Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hector had known silence all his life, but he had not known it could acquire a taste, and that taste was Poppy.
She was there when he woke and remained through the morning. But along with every thought of her was the guilt.
Poppy had made him promise never to touch her. And he had touched her because, for one moment, the wanting in him had been stronger than the discipline he had built his life upon.
That was the truth.
He could strip away every gentler version of it, every excuse made of longing and tenderness, and that hard fact remained.
He wanted her.
So, he had taken.
Hector’s hand tightened over the head of his cane until the carved surface bit into his palm. The pain was small and deserved. He leaned his weight into it and forced himself to remain still.
He had not been drunk. He had not been mistaken or misunderstood who she was, or what she had endured, or what she had trusted him to be. He had looked at her, and he had kissed her. It had felt, in that moment, like the first honest thing he had ever done for himself.
That was what damned him most.
When the moment ended, and duty came back with its coldness, he realized that Poppy mattered more than his selfish desires did.
That had been true before he kissed her, and it was truer after.
Her peace, her safety, and her trust were not things he could place beneath his hunger and still call himself honorable.
“Hector!” Jasper found him standing near the window, though the light did him little good.
“You look,” Jasper began, “as if you have just condemned a man to hang and discovered he was yourself.”
Hector did not turn. “Have you come to amuse yourself?”
“I always hope to. It keeps our friendship from becoming too noble.” He chuckled.
“I am not in the mood.” Jasper stopped smiling at once.
“You seldom are. It has never stopped me before.”
Hector exhaled through his nose. Jasper alone seemed able to take liberties without making him wish to end the acquaintance. It was an old mystery and an older mercy.
Jasper came farther into the room, and Hector could make out the darker movement of him against the light, the suggestion of broad shoulders, dark hair, and the restless grace of a man too accustomed to being welcome.
“Shall I guess?” Jasper asked.
“No.”
“Then I shall do it silently, which you will find more irritating.”
“Jasper.”
“There it is,” Jasper said. “The ducal warning. I tremble.”
Hector moved away from the window. The room shifted in blurred planes as he crossed it, the cane finding the floor ahead of him. “You know nothing of it.”
“I know you have not been yourself.”
“I am precisely myself. That is the trouble.”
Jasper was quiet for a moment. The silence lost its teasing edge. “Then is it about the duchess?”
Hector did not answer right away.
“That will do as confirmation,” Jasper said on a breath.
“Leave her out of this.”
“I cannot. She appears to be the entire subject.”
Hector’s grip tightened even further. “Do not speak lightly of her.”
“I was not going to.” Something in Jasper’s voice made Hector still.
There were moments when his friend’s charm fell away like a cloak slipped from the shoulders. What remained was harder to dismiss.
Hector said, “I kissed her.”
The words hung in the air between them, and Jasper’s silence deepened. In it Hector heard again the small, broken breath Poppy had given when his mouth touched hers.
“At last,” Jasper said softly.
Hector’s head snapped toward him. “That is your response?”
“It was the first one. I have others if you prefer variety,” he said drily.
“She asked me not to touch her.”
That silenced Jasper, in truth.
Hector swallowed, but the bitter taste returned. “She made me promise, and then I kissed her.”
“Did she turn away?”
“That is not the point.”
“It may be part of the point.”
“No. It is the excuse a selfish man reaches for when he wants permission to remain selfish.”
Jasper took a slow breath. “Hector—”
“I knew what she had asked of me. I knew why it mattered. I knew the terms on which she had allowed herself to trust me. And I broke them because I wanted to know what it would be like.”
“That is a merciless way to put it.”
“It is an accurate one.”
“Is it?” Jasper asked. “Or is it the version that lets you punish yourself most efficiently?”
Hector gave a short, humorless laugh. “You believe there is another?”
“I believe you rarely allow yourself a human motive when a monstrous one will do, and it is human to kiss your wife.”
Hector sighed. He felt as though the conversation was going nowhere.
“She trusted me,” he said. “Do you understand that? Not as others do. Not because of my title, convenience, or need. She trusted me because I told her she could. I told her she would be safe.”
“Was she unsafe?”
Hector closed his eyes. It made little difference. “With me? In that moment? Yes.”
“Did you frighten her?”
“No.” The answer came too quickly, then wounded him by its certainty. “I do not think so.”
“Did she ask you to stop?”
