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“Lady Cuthbert,” Nathaniel echoed, his tone delicately balanced between inquiry and statement. “NotEmma, then? How remarkably formal, considering the rumors that reached even my notoriously unreliable ears.”

Victor’s gaze snapped to his friend’s face, a dangerous edge entering his voice. “What rumors?”

“Oh, nothing specific,” Nathaniel replied, his casual tone belied by the careful attention with which he observed Victor’s reaction. “Merely whispers of the Duke of Westmere’s unprecedented attendance at a certain household.”

It was not much, but it was enough to imply scandal—as Victor already expected from the ton. They were a bunch of hapless gossips draped in finery, after all.

“Society’s capacity for manufacturing intrigue from innocuous circumstances never ceases to disappoint,” he said coldly.

Nathaniel leaned forward, his customary levity giving way to rare earnestness. “Victor, we have known each other since we were scarcely older than the boy. We have faced French guns and stormed enemy ships together. I have seen you at your best and your worst—indeed, I am one of the few privileged to know there is a ‘best’ beneath that forbidding and rather miserable exterior you present to the world.”

Victor turned back to the window, unwilling to meet the concern in his friend’s gaze.

The rain had intensified, sheets of water obscuring the view beyond the glass, transforming the outside world into an impressionistic blur of grays and muted colors.

“Your point?”

“Mypoint,” Nathaniel said quietly, “is that in all our years of acquaintance, I have never seen you look at any woman the way you looked at Lady Cuthbert. Nor have I seen you engage with any child as you did with her son.”

Victor narrowed his eyes. “And what, pray tell, do you think you have seen?”

Nathaniel scoffed. “Oh, come now, Westmere. You truly do not think that I did not notice how much you changed, or how your relationship with Lady Cuthbert has evolved?”

“I assaulted a man in public.”

“Frampton?” Nathaniel gave an inelegant snort, stretching his legs out in front of him. “The man is a pestilential ass who has been begging for a thrashing since Eton. If anything, your restraint was the truly remarkable aspect of that encounter?—”

“She was afraid,” Victor said abruptly, the admission torn from him. “When I confronted Frampton, I saw it in her eyes—not concern for him, but fear of me. Of what I might do.”

Understanding dawned in the Marquess’s expression. “Ah…”

Victor let out a frustrated breath. “Her late husband… he was not known for his temperance or gentle disposition either.”

At that, Nathaniel arched an eyebrow. “And so you concluded that you, having defended her from malicious gossip, were somehow equivalent to a man who abused his wife?” His tone suggested he found this logic profoundly flawed. “Forgive me, but that seems a rather spectacular leap of reasoning—even for a man of your particular caliber of determined self-recrimination.”

Argus rose suddenly, moving to the door with ears pricked up in attentive hope.

For a moment, Victor thought he heard the rapid footfalls that had become familiar during Tristan’s visits to Westmere Hall—the eager, slightly uneven gait of a boy perpetually on the verge of running despite his mother’s frequent reminders about proper deportment.

The phantom sound faded, leaving only the rhythmic percussion of rain against glass.

Argus whined again, returning to his place at Victor’s feet with visible disappointment.

“It is not merely that,” Victor admitted, refilling his glass with mechanical precision, and ignoring the disappointment blooming in his chest. “Caroline… John…”

Nathaniel’s expression sobered. “Your wife and son have been gone for nearly a decade, Victor.”

“And does that diminish my responsibility? My failure?” Victor demanded, a rare flash of emotion breaking through his carefully maintained reserve. He could not allow that. “I was her husband. I was to be his father. And yet I failed to protect them.”

“From fate?” Nathaniel spoke the words quietly, a compassion he rarely showed. “Even you, with your outsized sense of duty, must recognize the limits of human intervention. The finest physician in London attended to Caroline during the birth. Nothing more could have been done.”

“You cannot know that,” Victor insisted. “Had I?—”

“This is not about Caroline,” Nathaniel interrupted. “This is about Lady Cuthbert and her son. This is about your fear that permitting yourself happiness is somehow a betrayal of a ghost. Or worse, that embracing this chance might result in similar loss.”

The accuracy of Nathaniel’s assessment made Victor freeze, and he turned away, unwilling to have his innermost fears so precisely articulated.

“You presume a great deal,” he said stiffly.