Matthias did not send Felix away.
That did not repair anything.
Truth rarely behaved as cleanly as confession demanded.
By spring, Hartmann had left Bavaria.
Before leaving, he gave Eleanor copies of every document he possessed: Anna Keller’s letter, the register from the lying-in house, Johann von Falken’s payments to Hartmann’s mother and the parish entry recording his own birth.
Eleanor thanked him.
She did not forgive him.
He seemed to understand the difference.
Matthias moved back into the east wing, but not into Eleanor’s rooms.
For months they spoke only about Felix.
The boy’s legs slowly strengthened with better diet, cod-liver oil, time outdoors and the ordinary resilience of children who did not know adults had nearly reorganised their lives around a misunderstanding.
He remembered little of that winter.
Years later, he would remember his father’s sudden habit of attending every breakfast.
Matthias became an attentive father with the desperation of a man trying to pay a debt no one had priced.
Sometimes he overcorrected.
He carried Felix upstairs long after the boy could climb alone.
He abandoned business trips.
He sat through illnesses that did not require him.
Eleanor watched without interfering.
One evening in May, Matthias found her on the west terrace.
The snow was gone. The first green had returned to the woods below.
He stood several feet away.
“May I?”
She looked at the empty chair beside her.
He sat.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Matthias said, “I don’t know how to ask you to stay.”
Eleanor looked toward the valley.
“Then don’t.”
He nodded.
“I deserved that.”
“This is not about deserving.”
“No.”
She folded her hands in her lap.
Matthias stared at them.
“I believed the worst thing about you because it was easier than believing I might be wrong about myself.”
Eleanor said nothing.
He continued.
“Anna.”
She looked at him.
“I have thought about her every day since the chapel.”
“Good.”
He accepted that too.
“I sent people to find her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Eleanor’s mouth tightened.
“Then perhaps wait until you do.”
Matthias looked at her.
“I thought perhaps Felix should know.”
“When he is older.”
“Yes.”
“And only if knowing helps him, not because confession helps you.”
Matthias looked away.
That landed where she intended.
After a while,l e he asked, “Do you hate me?”
Eleanor considered the question seriously.
“No.”
He looked surprised.
She continued.
“Some days I wish I did.”
The honesty hurt him more than anger.
Matthias stared at the fields.
“I loved you.”
Eleanor corrected him.
“You love me.”
He looked at her.
She did not soften.
“That is why what you did matters.”
He nodded.
Below them, Felix shouted from the garden.
Both turned automatically.
The boy was trying to climb a low stone wall while his nurse argued that his physician had forbidden recklessness.
Felix shouted back, ” Dr Hartmann was no longer there to forbid anything.
Eleanor almost smiled.
Matthias did.
Then stopped when he noticed she had not.
“Will you leave?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“I haven’t decided.”
He nodded slowly.
A year earlier, he would have demanded certainty.
That spring, he had learned what certainty had cost him.
Eleanor rose.
Matthias remained seated.
At the terrace door, she stopped.
“Felix has been asking why you no longer ride with him.”
Matthias looked up.
“I thought his legs-”
“His legs are improving.”
“I know.”
She waited.
Matthias understood.
“I’ll take him tomorrow.”
“Not the black mare.”
“Of course not.”
“He hates the chestnut.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. He stopped liking her in February.”
Matthias lowered his eyes.
Another small thing he had missed.
“I’ll ask him.”
Eleanor nodded.
Then she went inside.
Matthias stayed on the terrace for several minutes before going down to the garden.
Felix was still on the wall.
When he saw his father, he lifted both arms without embarrassment.
Matthias picked him up.
The boy immediately complained that he was not a baby.
Matthias put him down.
Felix took three steps, stumbled, recovered and kept walking.
This time Matthias did not reach for him.
He simply followed.
