Felt the doubt—felt the cautious restraint in his response, felt the unspoken truth he was choosing not to say.
Her throat tightened. “He will return,” she repeated, sharper this time, as if saying it aloud might make it so.
Heath exhaled, slow, deliberate. “Perhaps.”
Blanche stiffened.
The quiet restraint in his voice felt far worse than a direct challenge—it carried doubt, the kind that dug beneath her skin, the kind she refused to entertain.
“He has not abandoned us,” she said, more forcefully than intended. “You do not know him as I do.”
Heath studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable. “I’m just saying that he has not written, Blanche. No letter. No message. Nothing in all this time…”
Blanche swallowed, her fingers curling against her palm. “That does not mean?—”
“It means something. You have to understand that,” Heath interrupted, his tone still measured but sharper now.
“Understand what, according to you?”
“Understand that a man does not simply disappear without a word—not if he is honorable, not if he values his family.”
Something inside Blanche snapped.
She rose swiftly, the chair pushing back against the wooden floor with a quiet scrape. “And what would you know of honor?”
Heath’s jaw tensed. The shift in his posture was subtle, but unmistakable—the easy warmth he had carried earlier hardened.
“Enough to recognize when a man does not uphold it.”
Blanche narrowed her eyes, her pulse hammering against her ribs. “You see everything through the eyes of a rake—cynical, dismissive. But my father is not like the men you surround yourself with.”
Heath exhaled sharply, standing now, his movements deliberate, composed—but the rigid set of his shouldersbetrayed him. “I am not saying he does not love you, only that the world is rarely as kind as you imagine it to be.”
“It is not imagination,” Blanche snapped. “It is certain.”
“Then I hope you are right,” Heath murmured, but his voice held no conviction. Blanche knew it, and it infuriated her.
She followed him as he strode toward the entrance hall, her steps quick, her words relentless. “You assume the worst, always. You believe abandonment is inevitable because it is what suits you!”
Heath turned sharply, his gaze flashing with something unreadable. “I believe in reality, Blanche. Not illusions.” The finality in his tone sent a chill through her.
Before she could speak again, before she could argue, before she could demand that he take back his cold certainty, Heath reached for his coat, pulling it over his shoulders with practiced ease.
Blanche inhaled sharply. “Where are you going?”
“Out.” It was the only answer he gave before stepping outside, the door swinging open, the night swallowing him whole.
Leaving behind a heavy silence—one that settled into the room, unyielding and absolute, becoming Blanche’s only companion in his absence.
Nineteen
“Trouble in heaven?”
The words greeted Heath the moment he stepped inside, the familiar drawl laced with amusement as Percy leaned lazily against the doorway, a half-empty glass of whiskey dangling between his fingers.
Heath huffed a quiet breath, unfastening the buttons of his coat with slow precision, more out of habit than necessity. The lingering weight of the evening settled over him—heavy, frustrating, something he had yet to name.
“If that’s what we’re calling it.”
