He let the thought sit. It made his stomach go cold.
“I swore an end to you,” he said. “Not a mirror of you with kinder words.”
Memory rose: his sister’s small, brave smile. He had made the vow at a deathbed with a rage so clean it had felt like holiness. He had fed it for years.
“She asked me to be brave.”
The request burned. He could not tell whether it was because it was unfair or because it was true.
“I do not know how,” he admitted, finally. “I know how to refuse. I know how to endure. I do not know how to break my word and live with it.”
He dragged both hands through his hair.
“You would despise this, this counting of costs, this… conscience. You did not tabulate pain; you tabulated profit. I am not you. And yet here you are, telling me what a man ought to be.”
He stared until his eyes watered and the paint blurred. Then he blinked the tears back to where they belonged and spoke more evenly.
It was suited for a man of his standing to shed a tear, no matter how tumultuous his heart felt on the inside.
“She is my wife,” he said. “I love her. I will not deny it. But I cannot give me what she wishes, either.”
He breathed.
“I will not chase her to her estate at midnight, and I will not drag her back so that, in a week, the same fear sits down again between us.”
He faced the portrait squarely.
“You win tonight,” he said, bitterly. “Or the vow does.”
He glanced at the desk.
“I do not know who I am without the vow,” he said, “You cannot make me cruel. Only I can do that.”
The portrait regarded him with all its perfect indifference. He let it.
He turned away and took the chair he had avoided, the one that faced the empty space where she had stood. He drew paper toward him and began.
Maria,
I have done the cowardly thing and told the truth too late. I will not insult you by asking for your patience for what I cannot promise to change. I love you. If there is a future where I am not ruled by a dead man, it will be because I learned it, not because I panicked. If you wish to speak to me, a word will bring me. If you do not, I will honor that more than I have honored anything.
He signed his name. The letters were even. He sanded the ink, folded the sheet, and sealed it. He rang for a footman.
“Your Grace.”
“Take this to…” he began, and faltered. Suddenly, he did not feel as impassioned as he did a few moments ago.
The footman extended his gloved hand. “Your Grace.”
Stephen’s fingers tightened.
He could send it. It would be a decent act. It would not be a change.
The footman waited patiently.
“You will… not deliver it,” he said, finally handing over the letter.
“Your Grace?”