“May I Eat What You Didn’t Finish?” My Son Asks the Cold Duke—Unaware He’s His Father

Chapter 9

That night, Rowan could not sleep. While Sam dozed in a chair in the stillroom, exhausted by new boots and spoon-counting adventures, she finished the extra work she had traded Mrs. Vale for another half day’s wage.

The room smelled of lavender, vinegar, and the sweet sharpness of quince preserves cooling on the shelf. Candles burned low. For the first time all day, Rowan removed her cap.

Her hair fell around her shoulders. The walnut rinse — applied weekly to darken the golden strands that were too easily recognizable — had faded at the temples, revealing thin threads of old gold. She caught her reflection in the dark window and almost looked away.

Lilia would not have recognized this woman. Or perhaps she would have. Perhaps she had been becoming her all along.

Sam shifted in the chair, crumbs on his shirt from the biscuit Mrs. Vale had pretended not to give him. Rowan crossed to tuck the blanket higher around his shoulders. He sighed in his sleep and caught her wrist with one small hand.

“Mama,” he murmured. “I am here.”

He settled at once. The old ache rose in her throat. She sat beside him and, without thinking, began to sing.

It was an old Northwood song, passed down by kitchen girls and tenant wives. Lilia had learned it from her mother and once sung it in the orchard while stealing early apples. Julian, pretending to read beneath the trees, had told her the melody made the whole estate feel less lonely.

She had not sung it aloud in years. Her voice was quieter now, roughened by disuse, but the tune remembered itself.

Down the corridor, Julian stopped.

He had been returning from the library, candle in hand, cravat loosened. The song reached him at the corner near the stillroom — so faint at first he thought it was his imagination. Then the words took shape.

His fingers tightened around the candlestick. No one sang that song anymore. No one except—

He moved toward the door as if pulled. Candlelight spilled across the threshold. He saw Sam first, curled beneath a blanket, one new boot still on. Then he saw her.

Her cap was gone. Her hair, loosened around her face, caught the candlelight in hidden strands of gold beneath the darker rinse. The severe lines of Mrs. Hale softened. The guarded kitchen widow blurred.

For one suspended second, Julian saw the orchard at dusk. A girl laughing through leaves. Her hands full of stolen apples. Her eyes bright with mischief and impossible tenderness.

The candlestick shook in his hand.

Rowan looked up. The song died in her throat.

Julian stared at her as though the dead had risen. “Lilia,” he said.

The name struck her like a hand against a bruise. She rose too quickly, nearly upsetting the stool. “Do not call me that.”

Shock flashed across his face, followed by hurt, then something deeper and far more dangerous. Longing.

“All this time,” he said hoarsely. “You were here. Why? Why hide from me?”

“You cannot truly be asking that.”

“I am.” His jaw tightened. “You disappeared.”

“I disappeared?” The words tore out of her before she could stop them. Sam stirred, and she bit down on everything that wanted to pour out of her.

Julian set the candlestick down with painstaking care, as though one rough movement might shatter everything. “I returned from London, and you were gone. Your father’s rooms were empty. No one would tell me where you had gone.”

“My father was dismissed. By whom?”

She shook her head, disbelief burning through her like a fever. “Do not. Do not use that name as if you have the right to be wounded by it.”

The color left his face. For a second, Rowan almost reached for him. Even now, even after years of teaching herself not to love him, some ruined part of her still recognized his hurt and wanted to soothe it. She curled her hands into fists instead.

“You sent me a letter,” she said, voice low and fierce. “You told me what happened between us was a mistake. That I had misunderstood you. That I should not write, should not wait, should not shame myself by hoping for more.”

Julian went utterly still. “No.”

The single word was so raw that something inside her faltered.

“No,” he repeated. “That is all you have to say?”

“I did not write that.”

The room seemed to tilt. Rowan gripped the edge of the table, feeling the rough wood beneath her palm, grounding herself in the only solid thing available.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect nothing. I am only telling you the truth.”

“The truth?” Her laugh was quiet, pained. “The truth is that I waited until my pride bled. I read your letter until the creases tore. I carried your child beneath my heart while the village counted backward from his birth and called me every name they were too polite to say aloud.”

The breath stopped. Rowan realized what she had revealed a fraction too late. She stepped instinctively between him and Sam — protective and final.

Julian’s eyes came back to hers, and she saw him force the question down before it could fully form.

“Rowan,” he said, using the name she had chosen, softly enough to undo her. “I wrote to you again and again after my father took ill. After I realized I would not return as quickly as I promised. After he died. I wrote until my hand cramped. I told you to wait. I told you I would come for you.”

“No.” She shook her head. Because if she let the possibility stand, it would crush her. “You do not get to rewrite the only story that allowed me to survive you.”

He flinched. Then his voice dropped, stripped bare. “Did it allow you to survive me?”

Rowan looked at Sam — her sleeping son, one hand tucked beneath his cheek, innocent in a world that had never fully permitted him to be. The sight steadied her and broke her at once.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Because I had to.”

Julian closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the cold duke was gone. Only the man from the orchard remained — older, scarred, trying to understand how a single summer had become seven years of ruin.