“I think what’s right is ensuring that she grows up with people who have a legal claim to her.” His voice became cooler and more distant. “People who won’t have to maintain elaborate lies about her parentage.”
The withdrawal in his tone made her stomach clench. After everything they’d shared, all the barriers they’d broken down, he was retreating behind his walls again.
“Owen, she’s our daughter.”
“No.” The word was flat and final. “She’s not. She never was. We were temporary guardians and nothing more.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? We took her in because the circumstances left us no choice. We’ve cared for her because she needed care. But now she has a chance to be with her real family. A family outside theton, the scrutiny… all this mess.”
The dismissal of everything they’d built cut deeper than any physical wound. “So, what happens now? We simply hand her over and pretend the last months never happened?”
“We say the child died. Fever, sudden illness. These things happen.” His voice carried the same tone he might use to discuss shipping schedules. “Thetonwill offer their condolences and then forget. Children die all the time.”
“Children die all the time?” The words came out strangled. “That’s your solution? We fake her death?”
“It’s practical. Clean. No questions about where she’s gone or why.”
Iris stared at him, seeing a stranger where her husband should be. This wasn’t the man who sang lullabies in the nursery or worried when Evie fussed during feedings. This was the cold Duke she’d married, the one who calculated everything in terms of advantage and risk.
“She’s not dead, Owen. She’s upstairs in the nursery, playing with the wooden blocks you bought her. She’s real, and alive, and she loves us.”
“She’s an infant. She doesn’t love anyone. She responds to familiar voices and faces, nothing more.”
The brutal dismissal made her eyes sting with tears. “How can you say that? How can you sit there and pretend she means nothing to you?”
“Because clinging to illusions helps no one.” He rose from his seat and moved to the window. “She was never truly ours, Iris. The sooner we accept that, the less painful this will be.”
“Less painful?” Iris stood up as well. Her anger gave her strength. “There’s nothing about this that won’t be agonizing. But that doesn’t mean we should simply surrender without a fight.”
“What fight? Against what? Legal documentation? Blood relatives with legitimate claims?” He turned to face her, and she could see now that his expression was carved from stone. “We have no grounds to oppose this.”
“We have love. We have the fact that she’s known no other parents. We have months of care and devotion and building something real together.”
“None of which matters, legally.”
“It should matter to you.”
“What matters to me is doing what’s right, not what’s comfortable.”
The tears came then. They were hot and furious and impossible to stop. “What’s right? What’s right is keeping families together. What’s right is honoring the bonds we’ve built.”
“What’s right is accepting reality instead of living in fairytales.”
“Fairytales?” The accusation hit her like a slap across the face. “Is that what you think this has been? Our marriage, our family, everything we’ve shared?”
Owen’s face went carefully blank. “I think we got caught up in playing house and forgot it was temporary.”
“Playing house,” she repeated bitterly. “All those nights you held her while she slept, all those mornings we fed her together—that was just playing house?”
“It was necessary caretaking until proper arrangements could be made.”
“And what about us? What happens to our marriage when she’s gone? What do we have left?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard. For a moment, something vulnerable flickered in his expression before his mask slammed back into place.
“We go back to what we were. A marriage of convenience. Two people sharing a name and a roof, nothing more.”
