“When we’re alone, he doesn’t hesitate. He touches me without thinking. He looks at me like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.”
I swallow.
“But in public…” I shake my head slightly. “He creates space. Not in a way anyone else would notice. Just enough that I do.”
The words feel disloyal.
“I don’t know if I’m imagining it,” I add quickly. “I probably am.”
“Bloody hell.” His jaw tightens.
“Christina,” he says, leaning forward, “if I ever thought Phil was ashamed of you because of your heritage, I’d kick his arse myself.”
Despite everything, I let out a startled laugh.
“You would not.”
“I bloody would,” Arthur says. “Don’t care how old he is.”
“He’s bigger than you.”
Arthur snorts.
“Not the point.”
The image of it breaks through the tightness in my chest, and I laugh again, the sound thinner now.
He watches me for a moment longer, the humour in his expression softening into something steadier.
“I’m not naïve,” he says. “I know there are plenty of twats in this world who’d think like that. Racists who care more about the colour of someone’s skin than the kind of person they are.”
He pauses.
“But Phil isn’t one of them.”
The certainty in his voice makes it hard to argue, even with the doubt still sitting quietly inside me.
“I made sure of that,” he continues. “Him and Jane. Raised them properly. Taught them to look at people, not categories.”
His mouth twitches.
“Even if their mother sometimes forgets herself and starts acting like she’s got shares in the aristocracy.”
I huff out a small laugh.
“I can’t imagine where she gets that from.”
Arthur rolls his eyes.
“Not from her family, that’s for damn sure. They were miner folk through and through.”
He shifts slightly in his chair, turning toward me more fully.
“You should tell him.”
The words land gently, but firmly.
I hesitate.