Page 118 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“You speak as if leaving would be a kindness,” she said. “As if deciding what I deserve without asking me is some noble thing. But that is still a sacrifice, Hector. It is only one you are trying to make on my behalf.”

He felt the cane before he accepted it. She placed it against his hand, not thrusting, not pleading. Simply returning to him what was his. His fingers closed around the familiar shape.

The world steadied at once.

He hated how much relief passed through him. He loved that she had noticed.

“So,” she said, “perhaps that is one more thing we have in common.”

Despite himself, his mouth softened. “Have you been keeping a list of things we have in common?”

“Perhaps.”

“A dangerous occupation.”

“Not as dangerous as allowing you to keep a list of reasons you must leave.”

He looked toward her, though he could not make out her face. He knew where her eyes should be now. Blue. It had taken him days, yes, but he knew.

“Poppy,” he said.

“No. Let me say this.” She came a little closer. “You may decide what sort of man you wish to be. You may decide how to care for Aurora and Princess. You may even decide whether you can forgive yourself, though I hope one day you do. But you do not get to decide whether I deserve you.”

His grip tightened on the cane.

“That is not your decision to make,” she said.

The dark remained. The house did not become suddenly bright, nor the past less brutal. Somewhere beyond these walls, Aurora slept after dreaming of a mother she had lost. Princess would wake at dawn needing comfort without understanding why the night had been disturbed. Nothing had been solved.

Yet Hector stood with the cane in his hand and Poppy before him, and for once the silence did not demand retreat.

He nodded.

It was small. It was not enough.

But it was a beginning.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Iam not brave enough.” Aurora reached toward the smallest pony, then drew her hand back.

Poppy rose and crossed to her. “For what?”

Aurora looked at the pony, then at the ground. “To sit on him.”

“You need not sit on him today.”

“But I should.”

“Who told you that?”

Aurora considered this gravely. “No one.”

“Then no one is disappointed.”

The child’s brow pinched, as if disappointment might still be hiding somewhere nearby, waiting to spring out. Poppy crouched beside her and kept her voice even.

“You are the bravest little girl I know.”