
Poppy kept singing while Aurora danced beside her. And Princess laughed and ate through it all. It was the most fatherly he had ever felt, and the feeling left him exposed.
He looked at Poppy, who grinned at him.
“You are doing great,” she said excitedly.
She was motion and color to him. He could not see her expression in detail, but he imagined it instead through Princess’s eyes.
She was bright, kind, absurd, and safe. Of course, the children turned toward her.
Of course the staff softened when she entered a room.
Of course, even his silent house had begun rearranging itself around her presence.
She is an angel.
The thought came without permission, and with no poetry attached to it. Merely a fact. He did not require perfect eyesight to know it.
At last the performance ended, not just because Princess was tired of it and her food but because Poppy and Aurora did.
Aurora collapsed into her chair, flushed with accomplishment.
Princess made pleased sounds over the remains of her meal.
The dining room, though still noisier than any dining room had a right to be, settled into a gentler disorder.
But Poppy’s laughter remained.
It seemed to linger after the sound itself had faded, lodged somewhere beneath Hector’s sternum. He disliked the vulnerability of that. He disliked more that he did not want it gone.
Poppy came close again. Her voice lowered beside him. “Aurora is smiling at you.”
He turned toward the child. The shape of her was small and indistinct, but he could make out the angle of her face in his direction.
He smiled.
It felt awkward. Underused.
Then, because Poppy was near and because the room had already stripped him of more defenses than he had intended to surrender, he whispered, “Am I doing a good job?”
The question escaped before he could make it sound like something else.
Poppy did not tease him.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
He heard the smile in her voice. Worse, he heard tenderness. It moved through him with a force that no accusation could have matched.
At that moment, the truth clarified.
He had already known pieces of it. In the altered pace of his mornings. In the way he listened for her steps before he admitted he was listening. In the irritation he felt when she tired herself. In the dangerous peace that came when she sat across from him and spoke his name without a title.
But now the thought formed whole, undeniable.
He could not lose Poppy.
Not now. Not ever.
The certainty should have warmed him. Instead, it frightened him with its simplicity.
Want made men selfish. Need made them cruel.
He knew enough of darkness to distrust what it might do when it reached for light.
He was not easy, not gentle by nature, not made of the same open warmth that seemed to live in her without effort.
Poppy gave herself to wounded things because she could not help it.
He could not allow himself to become one more wound that consumed her.
Perhaps the only way to keep her was to keep his distance.
The logic was brutal and clean. He understood brutal, clean things.
He had promised not to touch her. At the time, the promise had seemed honorable.
Necessary. A protection for her, perhaps for him.
Now he regretted it with an ache that shamed him.
He regretted it when she leaned close. When she said his name.
When he heard laughter in her breath and imagined what it might be to feel that laughter against his skin.
Regret did not alter duty.
He would give her space. He would be careful. He would not drag her into the colder chambers of himself and call it marriage. He would—
“Hector?”
He turned toward her at once.
So much for distance.
Poppy stood near his chair. “Aurora and I have a night routine with Princess. Nothing elaborate. A little settling, a little story if Aurora is not too tired. Would you like to join us?”
No.
That was the answer a prudent man would give. A man committed to distance. A man who understood that every shared hour would make the next separation harder.
Aurora was still facing him when Princess made a soft sound, full and content after her meal. Poppy waited, hopeful but not demanding, as Hector’s hand closed around the head of his cane.
“All right,” he agreed, gruff as ever.
Poppy’s silence lasted half a heartbeat too long, and he noticed the small, appreciative smile.
In that moment, he knew that he had fooled no one.
Not Aurora, who gave a small, delighted gasp.
Not Poppy, whose presence seemed to alter the air.
And most certainly not himself.