“No.”
“Did she kiss you back?”
Hector’s mouth tightened, but memory answered before pride could. Poppy had not been passive. She had leaned into him, lightly, as if astonished by herself. Her hands had lifted, then faltered. She had been warm and alive and completely there.
“That does not absolve me,” he said.
“I did not say it did.”
“It changes nothing.”
“It changes everything, Hector.”
Hector struck the cane once against the floor, not loudly, but with enough force to mark the break in his composure.
“Do you know what I did afterward? I left her in uncertainty. I gave her a kiss and nothing to stand on. No promise I could keep. No future I could offer without risking her happiness. I took the comfort of that moment and gave her the burden of its meaning.”
Jasper’s voice softened. “And what meaning do you think she gave it?”
“The one any woman with a heart might.” Hector’s throat worked. “That I had chosen closeness. That I might stop holding myself apart. That she might not have to live always at the edge of me.”
“And is that impossible?”
“Yes.”
“Because you say so?”
“Because I know what I am.” His voice rose.
Jasper approached Hector then and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“You are a duke with poor eyesight and a talent for misery. But neither of those makes you unfit for affection.”
Hector almost smiled, but it failed before it formed.
Jasper had never cared for reverence. He would prod at wounds to prove they were not altars in your life and could be taken down.
“Poppy’s life cannot be an experiment in whether I learn tenderness too late,” Hector said.
“She may have some opinions on that.”
“She is kind. That is not the same as wise.”
“A dangerous thing to say of a woman whose judgment you otherwise admire.”
“I admire it too much to exploit her kindness.”
“You assume love from her would be an error.”
Jasper had not said the word loudly. He had not adorned it. It lay between them, plain and difficult.
“And you sound very sure for a man who cannot stop thinking about a kiss.”
Hector turned his face away. Heat had risen beneath his collar, unwelcome and absurd. “My thoughts are irrelevant.”
“They are the whole trouble.”
Jasper stepped back. “Listen to me. If you regret hurting her, then do not compound it by becoming stone.”
Hector laughed once, without mirth. “And what would you have me do? Go to her? Tell her I have regretted the kiss every hour since it happened, except in the same hour I have cherished it beyond anything decent? Tell her that it was the most right thing I have ever done for myself, and therefore the most dangerous thing I have done to her?”
“Hmm, that is exactly what you should tell her,” Jasper said.
That landed cleanly.
Hector turned his cane in his hand, thumb moving over the worn place where habit had smoothed the surface. He had made an art of restraint because restraint had seemed the only moral shape his life could take.
Want less. Need less. Ask nothing. Protect what can be protected.
But Poppy had stepped into that ordered barrenness with her dark blonde hair and blue eyes he could not properly see, with her patience, her stubborn gentleness, her refusal to treat his damage as either tragedy or virtue.
She had not saved him. He hated such melodrama.
She had done something more unsettling; she had behaved as though there were a man still present beneath the title.
“I cannot undo it,” Hector said. “I can only ensure she is not asked to pay for my weakness.”
Jasper sighed. “You think withdrawal is protection.”
“It may be the only protection I can offer.”
“It may be a punishment for her. You have a habit of confusing the two,” Jasper argued.
Hector’s expression closed. “You have said enough.”
Jasper let out a frustrated laugh.
“Then I shall say one more thing and risk your temper. Your duchess is not porcelain. If you retreat without explanation, you will not preserve her. You will leave her alone with questions you caused.”
Hector’s chest tightened. “I know.”
Jasper remained where he was for several breaths, then moved toward the door. “You are determined to suffer nobly.”
“I am determined not to injure her.”
“Those may prove to be the same thing if you insist on deciding for both of you.”
The door opened. Hector heard Jasper stop in his tracks.
“For what it is worth,” Jasper said, quieter now, “I do not think a kiss made you dishonorable. I think what you do next will matter more.”
The door closed, and Hector stood alone.
He did not move for a long time. The room settled around him, indistinct and airless. In memory, Poppy lifted her face; he bent toward her with a hunger so tender it had fooled him into calling it harmless.
He regretted it, and he would regret it until the regret became part of him, familiar as the cane in his hand.
And still, when he died, if God allowed a man one mortal sweetness to carry past the dark, Hector knew he would carry the feel of Poppy’s mouth beneath his.
Poppy had expected the house to feel different.