Hans x Henry | 3437 words | T | AO3
In so many ways, it is absolutely nothing like what his father did.
Radzig says he fell in love. Henry didn’t. Radzig’s affair was over time, months maybe. Henry’s wasn’t. It was an impulse decision, just one afternoon that he was flattered into. That was all it was. He made no promises, and none were made to him.
Radzig seduced his mother and stole her virtue. Henry couldn’t say he’d done the same to Lady Stephanie of Talmberg. And then after, when there were consequences, Radzig had choices about what he would do. Henry didn’t and doesn’t.
Radzig admitting what he had done and recognizing his bastard would have resulted in Henry living a more comfortable life, though probably away from his mother, and he never would have known Martin. And though he doesn’t long for that life, had Radzig chosen that path for him, Henry would have been rich. He would have been educated and trained as a young boy instead of scrabbling to get all of that on his own after he was grown. Most would consider it a superior life. He certainly had yearned for it until he learned what it would cost him.
If Henry were to recognize his own bastard child, the current heir to Talmberg and supposed son of Sir Divish, it would result only in misery for three people, if not their deaths.
In a way, he feels like he understands his father better than he has in the past. In a way, he doesn’t understand him or his choices at all.
Henry thinks of all the women he’s bedded since Lady Stephanie. All the potential bastards in the world bearing his face but not his name.
Wherever they are, if they even exist, they’re not here, in this room, where Lady Stephanie and Sir Divish proudly show off their little boy in his Easter frock. Henry’s little boy.
Henry stares at the child’s big, blue eyes and strong brow that looks exactly like his own as these and a thousand other thoughts race through his mind faster than he knew thoughts could race, faster than he can put words to them, and he feels the sweat drip down his spine.
“Henry,” Radzig says, his voice dipping and rising at the end, a queer smile on his lips, “I think the two of us need to have a chat.”
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