Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
“Poppy! You absolutely must attend Viscount Harriet’s ball.” Poppy’s sister suddenly turned her attention to him. “Your Grace? Please convince her.”
Hector felt his pulse quicken as he stood near the edge of the drawing room and listened to his house become unfamiliar with all the noise of the children and adults who lounged around.
Utter chaos surrounded him in his sight, but not in his heart or mind.
Every time he heard Poppy’s laughter, he knew that he had made the right choice.
He took a deep breath in. “If my duchess wants to attend a ball, then we shall.”
He felt his palm shake where he clutched the cane.
How would I dance with her?
Aurora’s voice traveled in quick bursts from one side to the other; the Pridewell boy answered with equal seriousness, and Princess produced small sounds of effort as she crawled in pursuit of a toy, and then Poppy’s garment.
Hector knew that all eyes were on him; he looked toward Poppy and could see the outline of her smile.
“I do not wish to go,” she said softly, and he heard the depth of her understanding.
He was grateful for her words. Although the room was filled with blurred shapes and movements, Poppy remained at the center of it all. The ladies started chatting again while Leander wrote at a desk, silently solving some unexpected issues that came up.
Hector could not help but admire Poppy from afar as she laughed with her sister.
He distrusted how often his attention found Poppy and the ease with which she had become necessary to his breathing.
He distrusted the warmth that moved through him when she laughed, and most of all, the memory of her standing before him three days earlier, telling him she was smiling at him and that he ought to smile back.
Hector had done as she asked, and the act still troubled him. Poppy had issued that absurd order in her bright, unguarded way, and he had obeyed before pride could intervene.
Worse, he had wanted to obey her, just to see her smile. Poppy and Julia got up and joined the children where they played and laughed together. With the girls, Poppy was even more breathtaking.
“She is good with them,” Leander suddenly appeared at his side.
Hector did not need to ask whom he meant. “Yes, she is.”
“Those girls look at her as if she hung the moon and stars in the sky herself.”
Hector agreed. “They adore her.”
Was he feeling adoration as well?
Hector’s gaze moved toward the smallest shape near Poppy. Princess had crawled close to her and was patting Poppy’s skirt with great concentration. Poppy answered without looking down, her hand settling lightly over the baby’s back as she continued speaking to Aurora.
Hector found himself waiting for Poppy’s laughter.
He did not want to admit that he was longing for her. Longing was for men who had not learned the cost of wanting, and he had learned. He had built his life according to his wants.
Perhaps I want Poppy too.
“Your invitation has pleased Julia immensely,” Leander said.
Hector kept his face neutral. “I am glad.”
“Thank you for inviting us.” His gratefulness was genuine.
“You are most welcome, and Julia and Thomas are most welcome anytime too.” Hector meant every word.
Poppy’s family was his family.
“Poppy missed her sister.”
“So did Julia.”
Hector knew that Poppy missed her sister because he had observed it in the way her cheerfulness thinned after Julia’s letters arrived and the way she mentioned some distant memory but stopped herself.
He had invited them because a duchess isolated from those she loved would eventually become unhappy, an unhappy household was unstable, and the children required stability.
That was all, or at least that was what he told himself.
Poppy looked up then, as if she heard his thoughts, and perhaps she did. Her smile seemed to deepen as they stared at each other. Leander made a small sound next to him to draw his attention.
“I do hope that you two will join the ball.” Hector should have found the comment impertinent, but as he tried to make out the details of Poppy, he had no negative thoughts.
His own limitations angered him. It also frightened him, though he would not have used the word. Hector was just about to respond to Leander when Princess made a sound. It was soft, insistent, and different from her usual babble. Poppy looked down at her, and Hector noticed that she was wide-eyed.
Something has happened.
His attention fixated on them immediately.
“What is it, my darling?” Poppy asked.
The room stilled.
There were many forms of address Poppy used with the children.
Little star. Sweeting. My brave girl. My darling.
She offered them freely, without calculation, as if tenderness were not a finite resource.
Hector had once thought such softness dangerous.
Children, like adults, had to learn that the world would not always answer kindly.
But Princess reached for Poppy with both hands, and Poppy leaned toward her without hesitation.
Then Princess said, clear enough for every adult to hear, “Mama.”
Silence fell with such completeness that Hector heard the faint settling of fabric as Poppy froze.
Princess reached again, more urgently, her little hands opening and closing toward Poppy.
“Ma—ma,” she repeated, less perfectly this time, but the meaning remained the same.
Poppy made a small sound, and Hector could not see her tears at first. He saw only the shape of her bending toward the child and the sudden collapse of distance between them as she wrapped her in her arms. Then her hand lifted to her face, and he understood that she was crying.
Princess fell into her arms, and Poppy held her so fiercely as if she might escape.
“Oh,” Poppy whispered. “Oh, my sweet girl.”
Julia drew in a broken breath. Hector turned slightly and saw the blurred movement of her hand rising to her cheek as well. Leander was quiet beside him, and Aurora, sensing something momentous without understanding its full measure, looked from face to face and then moved closer to Poppy.
“Why are you crying, Poppy?” she asked softly.
Poppy laughed through her tears, though the sound barely held. “Because I am happy.”
Princess looked up at Poppy’s face, fascinated by what she saw, and Hector understood the child’s interest in her.
Hector’s throat tightened so sharply he had to look away.
He had thought himself prepared for milestones.
First steps. First words. Small victories marking the child’s movement into the world.
