Chapter 10
Cedric refused to apologize.
Predictable.
He called me sentimental.
Also predictable.
We met once more because Adrian requested it.
Four people.
Me.
Adrian.
Cedric.
Lenora.
No Eudora.
No Verity.
This conversation belonged to the families that had turned grief into strategy.
Cedric opened with:
“I prevented a crisis.”
Lenora laughed.
Not kindly.
“What crisis?”
He looked at her.
“You were barely eating.”
“So you stole a baby?”
“I was trying to save you.”
She stood.
Adrian took her hand.
Not stopping.
Supporting.
Lenora looked at her father.
“My son died.”
Cedric flinched.
She continued.
“You treated that like a political vacancy.”
Silence.
“He had a name.”
Cedric looked down.
“Benjamin.”
The first time I heard it.
Lenora’s voice shook.
“Say it again.”
“Benjamin.”
“Good.”
She sat.
That was important.
Cedric had spent three weeks calling him the Vale-Ainsworth boy.
The heir.
The loss.
The problem.
Never Benjamin.
Reducing the dead child to role made replacement imaginable.
Adrian understood too.
He looked at Cedric.
“You were scared our marriage wouldn’t survive grief.”
“Yes.”
“You should have asked.”
Cedric said nothing.
There was the entire disaster again.
Fear.
Assumption.
Control.
Then Cedric turned to me.
“You think this doesn’t affect your engagement alliance?”
“It ended.”
His face changed.
For the first time, real consequence reached him.
His plan had been partly designed to strengthen Ainsworth’s position through Eudora’s marriage to me.
Instead, he destroyed it.
He looked old.
Not defeated.
Just finally facing cost that belonged to him.
I removed Ainsworth access to Blackwell—Caldermere, rather—private family strategy for an indefinite period.
Not because of surname.
Because Cedric controlled most of it.
Adrian maintained relations with Lenora’s cousins individually.
No family war.
Cedric hated that most.
He wanted collective identity.
Collective consequence.
Collective leverage.
May you like
We answered with individual responsibility.
Harder to manipulate.
