“You wore the dress,” he reminded her evenly. “That is more than I would have predicted you would do. Perhaps a part of that was knowing it would end there.”
He wasn’t sure she had known how he would react, but they had known each other somewhat by then, and perhaps she had believed he would do the honorable thing in that situation. He was not so bound to the conventional version of honor as some men, but he had his own version of it to which he subscribed. “No Chaldean has been faced with the choices you have had before you. I wish I had seen it sooner. Or admitted it sooner, I suppose.”
It had always been there, after all, and he would take responsibility for making those excuses all those years. It was not only duty that drove people against common sense or decency. “If you had come to me on your own, I cannot say. I still would not have enjoyed the presumption of seeing you in that gown, even had it been your own doing, though I suppose I would have deserved it.”
He had used such social tactics against her, after all, and it would have served him right to have her call his bluff. “I suspect he will never find himself in such a predicament again, but this life you have brought him into… It is not an easy one either. It will most certainly not be easy for him. He will be resented for his place with you, and my favor will only worsen that particular sentiment. Shayleiah will be expected to take a side. Children are cruel. And sweet girl that she is, there is no doubt in my mind where she will stand, but it will make things harder on her as well. Any place he earns for himself, it will still be said it was given to him through your influence. Or mine.”
He tilted his head, considering for a moment. “I may say it for that reason alone then. My daughter does not need this boy.” But the decision was already made, and now he was only arguing for the sake of it, because he enjoyed hearing how she would frame her retorts. “I have worked hard to cultivate an entirely agreeable image for her, and this will damage that. And for him… He may well resent her for it one day as well, when they say she endures him for pity’s sake, like some wounded animal. They say as much when she is seen with Tauryn. That it is kind of her to look past what he is. None of us take well to pity and he is a proud lad already, you can see it in how he carries himself.”