Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The papers looked ordinary, and that was almost unbearable. Their edges were square. Their ink was dry. Their formality did not tremble beneath the weight it carried. A stack of official pages, nothing more, and yet Saint Catherine’s Haven had changed while resting under her hands.
Children who had gone to sleep uncertain of tomorrow would wake under a promise strong enough to outlast moods and gossip.
Food would not depend on a donor’s passing tenderness.
Repairs would not wait upon embarrassment.
Those small bodies, those watchful eyes, would be held within a structure Hector had built from authority because authority was what he had, and he had never known how to give anything halfway.
Poppy watched Hector stand near his desk, tall and composed.
He had turned slightly toward the corridor, listening, perhaps, for the children.
His dark hair caught the room’s softer light.
His pale gray eyes looked toward what he could not wholly see, and though others sometimes mistook that distance for coldness, Poppy knew better.
There is nothing cold about him.
There was fear, carefully governed. There was guilt, old enough to have learned manners.
There was tenderness that often arrived dressed as instruction, provision, or command because naked tenderness cost him more.
He had placed the care of Saint Catherine’s Haven into her hands because he believed she would not fail the children.
It humbled her more than praise.
She gathered the deed and set it properly in the center of the desk.
Then she glanced toward the small parcel she had hidden beneath a folded cloth on a nearby chair before the children went off for breakfast. She had nearly lost courage twice that morning.
Once when Aurora entered in indignation, and once when she saw the papers and understood that Hector’s gift was larger, more consequential, more worthy than anything wrapped in paper and hope.
Now she wondered if that had ever been the measure.
“Hector,” she said.
He turned at once. “Yes?”
“I have something for you.”
His expression altered only slightly, but she had learned to read him in small revisions. His mouth stilled. His shoulders became attentive. The hand on his cane shifted, not tightening exactly, but preparing.
“For me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I was not aware the occasion required an exchange.”
“It does not.”
“That is dangerous territory.”
“Receiving a gift?”
“Receiving without cause.”
She smiled, though her heart beat with unreasonable force. “There is a cause.”
He waited.
She crossed to the chair and lifted the parcel.
It was not large. She had wrapped it herself with more care than skill, running her fingers over the edges again and again until Mrs. Patterson had gently taken the string from her and retied it properly.
Poppy carried it back to him and placed it on the desk.
“Sit,” she said.
One brow rose. “You are issuing commands now?”
“I am entrusted with operations.”
“Of Saint Catherine’s Haven, not of me.”
“I consider your cooperation essential to the institution.”
He gave a low sound that almost became laughter. “A formidable appointment indeed.”
But he sat.
Poppy moved the chair nearer, then guided his hand to the parcel. His fingers touched the paper, then the string. He explored the shape without opening it, and that restraint nearly undid her.
“You are trying to determine what it is,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It is not a book.”
“No.”
“Not gloves.”
“No.”
“Not papers, unless you have wrapped bureaucracy as revenge.”
“Tempting, but no.”
His mouth softened. “Then I am at your mercy.”
She sat beside him. “Open it.”
He untied the string carefully. Hector did most things carefully when he believed no one was watching.
It was one of the first truths she had discovered about him.
His reputation spoke of command, severity, and pride.
His hands revealed patience. Even now, when he might have torn through the wrapping to satisfy curiosity, he loosened the knot by touch, set the string aside, and unfolded the paper in clean motions.
When his fingers reached the contents, he stopped.
Poppy held her breath.
He touched the first item, then the next. His fingertips moved slowly over the shapes: the smooth lengths, the bundled tools, the small containers fitted snugly together. His face did not change in any obvious way. That frightened her more than if it had.
“They are art supplies,” she said, because the silence had grown too large. “I did not know exactly what you would prefer, and I may have chosen poorly. Mrs. Patterson helped a little, though she insisted I should choose what I thought you would like, and I—”
“Poppy.”
She stopped.
His voice was quiet.
He picked up one of the brushes and held it as if it were something fragile recovered from a ruin. His thumb moved along the handle. He tilted it, not to see, exactly, but to understand its balance.
