Page 94 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

Princess reached again, more urgently, her little hands opening and closing toward Poppy.

“Ma—ma,” she repeated, less perfectly this time, but the meaning remained the same.

Poppy made a small sound, and Hector could not see her tears at first. He saw only the shape of her bending toward the child and the sudden collapse of distance between them as she wrapped her in her arms. Then her hand lifted to her face, and he understood that she was crying. Princess fell into her arms, and Poppy held her so fiercely as if she might escape.

“Oh,” Poppy whispered. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

Julia drew in a broken breath. Hector turned slightly and saw the blurred movement of her hand rising to her cheek as well. Leander was quiet beside him, and Aurora, sensing something momentous without understanding its full measure, looked from face to face and then moved closer to Poppy.

“Why are you crying, Poppy?” she asked softly.

Poppy laughed through her tears, though the sound barely held. “Because I am happy.”

Princess looked up at Poppy’s face, fascinated by what she saw, and Hector understood the child’s interest in her.

Hector’s throat tightened so sharply he had to look away. He had thought himself prepared for milestones. First steps. First words. Small victories marking the child’s movement into the world. He had known Princess would speak eventually. He had assumed her first word would be some simple object, some syllable repeated by chance until meaning attached itself.

He had not considered this.

The word should have belonged elsewhere, to an absence no one in the room could fill without consequence. It should have opened grief. Perhaps it did. But as Hector listened to Poppy’s quiet weeping and Princess’s pleased repetition, grief did not stand alone. Something else rose with it, something living and undeniable.

Belonging, conferred by a child who knew nothing of blood or law or bargains made between adults.

Leander spoke quietly beside him. “Sterling.”

Hector did not answer. He did not trust his own voice.

Across the room, Poppy lifted her head. Even through the blur of his imperfect sight, he knew she was looking for him.

The knowledge struck him with unreasonable force.

He stepped forward before deciding to. His cane found the floor; the room seemed to hold its breath around the small sound. He stopped near enough to see the outline of Princess in Poppy’s arms. Julia stood with tears in her eyes and one hand at her mouth while Leander remained behind, quietly.

Poppy looked up at Hector. Her blue eyes were wet; he could not see their color at that moment, but he remembered it. She did not smile, but she seemed happy.

“I did not teach her that,” she said, as if she needed him to know.

The statement moved through him with unexpected pain. Of course she would think to reassure him. Of course she would fear overstepping, even now, holding a child who had named her from the only truth infancy understood.

“I know,” he said.

Her mouth trembled.

Princess turned toward the sound of his voice. For a moment, Hector thought she might reach for him, but she settled back against Poppy instead, satisfied with the arrangement of her world.

He should have felt displaced, but he did not. He felt the strange, humbling relief of seeing a door open in a house he had believed would remain full of locked rooms.

Aurora tugged at Poppy’s sleeve. “Is Princess allowed to call you that?”

Poppy’s breath caught. She looked at Hector again.

Hector had lived too long by permission and prohibition. By what must be controlled, named, and contained. Yet some things became false when governed too harshly. He looked at Poppy holding Princess as if the child had been entrusted not to her arms but to the deepest part of her.

“Yes,” he said.

The single word cost him more than he showed.

Poppy closed her eyes. Tears slipped down her cheeks. When she opened them again, something passed between them that had no proper name. Gratitude, certainly. Relief. But also recognition. She had asked him once to smile because she was smiling at him. Now she asked nothing, and he gave what he could.