“You looked like you needed this.” Benedict handed him one of the glasses and joined him at the railing. “Also, you looked like you were about to do something dramatic, and I thought I should intervene before you threw yourself off the balcony.”
“The balcony is six feet above a flower bed. To depart in such a manner would be a dreadful bore for the survivors.”
“All the more reason to prevent it. The scandal would be embarrassing for everyone.” Benedict took a sip of his brandy, his eyes on the city lights below.
“My dear fellow, you appear positively haggard.”
“I always look haggard. I just usually dress it better.”
“That’s a falsehood and we both know it. You’re one of the most annoyingly handsome men in London, and the fact that you manage to look terrible tonight suggests something significant has happened.” Benedict turned to face him fully.
“Something transpired in Cornwall.”
Rhys considered deflecting, offering one of the practiced responses that had served him so well for so long. But Benedict knew him too well for that, and besides, he was tired. Tired of performing, tired of pretending, tired of carrying the weight of secrets that had grown too heavy to bear alone.
“The new governess happened.”
“She quit?”
“No.” Rhys took a long drink of brandy, letting the burn settle in his chest.
“She stayed. And she told me I’m failing my children.”
Benedict absorbed this in silence. He was the only person in London who had met the triplets, having accompanied Rhys on one of his early visits when the grief of Celeste’s death was still fresh and he had needed someone to witness that his daughters were real, that they existed, that they were not simply a dream he had invented to torture himself.
“She said that?” Benedict asked finally.
“She said it with considerably more precision and considerably less drama. Which made it worse.” Rhys stared into his glass as though the brandy might offer answers.
“She’s been there three weeks. Three weeks, and she knows more about my children than I do. She knows that Anna keeps a calendar counting down to my visits. She knows that Viola asks every morning if today is the day I’m coming. She knows that Thistle saves her best rocks to show me and won’t let anyone else see them.”
“And you didn’t know any of this.”
“I knew they were happy to see me. I didn’t know the shape of their waiting.” The words came out rough, unpolished and stripped of the wit that usually protected him.
“I didn’t know what my absence looked like from inside their experience of it.”
Benedict was quiet carefully. The sounds of the ball drifted through the terrace doors behind them, laughter and music and the rustle of silk, all the trappings of a world that suddenly seemed very far away.
“She’s right, you know,” Benedict said finally.
“I am aware.”
“You’ve been playing at fatherhood, Rhys. Visiting when it suits you, leaving when it becomes inconvenient, telling yourself that three days a month is enough because the alternative would require you to change everything.”
“I know.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Rhys stared at his cards. He had been holding the brandy glass the same way he held cards at the table, assessing its weight, calculating its worth. He had a winning hand in this game too, if he chose to play it. He had money, connections and the power that came with being a duke in a society that valued dukes above almost everything else.
He could change things. If he wanted to badly enough. If he was willing to pay the price.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m going back to Cornwall in two weeks instead of four.”
Benedict raised an eyebrow. “That’s twice as often.”
“It’s still not enough. But it’s more than I’ve been doing.”
