Page 74 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

The sincerity of the question caught her attention. He was not challenging her. He truly wanted to know.

“I believe so, yes.”

“She may not like that.” He raised his brow.

Poppy shook her head slowly as she thought about it. “Maybe not at first, but it will help create a sense of family and stability that Aurora needs.”

“I will not have her frightened. Nor forced to sit through some ceremony she does not understand because adults have decided it will improve her.”

Poppy’s heart softened. He was just an uncle frightened of becoming one more terror in his niece’s life.

“I would not ask that of her,” she said. “But meals are not only ceremony. Not if we make them otherwise. Aurora needs to feel she belongs somewhere that does not vanish when she closes her eyes. She needs the same faces. The same table. The same voices. She needs to learn that we will still be here at breakfast, and dinner, and the next day.”

His jaw worked once, as though he had bitten down on words.

Poppy continued more gently. “Family is not only affection. Sometimes it is repetition until the heart believes what the mind has been told.”

He sat very still.

Then, more quietly than before, he asked, “Do you think she would enjoy spending time with me?”

Poppy did not answer immediately. His question revealed more than he likely meant to show, and there was no vanity in it. She sensed no expectations either. Perhaps he feared being disliked by a four-year-old girl whose whole world had already been broken.

“I think,” Poppy said carefully, “that she does not know you yet.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the truest one I have.”

His hand moved toward his cane as if readying himself to leave. “I do not wish to force her into my company if she finds it unpleasant.” Poppy looked at him kindly, and he seemed to remember his coldness as he allowed it to take over his features. “I only meant that upset children at the table would be noisy and disruptive, which I would prefer to avoid.”

Poppy pursed her lips, hiding the smile that threatened to emerge. “She may find it unfamiliar at first, but not unpleasant. That is different.”

He raised a dark brow at her, and a faint flush warmed her throat.

“I believe that the more Aurora sees you in an ordinary setting, the less alarming you will seem, and eventually you will grow on her.”

His mouth tightened disapprovingly. “Like mold.”

Poppy let out a soft laugh. “More like ivy.”

For one suspended moment, something almost like amusement crossed his face as he watched her, and she felt absurdly victorious.

Then she added, without thinking about it, “You have even begun to grow on me.”

The words landed between them with far more weight than she had intended. Hector coughed suddenly and got up.

Poppy looked down at her plate, mortified. “I did not—I only meant⁠—”

“That will be all,” Hector said coldly, but his reddened skin gave his true feelings away.

He tapped his cane with perhaps more force than necessary.

Poppy rose as well, though she did not know why. “Of course, Your—Hector.”

He took two steps, then stopped near the door. For a moment she thought he would leave without another word. Instead, he turned his head toward her.

“I will ensure Aurora joins us for meals,” he said slowly. “But if she makes too much of a fuss, we shall stop.”