At last she smoothed her hand along his cheek once more and whispered, “Talk to me.”

He jolted at the words, as if they made him realize where he was and with whom. He straightened, turning his face as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m weaker than I thought.”

She wrinkled her brow. “No, you’re not. You have suffered and survived. That makes you so very strong. But that doesn’t mean you don’t feel. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be human.” She cupped his face again and he let her. “Please, won’t you tell me?”

There was a long, charged moment where she could see he was fighting the idea of sharing with her. How could she blame him? Cutting himself off from his emotions had been his way to save himself from a rocky, difficult childhood. She understood barriers, boundaries to keep others from seeing inside.

But she had shared parts of herself with him that no one, even her sisters, understood. She wanted so desperately to be the same shelter for him now. If she wanted any kind of life with him, she had to win that battle.

But not by forcing it.

He cleared his throat, lifted his gaze to hers and whispered, “My father had thrown the bear into the parlor as he dragged my brother off to scream at him. I snuck in and took it. I hid it so the earl couldn’t destroy it.”

“What did you father do when he couldn’t find it?” she asked.

“He assumed one of the servants had thrown it out with the rubbish, I think, since he had shouted so long and hard about destroying it. Went off to drink with his cronies and forgot the whole thing.”

He shivered, and in that moment she knew he wasn’t with her anymore. He was back in time, a little boy trying to save his brother. Trying to save them both from the kind of man who would punish a child for seeking comfort.

She didn’t push him, but let him live out that memory, watching as his eyes swelled with tears again, but this time they didn’t fall. This time he choked out, “I went to Solomon’s room that night. He was crying, I think I remember him crying. I showed him the bear.”

“He must have been pleased,” she whispered, looking into the box before her with its evidence that the late earl had kept his childhood toy close to him for a great many years.

“He was not,” Jasper corrected, his voice rough. “He shouted me out of the room, telling me he didn’t need baby things like I did. He said he’d burn it himself.”

She shut her eyes, feeling the laced, tight pain of her husband’s words. Feeling the rejection of his brother at the core of that kind act. And seeing the truth of it in the box in front of them.

“It must have been hard for him to go against your father,” she suggested gently.