He had known Princess would speak eventually.
He had assumed her first word would be some simple object, some syllable repeated by chance until meaning attached itself.
He had not considered this.
The word should have belonged elsewhere, to an absence no one in the room could fill without consequence.
It should have opened grief. Perhaps it did.
But as Hector listened to Poppy’s quiet weeping and Princess’s pleased repetition, grief did not stand alone.
Something else rose with it, something living and undeniable.
Belonging, conferred by a child who knew nothing of blood or law or bargains made between adults.
Leander spoke quietly beside him. “Sterling.”
Hector did not answer. He did not trust his own voice.
Across the room, Poppy lifted her head. Even through the blur of his imperfect sight, he knew she was looking for him.
The knowledge struck him with unreasonable force.
He stepped forward before deciding to. His cane found the floor; the room seemed to hold its breath around the small sound. He stopped near enough to see the outline of Princess in Poppy’s arms. Julia stood with tears in her eyes and one hand at her mouth while Leander remained behind, quietly.
Poppy looked up at Hector. Her blue eyes were wet; he could not see their color at that moment, but he remembered it. She did not smile, but she seemed happy.
“I did not teach her that,” she said, as if she needed him to know.
The statement moved through him with unexpected pain. Of course she would think to reassure him. Of course she would fear overstepping, even now, holding a child who had named her from the only truth infancy understood.
“I know,” he said.
Her mouth trembled.
Princess turned toward the sound of his voice. For a moment, Hector thought she might reach for him, but she settled back against Poppy instead, satisfied with the arrangement of her world.
He should have felt displaced, but he did not. He felt the strange, humbling relief of seeing a door open in a house he had believed would remain full of locked rooms.
Aurora tugged at Poppy’s sleeve. “Is Princess allowed to call you that?”
Poppy’s breath caught. She looked at Hector again.
Hector had lived too long by permission and prohibition. By what must be controlled, named, and contained. Yet some things became false when governed too harshly. He looked at Poppy holding Princess as if the child had been entrusted not to her arms but to the deepest part of her.
“Yes,” he said.
The single word cost him more than he showed.
Poppy closed her eyes. Tears slipped down her cheeks.
When she opened them again, something passed between them that had no proper name.
Gratitude, certainly. Relief. But also recognition.
She had asked him once to smile because she was smiling at him.
Now she asked nothing, and he gave what he could.
His hand loosened on the cane.
Julia wiped her face, laughing softly through tears. “Well. That is that, then.”
Leander’s son leaned toward Aurora and whispered, with the tactless clarity of childhood, “Why is everyone crying?”
Aurora considered with grave authority. “Because Princess said the right word.”
No one corrected her.
Poppy laughed, and the laughter broke the stillness.
Julia laughed too, through her own tears.
Leander came forward and rested a hand briefly on his wife’s shoulder.
The children resumed breathing, moving, and asking questions, and Princess, pleased by the attention, pressed her damp little hand against Poppy’s cheek and murmured her first word over and over again.
Hector remained where he was.
He had spent years believing affection made claims a man might not survive.
Duty was safer. Duty could be defined, performed, and measured.
But this room offered no such safety. Here was Poppy, who had entered his life as a practical answer and became a question he could no longer avoid.
Here were the children, binding themselves to her without permission from bloodline or title.
Here was his own heart, traitorous in its quiet insistence, tightening not against loss but against tenderness.
He would not name what he felt.
Not yet.
But when Poppy looked at him over Princess’s head, her face tear-streaked and luminous with a joy that had wounded her into silence, Hector let himself smile.
Enough that she would know.
And from the way her expression softened, she did.
When the guests had dwindled, and the children’s laughter faded into quiet play, Poppy finally found herself alone with Hector in the wide, near-empty library. Her eyes still glistened from earlier tears, but she held a soft smile as she stepped closer to Hector.
“Thank you,” she whispered quietly and steadily.
Her words were filled with meaning, and she hoped that he felt her gratefulness.
“I cannot thank you enough for inviting Julia and Leander. It was the sweetest surprise, Hector.” She looked down for a moment, gathering herself.
“I did not realize how much I needed this, but you did. For a man without the best sight in the world, you sure do see a lot.”
Hector inclined his head with a faint smile. “You are very welcome. It was the right thing to do.” His tone was polite but sincere, as if no greater thanks were necessary. “But I only see a lot when I look at you.”
Poppy glanced up at him, her smile deepening, and she blushed unashamedly. “I do hope there are no more surprises. Princess has given us the biggest of them all, as it is.” Her eyes searched his face.
Hector nodded. “There is one more surprise…” He hesitated, then met her gaze firmly.
“I doubt I will be able to take you to Viscount Harriet’s ball.” He watched her before continuing. “My sight… it makes such events difficult. So, I have decided to hold a ball here, in Sterling House, where it is safe and familiar.”
Poppy’s eyes glistened anew; tears welled up, but she held them back by sheer will.
The weight of his gesture was so unexpected and generous that it settled heavily on her heart.
She thought silently how she did not deserve such kindness, and how she had never imagined this life of quiet wonders with the icy duke.
Hector saw the conflict in her eyes and offered quietly, “My wife deserves to attend a ball, and I will make certain that she does.”
Poppy’s breath hitched. She wanted to reach out then and to draw him close. She longed to hold his face in her hands. But propriety kept her rooted, a strict boundary against impulse.
Instead, a whisper slipped from her lips, soft and full of meaning. “Thank you, Hector. For everything.”