Page 44 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“That is enough. And this marriage is not that sort of arrangement.” Hector pointed his cane at his friend.

Jasper sighed, but there was laughter still at the edge of it. “Very well. I shall not inspect your wife’s eyes. I shall avert my gaze should she enter, in deference to your delicate constitution.”

Hector moved to the door.

“Is my visiting time over?” Jasper asked with mocking despair. “I had several more remarks prepared.”

“I feel sorry for the woman who marries you someday.” Hector scowled at Jasper, who was holding his stomach and laughing heartily.

“I would be a delightful husband! Unlike y—Hector—where are you going? You cannot flee a conversation in your own house.”

Hector opened the door. “Watch me.”

“Aurora,” Hector called.

Aurora saw him before he spoke and hid. Hector knew because a moment after he arrived at their chamber, he had heard the faint scuff of a child’s shoe and the whisper of fabric dragged across carpet. Then silence.

He remained in the doorway and let his cane rest lightly against the floor. He had learned that entering too quickly sent her away or made her nervous. Speaking too loudly did the same thing. Sometimes, even smiling, according to one disastrous attempt, made matters worse. He suspected his smile did not look as he expected it to.

“I have come to ask whether you require anything?” he pretended not to notice that she was hidden under a table. He tried again. “Have you eaten?”

No answer.

The child moved suddenly. Her steps pattered, then stopped.

Hector kept himself motionless. “You need not speak if you do not wish to. I only wished to say good afternoon.”

When she did not respond, he could have retreated then and counted it as restraint. Instead, driven by a stubbornness that had served him well in Parliament and poorly with every wounded thing, he lowered himself carefully to one knee. The movement was awkward with the cane, and he felt the old pull through his body from compensations learned too young. He did not mind discomfort. He minded the sharp little gasp from the corner.

“I am not coming nearer,” he said.

Aurora’s voice emerged after a long wait, so soft that he almost missed it. “Wh-where is P-Poppy?”

“She is getting ready to sleep, as should you, I believe.” He kept his tone even, though the stutter made him feel guilty. “Would you like me to send for her?”

He thought she nodded, but he could not be certain.

“I will send for her,” he said.

The small shape held itself ready to vanish.

He rose slowly. “Good afternoon, Aurora.”

He had nearly reached the door when she whispered, “G-good af-afternoon.”

He stopped himself from turning too quickly. The words had cost her. If he made too much of them, she might never offer any again.

“Thank you,” he said, and left.

In the corridor, he exhaled. It was not victory, but it was progress, perhaps. He had frightened her merely by existing. Still, she had answered him. The answer had not been a smile, and certainly not trust, but it had been given.

He found Mrs. Patterson near the nursery room.

The housekeeper had been with his family long enough to have seen every version of him. The half-blind boy who refused help, the young man who made pride from pain because pride was cleaner, and eventually the duke who had inherited a house full of ghosts and dismissed most of them by refusing to look backward.

She was forty now, steady in voice and step, and one of the few servants who did not treat his sight as either a tragedy or an inconvenience. She placed things where he expected them, told him when rooms changed, and like his footman, she never took his arm unless he asked. Mrs. Patterson was more of a mother to him than his own ever was.

“Your Grace,” she said. “Is all well?”