The following morning after breakfast, Nancy closed her office door, exhaled, and collapsed into the chair behind her desk.
Nancy had barely begun to sort the household accounts—scarlet ledgers marching in disciplined rows—when the handle creaked.She glanced up, ready to dispatch whatever emergency required her immediate attention, only to see Oscar entering with a covered plate.
He set it down on the desk and uncovered it with a flourish. “Jam biscuits, freshly abducted from Cook. For Henry.”
Nancy arched a brow. “And you have volunteered as courier?”
“Something like that.”
There was a curious, almost buoyant edge to him today. He looked lighter, less burdened. But Nancy’s own thoughts were in disarray, caught somewhere between the memory of his warmth at the piano and the truth that she could never quite touch him without burning herself.
She tried for breezy. “Are they poisoned?”
“Only with an excess of jam.” He gestured at the plate. “You may try one, if you wish. They are not guarded.”
Nancy reached for the smallest biscuit. “If I take one, does it count as robbing a child?”
Oscar sat, uninvited, in the chair across from her. “I will lie for you if the matter ever comes to trial.”
Nancy bit into the biscuit, found it indecently sweet, and tried not to look as if she enjoyed it. “Henry will not be pleased if I finish his entire plate.”
“We can always commission more.” Oscar took a biscuit for himself, made a face at the amount of sugar, but finished it anyway.
They ate in companionable silence, which—once she adjusted to it—was not uncomfortable. The awkwardness that had lived between them seemed, at last, to be dozing.
Oscar set his biscuit down and regarded her with careful consideration. “You managed the children well. Clara is remarkably improved.”
“Bribery and threats,” Nancy said, licking a smudge of jam from her thumb. “The usual tactics.”
Oscar almost smiled. “You make it look effortless.”
Nancy’s pulse skipped. She looked at the jam stain on the paper, then back at him. “It’s not.”
“I know,” Oscar replied. He looked at her, really looked, as if he were taking stock of every mark she’d left on the world and found it wanting for nothing.
She wanted to hold onto the moment. Wanted to keep it from sliding away into regret or silence.
Instead, she blurted, “I found your letters.”
Oscar stilled. “Which letters?”
Nancy flushed, realizing how that sounded. “The ones in the music room. The ones for Peter and Teresa.”
He went very still, as if bracing for a blow.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, and meant it. “I stumbled on them during the hide and seek.”
He nodded after a moment. “They are unsent. I could not—” He stopped, as if the words themselves required more courage than he possessed.
Nancy reached for another biscuit, mostly to give her hands something to do. “You loved your brother,” she said. “I can tell.”
Oscar laughed, but without any mirth. “He was everything I am not. Kind. Open. Impossible to dislike.”
“I have met you, Oscar,” Nancy replied. “Impossible is a strong word.”
He tilted his head. “You manage it.”
She threw a biscuit crumb at him. It bounced off his jacket, which pleased her immensely.
