Page 115 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

Her voice was close enough that he could locate her by it. A few paces away. Breathing slightly fast from following him. She had meant to confront him; he heard it in the first syllable, in the effort she made not to let anger lead.

“You cannot keep⁠—”

She stopped.

He wondered what she had seen. His hand was on the wall. His empty fingers. The way he had gone still, because another step might carry him into furniture he should have known was there.

When she spoke again, the edge had gone from her voice.

“You forgot this.”

He did not reach out.

“Keep it,” he said.

“It is your cane.”

“I know what it is.”

“Then take it.”

He laughed once. It was a poor sound. “There. You see? Even this house becomes strange to me if I am foolish enough to leave a room without a stick in my hand.”

“You were upset.”

“I am always upset about something. It has become a talent.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“No. You meant to be kind.” He turned his face away from her voice. “You are always kind.”

The floor seemed uncertain beneath him. He disliked speaking without seeing her clearly. Poppy was a shape in the dark, her dark blonde hair and blue eyes lost to him except as knowledge painfully gathered over days and glances and the descriptions of others. It had taken him too long to learn those simple facts. A husband should have known his wife’s face the moment he saw it.

He put that thought away. It returned.

“I could never be the husband you deserve,” he said.

Silence.

Not surprise. Not exactly. More like pain carefully controlled.

“Because you forgot your cane?” she asked.

“No.”

“Because you cannot see well in the dark?”

He tightened his hand against the wall. “Because I cannot take you into a ballroom and know who is watching you. Because I cannot see whether you are happy unless your voice gives you away. Because it took me days to learn the color of your eyes.”

“Hector.”

“Other husbands do not need servants to tell them the details of their wives.”

“Is that all?”

The question struck him because there was no pity in it.

He turned back toward her. “All?”