Page 77 of A Duchess for his Family

The word struck deeper than it ought to have done.

Careless.

She, who woke in the night wondering whether Amelia had seemed too quiet at dinner. She, who learned every rule of Rivermere because she feared disturbing the lives she had entered. She, who married a man she barely understood because two grieving children had looked at her as though she might become the difference between loneliness and home.

“You… believe I was careless with them?” she asked incredulously.

“I believe you did not consider the danger, yes.”

“I considered nothing else.”

“If that were true, you would never have brought them here.”

Heat rushed into her face. “You are so determined to protect them from every possible hurt that you have forgotten they must be children before they can become anything else.”

“They are my responsibility.”

“And mine.”

“No.” The word came too quickly.

Sophia felt everything within her become quiet. Benedict seemed to hear it only after it had left him. His expression shifted, but she no longer knew whether it was anger or alarm.

“What do you mean, no?”

“They are my wards,” he told her. “I have been responsible for them since before you came to Rivermere.”

“And I am your wife.”

“That does not give you the right to tell me how they are to be raised.”

For one suspended moment, Sophia could hear nothing but the faint ticking of insects in the grass. The pond, the willow, the abandoned picnic… all of it appeared very far away. She thought of the vows spoken a month earlier. She thought of Amelia leaving books in her room and Marjorie climbing into her bed before breakfast. She thought of every servant who called her Duchess and every tender, dangerous hope she permitted herself to form.

She’d believed she belonged to them. How foolishly easy it had been.

Sophia swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “Perhaps you should not have married me, then.”

Benedict’s face changed. She wanted him to deny it. The longing was immediate and humiliating. She wanted him to cross the space between them, take her hands, and tell her she had misunderstood everything. Instead, anger moved faster than tenderness.

“Perhaps it was a mistake.”

Benedict’s breath stopped. All the fury disappeared from his face at once, leaving something stark and stricken behind it.

“Sophia—”

She bent and snatched up her gloves from the blanket. Her fingers trembled so badly that one slipped into the grass, but she would not stoop for it.

“Sophia, wait.”

She turned away. He said her name again, no longer as a command but as something nearer a plea. She could not answer. If she opened her mouth, all the hurt gathering beneath her ribs would escape, and she would not give him the humiliation of watching her break over a marriage he regretted.

Sophia rushed toward the house. The grass brushed damply against her skirts. Behind her, the willow leaves whispered over the pond, and the abandoned linen stirred in the breeze.

Benedict did not follow… or perhaps he did.

Sophia did not look back to discover it.

Chapter Nineteen