Instead, she had told him something true about herself. Something she had not meant to reveal.
I know what it is to wait for someone who does not come.
Her very own father. The memory surfaced unbidden, unwelcome. Her father, who had promised to return from his meeting with creditors and had not returned that night, or the next, or ever again. Who had left her and her mother to discover the debts, the shame and the slow collapse of everything they had thought was solid.
She had been sixteen, old enough to understand and young enough for it to destroy something essential in her understanding of the world.
She had learned, in the years since, not to wait, not to count days, not to save the best things for moments that might never arrive.
But she remembered what it felt like and she would not let Anna and Viola and Thistle learn that lesson if she had any power to prevent it.
She straightened her spine, smoothed her expression, and walked toward the nursery to prepare the children for their father’s departure.
Behind her, in the study, Rhys Langford remained seated at his desk.
He did not move for a long time.
He was looking at the small calendar that Anna had placed on the corner of the desk that morning, presenting it to him with the formal gravity of a general presenting battle plans. Twenty-eight marks in careful pencil, each one representing a day she had waited for him to come. Twenty-eight small scratches on paper that measured the distance between his visits in the currency of a five-year-old’s patience.
Beside the calendar, tucked into the corner where he had not noticed it until now, was a small collection of stones, unusual ones and exceptional ones, the kind that Thistle reserved for special occasions and special people.
She had left them for him while he wasn’t watching, while he was busy with the business of being present for three days and then leaving again, she had crept into the study and left her treasures on his desk.
Rhys picked up one of the stones. It was smooth and speckled, ordinary to most eyes but clearly significant to the child who had found it. He turned it over in his fingers, feeling its weight, its texture and the affection that had selected it as worthy of giving.
He thought about what Miss Grace had said, about presence and uncertainty. About children who could survive distance but not the ache of not knowing when relief would come.
He thought about Celeste, who had never asked him to choose but who had passed away waiting for him to choose anyway.
He thought about his daughters, who cherished him without reservation and received in return three days of attention scattered across an ocean of absence.
He thought about Miss Grace herself, standing in the doorway with her hand on the handle, telling him she knew what it was to wait for someone who did not come.
What would you have me do?
He had asked the question. She had not answered it, not directly. She had given him the principle instead of the prescription, the philosophy instead of the plan.
Either be present or be honest about your absence.
But what did presence mean? He could not live at Hartfell. His life, his obligations, his carefully constructed facade of rakishness that kept the world from asking questions he could not answer, all of it required him to be in London required him to be the Duke of Trevane, not the father of three illegitimate daughters.
Unless.
The thought surfaced slowly, like a creature rising from deep water. Unless he changed something and found a way to be more present without dismantling everything he had built.
He could visit more often, every fortnight instead of every month. He could stay longer when he came. He could write letters between visits, real letters, not the formal reports that Grieves sent on his behalf.
He could be honest with them. Not about everything, not about the title or the complicated truth of why their mother had never become his wife. But about the things that mattered. About the affection that brought him back each time and the reasons he had to leave and the certainty that he would always return.
It wasn’t enough, he knew it wasn’t enough. But it was more than he had been doing, and more was a start.
Rhys put his head in his hands and sat in the study until the sound of carriage wheels in the courtyard reminded him that the world was still moving, still demanding and still requiring him to be someone other than who he wanted to be.
When he finally stood, he slipped Thistle’s stones into his pocket. He would carry them with him. A reminder of what he was leaving behind. A reminder of the affection he did not deserve but had somehow been given anyway.
And on the ride back to London, he would begin composing a letter. Not to Grieves or Mrs. Kemp, but to his daughters directly. Three letters, one for each of them, telling them thathe missed them already and that he would return in two weeks instead of four.
It wasn’t enough.
