Page 81 of A Duchess for his Family

Sophia held them both. Somehow, she understood Benedict better then. His rules were not walls built from coldness. They were barricades raised by a man who had watched death enter a family twice and believed it his duty never to permit it through the door again. Every forbidden tree, every locked gate, every warning at the edge of a pond came from love sharpened by helplessness.

The knowledge softened something in her. It did not change what she believed. The girls had lost their parents. They should not also lose every joyful thing their parents had given them. Adventure had once been part of love. Trees, streams, muddy hems, and implausible stories were not merely dangers. They were memories of happiness.

Benedict wished to preserve the girls. Sophia wished to restore them. Perhaps neither desire was wrong. Perhaps the wrong lay only in believing one had to destroy the other.

Marjorie lifted her head. “Do you think Uncle Benedict would ever allow us to climb the pear tree?”

Sophia looked toward the house. Through the distant drawing-room windows, she saw the dark shape of a man standing motionless behind the glass. Even at that distance, she knew him.

For one breath, neither moved. Then Benedict turned away.

Sophia looked down at the girls.

“I think,” she spoke slowly, “your uncle may require some persuasion.”

Marjorie’s eyes brightened. “I am excellent at persuasion.”

“No,” Amelia and Sophia said together.

Marjorie sighed. Sophia drew them closer, feeling their laughter stir against her.

She understood Benedict’s fear now, but she understood something else as well. These children had already spent too much of their young life learning how suddenly happiness could disappear.

Sophia would not allow fear to take the rest of it.

Chapter Twenty

Benedict found Sophia in the smaller drawing room shortly before dinner. She was sitting near the window with a book open upon her lap, though the page had not turned since he entered. Evening light rested across her face and caught the gold of her wedding ring.

“Sophia, may I speak with you?”

Her fingers tightened faintly against the book. “Of course.”

“Privately.”

She glanced toward the open door. “We appear to be alone.”

He deserved that. Benedict closed the door nevertheless, then remained standing because sitting seemed too comfortable for what he intended to say.

For several days, he had rehearsed his words. None sounded adequate. Apologies were simple when offered for errors of account or judgment. They became far more difficult when the injury could not be corrected merely by admitting fault.

“I owe you an apology.”

Sophia looked down at the page. “You have already been exceedingly polite to me.”

“Politeness is not an apology.”

“No,” she agreed quietly. “It is not.”

Benedict drew a breath. “What I said beside the pond was cruel. I spoke in anger, and I had no right to call our marriage a mistake.”

Her face remained composed, but he saw the hurt move through it.

He forced himself to continue. “It was not a mistake.”

Sophia’s eyes lifted.

“The way you defended the girls… your willingness to argue with me when you believed their happiness required it… only proves that I chose rightly.” His voice dropped. “They need someone who will fight for them, even when the person she must fight is me.”