Chapter 2
Dulcie and I married four years earlier.
Privately.
No orchestra.
No society photographs.
No alliance.
A small chapel on the Aldercrest winter property.
Three witnesses.
Rafe.
My mother’s oldest friend, Evelyn March.
And Sophronia.
That was all.
Why secret?
Because three weeks earlier someone inside my organization had sold my travel route.
The ambush failed.
The message did not.
Anyone publicly close to me became leverage.
Dulcie knew the risk.
She still married me.
I asked for six months.
Six months before we announced her.
Long enough to identify the leak.
Long enough to stabilize the house.
Long enough to make sure her name could not become a target.
Six months became twelve.
Then eighteen.
The traitor was removed.
The immediate danger ended.
Still I delayed.
A funeral.
A succession dispute.
Another branch conflict.
Always one more reason.
Dulcie never pressured me.
That should not have comforted me.
It should have frightened me.
Silence from someone who loves you is not automatically consent.
Then my father’s old instruction surfaced.
Sophronia called it the Veil Rule.
I had never heard the phrase.
She told Dulcie that Aldercrest wives sometimes remained publicly unrecognized during unstable periods.
Not wives.
“Household dependents.”
Convenient language.
Dulcie was given a room in the staff wing whenever I traveled.
Then occasional service duties.
Then regular ones.
Each step presented as temporary.
Each step allegedly mine.
When I returned, Dulcie moved back into the private east suite.
I saw my wife.
Not the system surrounding her.
Sophronia arranged schedules carefully.
Different uniforms.
Different staff rotations.
Different stories.
I thought Dulcie occasionally helped at charity events because she wanted independence.
She had worked in hospitality before we met.
I never asked why she was still wearing an apron at midnight.
That failure belonged to me.
At the gala, I finally saw what my secrecy had become in someone else’s hands.
I looked at Dulcie across our bedroom.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She removed the lace headband slowly.
Then:
“Because every time I thought about telling you, your sister told me what crisis you were already carrying.”
My chest tightened.
“She made my pain sound selfish.”
May you like
There are cruelties that leave no bruise.
That was one.
