Page 115 of A Duchess for his Family

Nathaniel came closer but stopped several feet away. “Benedict.”

“I know what happens when people become necessary.”

The admission scraped something raw inside him.

Nathaniel did not offer some easy contradiction. He knew better. Instead, he said softly, “Sophia is already necessary to this house.”

Benedict swallowed. “That is precisely the problem.”

“To the girls.”

“Yes.”

“And perhaps to you.”

Benedict’s gaze hardened.

Nathaniel sighed. “There. That look. You may glower at me until the windows frost, but it will not alter anything.”

“I can alter my own conduct.”

Nathaniel became very still. Benedict heard his own conclusion forming before he wished to speak it. It was simple and practical, and painful enough to feel correct.

He allowed the boundaries to blur. He started seeking her out. He entered rooms and looked for her. He heard laughter in the corridor and listened for hers among it. He passed the library and wondered whether she was inside.

Such behavior was not control. It was surrender disguised as habit.

He behaved as though affection could be indulged without consequence. Last night proved otherwise. Sophia deserved certainty. The girls deserved stability. And Benedict needed to remember that Rivermere survived because he did not permit every impulse to become an action.

“I kissed her.” Benedict continued, more slowly. “And for several moments I forgot why I should stop.”

The confession altered the room. Even Nathaniel seemed to understand what it cost him.

Benedict looked at his own hand, the same one that rested against Sophia’s cheek. Resisting Sophia alone might have been possible. Resisting the hope she shared was something else entirely.

“I have lost control of my own household.”

Nathaniel frowned. “That is rather dramatic, even for you.”

“My rules are negotiated before breakfast. Marjorie has begun consulting Sophia as though she were legal counsel. There is a kitten sleeping in the west drawing room.”

Nathaniel chuckled. “Admiral is quite persuasive.”

“I found a wooden sword in my study yesterday. This house no longer feels as it did.”

Nathaniel studied him. “Is that truly something you wish to correct?”

Benedict looked around the study. He thought of Rivermere before Sophia, of quiet corridors, orderly rooms, meals conducted with excessive civility, two children trying very hard not to grieve too loudly, and himself, believing survival and happiness were the same thing because distinguishing between them demanded too much.

Then he thought of her laughter moving through the halls, of Amelia curled beside her with a book, of Marjorie dragging Sophia toward the garden by one hand while Sophia protested without making the slightest effort to escape, and of a house becoming warm.

The answer should have been simple. It was not. That was why he had to make it simple.

“I need to remember what this marriage is,” Benedict concluded.

Nathaniel’s expression became troubled. “And what do you intend to do?”

Benedict looked toward the door. Somewhere beyond it was Sophia, perhaps in the morning room with Amelia, perhaps in the garden arguing with Wilkes, perhaps laughing with Marjorie over some violation of household order that Benedict would discover only when it became impossible to reverse.