Oscar stood, buttoned his coat, and wondered—again—why anyone expected him to know what to do with children. He had spent the first ten years of his own childhood as an experiment in discipline. His own mother, a model of icy gentility, had believed that the word “love” spoiled a boy’s character; his father’s most tender expression was “Don’t disgrace the name.” The result: Oscar could quote Horace from memory, but he had no idea what to say to a crying child.
“Has the doctor been?” Oscar asked, as he strode past Mrs. Tullock, who scurried to keep pace.
“He says they’re healthy, but—well, grief is its own illness, isn’t it?” The housekeeper wiped her nose. “Might Your Grace wish to speak to them?”
No, he absolutely did not wish. “That seems inevitable.”
The march to the nursery was brief but ceremonial. Servants vanished from the hallways as they approached, as if the house itself was allergic to the idea of children. Oscar allowed Mrs. Tullock to open the door.
Inside, the Rowson twins were enacting a mute tragedy. Clara perched on the window seat, blue eyes hard as marbles, feet kicking the wall. Henry hunched in a threadbare chair by the fire, clutching a battered cloth rabbit. He did not look up.
Oscar examined the scene. “You are both old enough to know that food is necessary for survival.”
Clara’s answer was instant. “We won’t eat it.”
“You must.”
“We won’t,” she repeated, with the air of a girl prepared to die for a cause.
Oscar considered his options. Threat? Bribe? Rational argument? None had worked yesterday or the day before.
“Clara, if you do not eat, you will become weak. Henry will become weak. And then?—”
“We’ll die?” she interrupted.
Oscar blinked. “That is one outcome, yes.”
Clara looked at her brother, then back at Oscar. “That’s what happened to Mama and Papa.”
Henry’s eyes flinched but stayed on the rabbit. Oscar fought the urge to look away.
Splendid. Less than two minutes, and already we are at the existential phase.
Oscar approached the window, lowering himself to Clara’s level. “Your parents were ill. You are not. Unless you persist in this nonsense.”
Clara squared her shoulders in the same manner that his brother, Peter, did when they were younger, and it hurt to look at her. “You can’t make us.”
“On the contrary. I have made grown men kneel for less.”
“Are we grown men?” Her smile was small but devastating.
Oscar had no counter for that, so he turned to Henry. “Would you prefer another story tonight? The one with the brave fox, perhaps?”
Henry’s grip on the rabbit tightened. He did not answer.
It has a happy ending, you stubborn child. Unlike every story you actually lived through.
Oscar tried again. “There is a chessboard in the study. If you wish, I can teach you the basics.”
Henry shrank deeper into his chair.
Clara, watching with clinical detachment, said, “We’re not allowed in the study.”
“Under supervision, exceptions can be made.”
She considered this, then said, “You never smiled in any of the paintings downstairs.”
“I was rarely asked to.” Oscar found, to his horror, that he was nearly smiling now.
