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The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight as Emma descended the stairs, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders against the chill that seemed to emanate from within.

Sleep had proven elusive, her mind replaying Victor’s parting words in an endless, torturous loop.

She was startled to discover a dim light still glowing in the drawing room. Pushing the door open cautiously, she found Victor seated in a chair before the dying fire, a glass of brandy untouched at his elbow.

“You’re still here,” she said, her words falling clumsily into the silence.

Victor looked up, his features cast in harsh relief by the amber firelight. “I couldn’t leave without knowing if Tristan was truly well. How is he?”

“Sleeping peacefully,” Emma replied, moving further into the room but stopping short of approaching him directly. “The physician came and agreed with your assessment—the wound is clean and should heal without complications.”

Victor nodded, his gaze returning to the glowing embers. An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, weighted with unspoken words.

“What you said earlier,” Emma began, her voice barely above a whisper. “About… about knowing what it feels like to lose a child. What did you mean?”

For several long moments, she thought he would not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was distant, as though the words emerged from some deep vault rarely opened to the light.

“My wife, Caroline, died in childbirth ten years ago,” he said without preamble. “Our son lived barely an hour after.”

Emma sank into the chair opposite him, her shock evident. “I had no idea.”

“Few do,” Victor replied, finally lifting the glass of brandy but merely swirling the amber liquid rather than drinking it. “I have not made it a topic of drawing-room conversation.”

“Were you… were you married for long?” Emma ventured when it seemed he might not continue.

Victor’s expression remained carefully neutral. “Nearly a year. It was an arranged match—both families considered it advantageous. I was twenty-one, barely more than a boy playing at being a man.”

“And your wife?”

“Caroline was nineteen. Beautiful, accomplished. She would make an excellent duchess.” His voice held no inflection. “She performed her household duties admirably.”

Emma recognized the careful distance in his tone. In fact, she understood it.

“But… there was no love between you?”

She knew enough of what that felt like, for she had experienced the same with her late husband.

Victor’s eyes met hers directly for the first time since she had entered the room. “There was respect. We were partners in the enterprise of continuing the line.” A bitter smile crossed his face, and her heart twisted in her chest. “We had separate chambers, separate lives that intersected primarily at dinner parties and social functions. When the duty to produce an heir required it, we shared a bed.”

Emma felt heat rise to her cheeks at the blunt assessment, but she did not look away, for she knew, despite his clinical words, just how passionate the Duke of Westmere could be.

“I was in York on estate business when the messenger found me,” Victor continued, after draining his glass in a single swallow. “Caroline had gone into labor a month early. By the time I returned to London, it was too late. The physicians had failed to stop the bleeding, and Caroline was already slipping away.”

His voice remained steady, but Emma noticed how his hands had tightened around the empty glass, and her heart broke for him.

“She asked to see the child—our son. The nurses brought him, and… I remember how silent the room was. No infant’s cry.” Victor set the glass aside with careful precision. “She touched his face once, then looked at me and said she’d failed me.”

“Oh, Victor,” Emma breathed, her heart constricting.

That he still remembered those words meant that that day still haunted him, even up until this very moment. Indeed, he looked as though he were still living in the moment, his expression far too tortured for a man merely recounting a story.

“She died moments later. Our son followed within the hour. We never even had the chance to name him.” Victor’s gaze returned to the dying fire. “I arranged the funerals. I endured the condolences. And then I left England, unable to remain in a house haunted by what might have been.”

“The navy,” Emma said softly.

Victor nodded. “War seemed a fitting purgatory. I welcomed its brutality, its indifference. I saw men blown apart by cannon fire, watched friends succumb to fever, witnessed the kind of cruelty only humans can inflict on one another.” His hand rose unconsciously to the grotesque scar that marred his jawline. “I earned this three years ago during a boarding action off the Spanish coast.”

“And the others?” Emma asked, sensing there was more.