Poppy folded her hands in her lap to keep from reaching for him too soon.
“I remembered,” she said, more softly now, “that afternoon in the maze. You were painting for Aurora’s closet.”
His head turned toward her.
“You thought I did not notice,” she continued. “You were painting the shelves. Such delicate little work, though it was only a closet. You had paint on your cuff, but you looked…”
She stopped before she could make him retreat.
He finished for her. “Foolish?”
“No.”
His fingers closed around the brush.
“You looked peaceful,” she said. “Not idle nor escaped from duty. Only…yourself.”
Hector lowered the brush to the desk but did not release it.
“Mrs. Patterson told me,” Poppy said carefully, “that you once wished to paint more than you allowed anyone to know. Before you…lost your sight.”
“She should not have burdened you with that information,” he said gruffly, trying to hide his emotions.
“She did not. She gave me a door I had not known how to open.”
His jaw tightened. “It was a young man’s interest.”
“It was yours.”
“A duke has limited use for such indulgence.”
“Then perhaps a duke has been starved of useful things.”
He went very still.
Poppy regretted the sentence until she saw his hand move again toward the supplies.
“I do not know what I can do now,” he said.
The admission was stripped of defense. It hurt to hear because he had not asked for comfort; he had simply placed a fact between them.
Poppy leaned closer. “Then do not begin with what you can do. Begin with what you want to touch. What colors do you remember? What shape your hand knows even when your eyes refuse certainty.”
His eyes lifted toward her. The pale gray of them held light in a way that made her chest ache. There were moments when she felt he saw more by longing than other men saw by sight.
He turned the brush in his hand. “And if I create something that never becomes anything worth keeping?”
“Then I shall keep it.”
His gaze fixed on her, unfocused and piercing all at once.
She swallowed. “If you make a crooked line, I shall keep it. If you make a wash of color that means nothing to anyone else, I shall keep it. If you paint one shelf, one wall, one scrap of paper, I shall know you chose it freely for a little while. That will make it worth keeping.”
Hector remained silent as he drank in every word.
Poppy looked down at the supplies, suddenly shy before the simplicity. “I did not give them to you because I expect brilliance. I gave them because I have seen how much of yourself you lock away for the sake of everyone else.”
The brush slipped slightly in his hand, but he caught it.
“I do not know how to receive this,” he finally said.
“Then you need not do or say anything grand.”
Hector let out a shaky breath. “This may be beyond me.”
She smiled through the sting in her eyes. “For once?”
His hand reached across the small space between them. She gave him hers at once. He held it with such care as if she were fragile.
“No one has ever given me a gift such as this,” he admitted.
Poppy brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “You deserve this and so much more.”
At that, he bowed his head. For a moment he looked less like the Duke of Sterling than a man who had reached the end of a long road and found a lamp left burning for him. When he raised his face again, his eyes glistened.
Poppy did not pretend not to notice. She would not make a loneliness of his gratitude by looking away from it.
He set the brush down with reverence, then rose.
His cane remained leaning against the chair.
Without it, he moved only one step, but it was toward her, and she rose to meet him.
His hands found her waist, then her back, drawing her close with a restraint that lasted only until she touched his face.
Then restraint failed, and his mouth came to hers.
The kiss was warm, searching, and unguarded.
Poppy closed her hands in the front of his coat and held on, feeling the tremor pass through him only because she was near enough to receive it.
He kissed her as though gratitude had become a vow, as though all the words he had distrusted had found a language neither of them needed to defend.
When he drew back, he did not release her. His forehead rested against hers, and their breaths mingled.
“I love you,” he whispered. “Sight or no sight. I will paint for you, cherish you, and adore you for the rest of my life. No matter what.”
Poppy’s eyes burned, but she smiled because joy, too, could ache.
Poppy kept her hands against Hector’s chest. Beneath her palms, his heart beat strong and unhidden.
“I love you too,” she said. “All I want is happiness for you and our girls.”
His arms tightened around her. “Then stay with me while I learn it.”
“Always,” she whispered. “And when your hand forgets the way, I will place mine over it, and we will make something beautiful together.”