Page 117 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“That was not the only reason.”

His chest tightened. He did not trust that mercy. “It was reason enough.”

“For you, perhaps.”

“Do you not see?” He released the wall at last, then regretted it when darkness tilted around him. He forced himself still. “You did what I should have done. You answered a need that was not yours, while I ignored one that was.”

“You did not know.”

“I suspected enough to go eventually. That condemns me.”

“No,” she said. “It makes you human.”

He gave another bitter laugh. “Of course you would say that. Of course, you would find the one angle from which I appear forgivable. That is precisely why you deserve better.”

“Better than a man who is honest about his guilt?”

“Better than a man built from it.”

The words left him tired. There was nothing grand in confession. No cleansing. Only exposure.

Poppy was quiet for several breaths.

“Did you ever discover whether your sister had been telling the truth?” she asked.

He frowned. “What?”

“In the letter. Did you ever find proof that what she wrote was true?”

“No.” He did not like the answer. He liked less what it implied. “Not proof.”

“So you could be raising a stranger’s children?”

“No.”

The answer came before the thought. Immediate, absolute.

Poppy did not speak.

Hector straightened. “They are my nieces. Nothing will ever change that.”

“But if there was no proof⁠—”

“They are my nieces,” he repeated. “They are hers because she loved them, and they are mine because she is gone. Blood is not the only thing that binds a person to duty. They will have a good life, even if it is the only good thing I ever do.”

His breath sounded loud and harsh in the emptiness of the hall.

Poppy’s voice, when it came, was careful. “My sister once told me I never realize when I am making a sacrifice.”

He remembered her sister only in fragments from what Poppy had said before, but the sentence felt lived in. It had the weight of something repeated in private and resisted in silence.

“I still do not know whether she was right,” Poppy continued. “Perhaps she was. Perhaps I am very foolish about where care ends and surrender begins.”

“You are not foolish.”

“I may be.” A faint shift in her voice suggested the smallest smile, though not a light one. “But I know this. You suffer from the same problem.”

He had no answer.