It was not what silenced him.

As the fabric slipped from her shoulders, he saw the marks.

There were scars at both her wrists, pale and long-healed, of a kind he did not want to understand and understood at once — the marks of a person who had been restrained, and held, and kept somewhere against her will, and not for an afternoon.

He did not let his eyes linger on them, because some instinct told him that being looked at was its own old injury for her.

He lowered himself instead, slowly, down to one knee, so that he was not standing over her.

He had built a career on composure.