Page 99 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“Why not?”

“Because I am not a character in one of your indecent anecdotes, Jasper.”

“My anecdotes are tastefully indecent, but they work,” he pointed out.

“Jasper,” Hector sighed.

“Very well. Do not ask her because you fear she will pity you. And live the rest of your marriage imagining your wife’s beauty.”

That struck too near to his heart, so Hector said nothing.

Jasper’s voice lost its teasing edge. “Sterling, the woman has spent half the dance looking at you. If you asked with the care of a man who loves her⁠—”

Hector turned on him. “I am not in love.”

His words were low, and Jasper looked at him questioningly.

Love was not a thing Hector permitted into conversation. It altered the air. It made every silence accountable. He had built their marriage on terms clear enough to protect them both. And those terms were: their duty, respect, care where care was needed, and no foolish romantic expectations. Poppy had agreed. She had wanted safety for the girls, and he had offered it. But that safety was causing distance between him and his wife.

On the floor, Leander guided Poppy through the final measures. She moved well; even Hector could tell that. The outline of her turned, paused, and returned. A polite and warm applause followed. Finally, the dance ended, and Poppy thanked Leander. Her voice was bright, but Hector heard the restraint upon it.

She deserved a husband who could dance with her beneath candlelight without making courage seem like a tragic undertaking. She deserved someone who did not measure every desire against the burden of his own damaged body. She deserved more than a brooding, half-blind man who knew her by scent and silence but could not bring himself to cross a floor.

“Do not look so noble,” Jasper murmured. “It rarely ends well, and you are convinced your suffering is useful—but it should not be so if you truly care for that woman.”

Hector did not answer his friend. Across the room, Poppy laughed again, and he held himself still as if stillness could keep the sound from entering him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

By the time the last dance ended, Poppy had become practiced at not looking toward her husband. She failed often enough that she stopped pretending otherwise.

Each time she found him, he was at the edge of the ballroom, tall and dark-haired and severe. Jasper stood beside him for much of the evening, speaking now and then with an expression Poppy could not read from a distance. Hector listened with that stillness of his, the kind that made him seem carved from stone.

I ought not to have been disappointed.

That was what she told herself while thanking Leander for the dance, while laughing at Jasper’s outrageous compliments, while watching Julia accept her husband’s hand with the ease of long affection.

Poppy could only blame herself for her husband’s coldness; she had insisted on the shape of her marriage. The separate bedrooms, the sensible expectations and the gratitude instead of wanting. She had been proud of herself once for understanding that safety could be enough.

But the ballroom had unsettled that pride.

A dance was such a small thing. Three minutes, perhaps four. A turn, a touch, and a public courtesy. Yet when Hector had not asked, something in her broke.

“You are tired.” Julia found her by one of the quieter edges of the room, away from the remaining guests.

Her sister’s face held the gentle concern Poppy had known since childhood and resented only when it was deserved.

“I am a little,” Poppy said flatly.

“You are sad.”

Poppy looked down at her gloved hands. “That too, perhaps.”

Julia did not press. She had never needed to. Her patience made confession feel less like surrender and more like setting down a weight.

“I wanted him to ask me to dance,” Poppy finally said.

Julia’s expression softened. “Oh, Poppy.”