Page 107 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“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.