In Favour |Clara Walseworth|

A fraud ~ Chapter 19

Germany, 1819.

Nearly a year had passed.

The heavy, suffocating stillness that once filled Clara's days had lessened—if only slightly. It hadn't vanished, no. Some ghosts stayed no matter how many windows one opened. But the halls didn't feel quite so cold now. The silence no longer stung.

William had changed or at least—he'd tried to. Since his recovery, he had not returned to the hunt. The dogs remained kennelled. The rifles untouched. The long, wine-soaked days of smoke and laughter with rambunctious lords had faded into something quieter, something more deliberate and Clara liked to believe that the red stains that once lingered across his cheeks and chest had also gone too.

William walked more now. Alone, often, through the palace gardens or among the tree-lined paths just beyond the grounds. Once or twice Clara had found him in the small chapel tucked beside the south courtyard—not praying, not kneeling. Just... sitting and he had begun to speak more gently. Sometimes awkwardly. As though the act of kindness still felt foreign on his tongue, but he was trying to remember the shape of it. He had been trying.

To Clara, he had not said the words again—not since the sickroom. No apologies and no professions but he had shown up. He'd waited for her outside her drawing room some mornings just to walk with her to breakfast. He asked questions, listened—truly listened—when she answered. He sent for books, flowers and pastry's and He watched her without trying to own her. And sometimes, when he reached for her hand, it was only to hold it. Clara didn't speak of forgiveness. It didn't live on her lips. But she no longer flinched when he entered a room. She no longer guarded her breath.

They spoke easily now, if not intimately. Shared meals. Shared quiet. And sometimes, when dusk softened the palace into candlelight and the corridors hummed with nothing but footsteps and fading sun, he would sit beside her and speak to her about his day—his voice low, uncertain, but steady and in those moments, she watched him. Not with love but with something else.

On mornings when William poured Clara's tea before his own, or paused at the window to remark, "It's warmer today—you might enjoy the garden," she would watch him carefully. She could see the effort in his movements, the forced brightness in his eyes, the silent, aching plea etched across his face: "Please see that I'm trying. Please love me blindly again, as you once did." Yet no matter how hard she tried, she could not summon the feeling he so desperately wished for. She wondered sometimes if it was the Walseworth blood in her—the cold, stubborn pride of her lineage—that made her so slow to forgive. Or perhaps it was simply the reaction of any ordinary woman who had once been struck and screamed at by the man who had sworn to love her.

Clara still loved William, in a way. Not the man he truly was, but the fragile illusion she had once built in her mind—the man he had pretended to be in the early days, the man who had smiled so tenderly at her on their wedding day. She loved the way he tried now, fumbling toward redemption, desperate to reclaim the warmth he had destroyed. In some dark corner of her heart, it reassured her: he cared enough to try to be better, to make amends, even if it was far too late.

But Clara knew, deep down, that she could never love him again in the way he wanted. She would never be able to lie beside him without remembering, never kiss his lips with the innocent devotion she had once given so freely. That kind of love was gone. What remained was something quieter, sadder: a companionable affection, an endurance born of shared history. She could offer him the comfort of familiarity, the kindness of a steady presence—but not the blinding love he begged for. That part of her had long since been buried.

The mix of gravel and snow crunched beneath their shoes as the pair walked slowly through the east garden, where the last of the early December snow still clung to the hedges in white droplets. Birds fluttered through the trees overhead, and the breeze smelled of damp earth and life.